Space and occupancy

Recipes for "how full is it" and "do we need it". Before any of them, give each room its Capacity (Map Editor → Zones; see Setting up a site). A capacity of 0 means unlimited, and a rule about capacity has nothing to compare against.

Which counting number to trust is a question of its own: Occupancy: which number is which.

A room over its capacity

The question: Tell the facilities team when the training room has more people in it than it is certified for.

Part	Setting
Hardware	Something that counts heads in the room: a radar, or a door counter (entries minus exits). Tags only count people who carry one
Rule watches	The zone (Training Room)
Condition	People Count greater than the capacity minus 1 (for a 40-seat room, greater than 39)
Only after it has held for	5 minutes, so a crowd passing through the doorway is not an alert
Repeat at most every	1 hour
Action	Telegram to the facilities group, {{zone.name}} has {{people_count}} people (capacity 40)

After the event, not during it. For "did we get close today", use the scheduled metric Most Inside Today (% of capacity) greater than 90, checked every hour, and an email. It needs a door counter and a capacity.

Pitfall. A door counter's "inside" drifts if the counter misses exits. If the room shows people inside at 03:00, read Occupancy before trusting the alert.

Rooms nobody uses

The question: Which rooms could we give up, or turn into something else?

Part	Setting
Hardware	Anything that tells occupied from empty: a radar, a PIR, a door counter
Rule watches	A label carried by the rooms you want to review, or each zone
Condition	Utilisation, last 7 days less than 25
Checks	Scheduled, daily; On Monday only; repeat at most every 24 hours
Action	Email to the workplace manager: {{zone.name}} was occupied {{value}}% of opening hours last week

The rule is a weekly nudge. The evidence is Reports → Space Utilisation (share of opening hours each room was in use) and Zone compare (rooms side by side). The opposite question, which room is too small, is Hours at Capacity, last 7 days greater than 5.

Pitfall. Utilisation is measured against the venue's operating hours. A venue left at 24 hours makes every office look idle.

The money answer. Reports → Space Utilisation → Buildings works out, for each building, what a square metre that is actually used costs, and whether the people on one floor fit in the spare seats of the others — in which case that floor could be given back, sublet or closed without building works. It needs the venue's cost of space per m² (or per ft², with Area Unit set to square feet), a scaled floor plan and seat capacities on the zones. Where rooms count only tagged people the building is marked, because the real need is higher than shown.

How many office days each team really comes in

The question: Our policy is three office days a week. Which teams come in, and on which days?

Reports → Attendance → Office days by team. A team is a label on the person. Pick the policy (one to five days); the card shows each team's average office days a week, how many meet the policy, and how many are in on each weekday. Book the team's meetings on its busiest day, and look at closing a floor on the quietest. Only people with a tag are measured.

An unusually busy or quiet day

The question: Tell the floor manager when the mall is much busier than a normal Saturday, so they can open another counter.

Part	Setting
Hardware	Gateways hearing the tags and phones people carry (footfall), or door counters
Rule watches	The venue or the location
Condition	Footfall vs Usual greater than 150 (half as busy again); a second rule with less than 50 for "unusually quiet"
Checks	Scheduled, every hour; repeat at most every 24 hours
Action	Mobile app push to the manager, or Email

"Usual" is the same hours of the last four same weekdays, so a Saturday is compared with Saturdays. It is not computed before the first complete hour of the day, or on a day the gateways sent nothing: an outage is not an empty building.

Pitfall. A public holiday on a weekday looks "unusually quiet" against four normal weeks. Untick that day in On, or switch the rule off for it.

Stuffy meeting rooms

The question: Which meeting rooms need more fresh air, and when?

Part	Setting
Hardware	A CO₂ sensor in each room (Milesight AM307 / AM319, EM500-CO2 or any sensor that reports co2), at head height when seated, away from the door and the air outlet
Data table	Stuffy rooms: co2 number · room zone
Rule watches	A label on the CO₂ sensors (Room CO₂)
Condition	Sensor reading (any field) co2 greater than 1000, held for 15 minutes
Repeat at most every	1 hour
Actions	Add a row to a data table → co2 = {{co2}}, room = {{zone_uid}}; optionally Home Assistant → switch the room's fan or fresh-air damper on

The report: Custom Reports → Stuffy rooms → count Records and max co2, grouped by room and Hour. A room that appears every afternoon at 15:00 needs a ventilation change, not a bigger fan. The raw readings are also in Reports → Environment and the Air Quality source.

Pitfall. 1000 ppm is a comfort line, not a safety limit. Outdoor air is about 420 ppm; a room that never gets below 600 overnight has a sensor that needs calibrating, or no fresh air at all.

Related

• How many were here: Footfall, Enter / Exit, People Count, Space Utilisation, Attendance and Loyalty, and which to pick.
• Toilet visits by gender: splitting one door counter's total across the rooms behind it.