.. _intro-meeting-rooms-management:

Introduction to Meeting Rooms Management 
------------------------------------------

.. _25.4|VOSS-1490:


.. tip:: 

   :ref:`use-action-search-to-navigate-automate`


Overview 
..........

Meeting Room Management provides a unified view of meeting room usage and operational indicators across 
collaboration platforms, with a strong focus on analytics, visibility, and decision support. It 
enables organizations to understand how meeting rooms are actually used, identify under- or over-utilized 
spaces, and optimize workspace and real estate investment based on data rather than assumptions. 

The feature aggregates meeting room data from Cisco Webex and Microsoft environments into consistent dashboards, 
combining usage trends, device status indicators, and contextual metadata in a single place. 

Depending on configuration, some dashboard widgets may display data that is not restricted to the current 
hierarchy, particularly when based on globally visible reporter resources.

Rather than performing deep, real-time monitoring, Meeting Room Management emphasizes insight-driven 
analysis that supports planning, optimization, and long-term operational decisions.

Automated provisioning, templates, and configuration support consistent meeting room setup, while 
analytics on utilization, availability, and compliance help organizations improve room readiness and overall 
meeting room experience. 

Meeting room data refers to aggregated usage, participation, and device information for meetings held in
physical collaboration spaces using Microsoft Teams Rooms or Cisco Webex meeting room devices. This data 
is used primarily for utilization analysis, trend reporting, and contextual insight rather than detailed 
call-by-call troubleshooting.

.. rubric:: Related topics 

* :ref:`manage-meeting-rooms`
* Standalone reporter resources (time-series data)
* Insights Analytics in the Platform Guide


Supported meeting room environments
.....................................

Meeting Room Management supports spaces equipped with collaboration devices, including:

* Meeting rooms with tables, chairs, and video devices
* Cisco room devices (room bars, room kits, desk and standalone devices)
* Peripheral equipment such as: 

  * Touch controllers
  * Displays
  * Microphones

Cisco devices may be registered to:

* Cisco Webex
* Microsoft Teams (MTR certified and Teams enabled devices)

The VOSS platform supports mixed environments, presenting a consistent user experience regardless of the 
underlying vendor. Data is collected using a lightweight, scheduled data collection process. For Webex 
environments, default workspace metrics data collection and scheduling are automatically 
created when Meeting Rooms Management is enabled, reducing the need for manual configuration.

The scheduled data collection process: 

* Pulls data from multiple sources such as: 

  * Cisco Webex Control Hub
  * Microsoft services

* Aggregates and normalizes data into shared data models
* Ensures dashboards remain consistent, even in multi-vendor environments


This multi-vendor support enables consistent analytics and reporting across meeting room estates, 
even in environments that span different collaboration platforms.


Hierarchy awareness
.......................

Meeting room data collected from Arbitrator and synced in to VOSS for each Webex account is tagged with the 
relevant participant's (user) and workspace hierarchy paths so that you can view 
this data on meeting rooms dashboards in the context of the meeting ID and customer's business hierarchy. 

Hierarchy awareness allows usage and utilization trends to be analyzed in a business and geographic 
context, supporting data-driven decisions around workspace planning and investment.


.. rubric:: MS Graph room hierarchy alignment

In Microsoft environments, meeting rooms (`device/msgraph/Room`) are automatically moved and aligned with their associated 
Microsoft users during provisioning operations such as Easy Overbuild and related workflows.

* Rooms are matched to users by comparing the room email address with the user principal name (UPN).
* When Microsoft users are moved to a site level, any associated rooms are automatically 
  moved to the same hierarchy level.

This ensures consistent hierarchy structure and accurate reporting.


.. important::

   While meeting room data is typically filtered and displayed according to the hierarchy from which the 
   dashboards are accessed, certain Insights reporter resources can be configured to be visible across all 
   hierarchy levels. When this option is enabled, hierarchy filtering is not applied, allowing data that is 
   defined at higher levels (for example, system-level resources) to be accessed and visualized from any point 
   in the hierarchy. This is particularly useful for global datasets that need to be shared consistently 
   across an entire organization.



Insights reporter resources
............................

Insights reporter resources are used internally to support the collection and visualization of meeting room 
analytics in dashboards.

Some Webex meeting room dashboard widgets allow for the selection of Insights reporter resources 
(via the ``data/ReporterResource`` model) to support analytics and operational insight for 
the following Webex meetings data from the Arbitrator system:

* Webex CDR
* Webex Meetings
* Webex Meeting Participants
* Webex Meetings QoS

Insights reporter resources refer to the framework (via the ``data/ReporterResource`` model) that enables the 
collection, synchronization, and visualization of data in the dashboards. These resources support trend tracking 
and customized reporting on widget data. The model enables access to resource data in VOSS dashboards, 
facilitating the integration of data between Insights and VOSS so that dashboards may accurately reflect data. 

In VOSS it is also possible to add custom fields to reporter resources to allow further refinement of 
analytic data.

Reporter resources can also be configured to be visible at lower hierarchy levels. When this option is enabled, 
the resource is not restricted by hierarchy filters and can be queried and displayed across all levels of the 
hierarchy. This enables dashboards to surface globally defined data, even when viewed from lower levels in the 
hierarchy.


Data collection and display for Webex
.........................................

When Arbitrator is integrated with the VOSS platform for Webex, Webex meeting room data that 
displays on the VOSS dashboards comes from both the VOSS core platform and from the 
Arbitrator. This means Arbitrator doesn't need to collect all Webex meeting room data since some of the data 
is obtained via the VOSS platform API, specifically, 
data for people (users), workspaces, workspace locations, roles, licenses, and devices.

Arbitrator obtains the latest Webex meeting data via the Arbitrator's Webex API resource to present the 
data in dashboard widgets. For example:

* *Webex_meeting_qualities* resource: Shows for example, meeting title, meeting join time, masked local IP, 
  masked public IP, video mesh cluster, video mesh server
* *Webex_locations* resource: Shows for example, address, latitude, longitude
* *Webex_meetings* resource: Shows for example, host user ID, whether the meeting call is enabled for chat, closed captions, 
  recordings, transcriptions, or polls, and whether registration is required 
  the host has chat, count

.. note:: 

   Each resource represents an object in Arbitrator. A resource has associated data. A dashboard widget is set up to define the data to display on a dashboard. The data may come from 
   various sources, including, for example, data from CDRs imported to a directory, data collected by 
   probes, or data synced from VOSS. Regardless of the source, the system processes the data and 
   populates the appropriate database tables.

The data collection model is optimized for analytics and reporting at scale, rather than continuous deep 
monitoring of individual meeting quality events. 

It will still be possible to manually configure Arbitrator to collect all Webex data from the Webex API.

Manually configure Webex data collection on Arbitrator:

1. Log in to Arbitrator.
2. Go to **Archive Management> Configuration Management**
3. Configure a Webex tenant for data collection from the VOSS device (data collected via API). 
4. Configure a Webex tenant for manual data collection.



Calendar integration
...........................

The Meeting Rooms Management feature supports calendar integration to fetch, store, and display 
correlated and enriched Microsoft Teams Room and/or Cisco Webex Workspace calendar event data 
(via Microsoft Graph API), provided that the following prerequisites are in place: 

* Depending on your UC environment (Microsoft and/or Cisco Webex), Microsoft and/or Webex tenant set up
* Exchange calendar integration is enabled
* The ``Calendars.ReadBasic.All`` permission is assigned

Event data includes details such as: 

* Event location (meeting room name, and the floor a meeting room is on, if available)
* Event start and end date and time, timezone, and duration
* Event subject 
* Event organizer's name and email address
* Event participants (who joined and who left the meeting)
* Cancellation state (whether the event occurs or is cancelled)
* Whether the room actually joined the call (an event may be scheduled and then not occur)

Synced in event data is correlated across UC vendors and enriched for display on the dashboards.


.. rubric:: Related topics

* *Standalone reporter resources (time-series data)* in :ref:`automate-dashboards`
* :ref:`dashboard-reference`
*
  .. raw:: latex

     Insights Analytics in the Platform Guide

  .. raw:: html

     <a href="platform/reference-insights-analytics.html">Insights Analytics</a> 




.. _enable-meeting-room-management:

Enable meeting room management
..................................

Enabling Meeting Rooms Management provides access to several management dashboards that provide an 
overview of meeting room data, including summarized metrics and the ability to drill into the details of 
meeting room calls and devices via a range of analytics counters, list views of your meeting rooms/device 
inventory, meeting room usage details, device firmware versions (to easily see non-compliant versions), 
alerting and contextual notifications, all correlated and enriched with UC vendor data for 
additional context. 


To enable and use Meeting Rooms Management functionality: 

* Configure the Microsoft tenant
* Configure the Webex tenant
* Configure an Arbitrator with tenants and assign to the VOSS core platform
* Enable **Meeting Rooms Management** in the **Global Settings** (Enabled Solutions tab). This setting is 
  disabled by default.

  .. note:: 

     When setting **Enable Meeting Rooms Solution** to `Yes` (True), you'll need to log out and log in again 
     to update the menus with the relevant management screens and dashboards.

* Run a full sync once all requirements are set up so that data can start displaying on the dashboards. 
  See :ref:`scheduling`
