Synergy SKY has added an IoT technology platform to expand its data analytics for room usage. The technology will make it possible to detect presence in meeting rooms without videoconferencing equipment, by using low-cost IoT sensors that are quick and easy to deploy.

Empty meeting rooms that are booked out, cause frustrations among users and are a waste of facility resources. Studies show that up to 30% of meetings are no-shows. The IoT sensor technology Synergy SKY now has acquired makes it possible to free up booked meeting rooms when no-shows occur — even in rooms without video conferencing hardware.

The sensors are affordable and easy to deploy, as they are powered with long-life batteries (up to 10 years) and communicate with a gateway over LoRaWan. The gateway communicates over IP back to Synergy SKY either through cloud or local installation (on-premise).

And, a building with 1,000 employees doesn’t need more than one LoRaWan gateway that communicates with sensors in all rooms.

With the IoT sensors, you can detect when people walk in or out of the meeting room and compare the presence detection with data from your calendaring (Outlook, Google Cal.) service. By scheduling a time threshold for when the meeting is officially a no-show, you can send an automatic email to the meeting organizer warning them that their room is about to be released to others unless action is taken.

Here’s how it works — watch this video:

With IoT sensors in the meeting rooms you get:

• No-show — When a room is booked but no presence detected.
• Automatic check-in — No touch check-in to confirm your booking.
• Notifications — When no-show is detected you can set up rules for e-mail notification. I.e. “Action Required: your booked Room XX is empty, would you like to keep it?”.
• Automatic Room Release — Release unused rooms and get up to 30 % more available rooms.
• Insight – Reports on utilization. Compare actual use vs scheduled and get actionable data.
• User friendly — Synergy SKY is a server-side integration to your calendaring (MS Exchange / O356). No new booking portal or plug-in. Use Outlook just like any other meeting.

All these features will give you complete control over the entire meeting cycle and help you streamline all the steps before, during and after the meeting.

In other Synergy SKY news, they also became Cisco Certified last week, too. “The agreement will grant access to half of Cisco’s 3 million meeting rooms, compared to today where our solution is available in 55,000 meeting rooms,” said Vemun Waksvik, VP of marketing at Synergy SKY.

According to Waksvik, Synergy SKY will gain access to about 1.5 million meeting rooms that currently are not connected to Cisco’s own Webex Cloud. The company will also receive assistance from Cisco’s sales department.

“Cisco has more than 25,000 salespeople, while we have 15. That will assist us in accessing far more meeting rooms,” he said.