Overview
The Neighborhood feature allows you to designate sections of your office, or office floors, to specific teams or groups, based on capacity. This feature allows you to seat teams or cohorts together while being mindful of the available space per team. Neighborhoods are location-specific, and groups of employees must be assigned at the location level. Neighborhoods are shown on the map by using color-coded overlays, making it easy to visualize your space.
You can use Envoy neighborhoods in different ways, depending on how your workplace uses desks - Restricted neighborhoods for certain teams, open neighborhoods for desk hoteling, or open neighborhoods with a mix of permanent and hotel desks.
How Neighborhoods work
Neighborhoods are added to your floor map by including the neighborhood name in the proper column of the Desks CSV upload, corresponding to the desk number.
You can also manually create neighborhoods via the Neighborhoods page.
Once you've created your neighborhoods, you can assign access to employees or SCIM-based employee groups.
You can assign Neighborhood Captains to manage seating assignments without that user needing full admin permissions.
When employees sign in, they will receive a desk booking in the neighborhood that an admin has assigned them to.
If the employee chooses to change their hotel desk booking, they will only be able to choose a desk in the neighborhood to which they're assigned or a neighborhood that is open for any employee to reserve.
✨Tip: Make sure there are enough desks in each neighborhood for the number of employees assigned. ✨
Creating Neighborhoods
via CSV
If you use a CSV to keep track of your seating, you can include neighborhoods on the same line as the desk you're adding.
By doing this, you can automatically create neighborhoods, floors, and assign desks to certain employees. These neighborhoods will appear on the Neighborhoods page, and the desks will appear on each floor. These desks will be included in the desk count on the Neighborhoods page, next to the neighborhood title.
Learn more about using a CSV to import desk data.
Manually via the Neighborhoods page
Navigate to Maps > Neighborhoods.
Click on Create Neighborhood.
Give your neighborhood a name.
Click Create.
Assigning Neighborhood captains
Neighborhood captains have the ability to edit their assigned neighborhood(s) on the live map or in a map draft. They cannot make changes to desks or assignments that are not included in their neighborhood - these icons will be greyed out and uneditable. Having neighborhood captains is optional but can be great for large workplaces that need assistance with seating arrangements.
Learn more about being a neighborhood captain.
View for a neighborhood captain.
To assign a neighborhood captain:
Navigate to Maps > Neighborhoods and click Edit next to the neighborhood name.
Under Neighborhood captains, assign at least one employee using the dropdown.
Neighborhood captains do not need to be a part of the neighborhood.
Neighborhood captains need to have logged into Envoy at least once.
Remember to click Save after making any changes.
After the assignment, your neighborhood captain will receive an email notifying them of the change.
Editing Neighborhood names
Navigate to Maps > Neighborhoods.
Click Edit next to the Neighborhood you want to edit.
Change the name of the neighborhood under Neighborhood name.
Click Save.
Deleting Neighborhoods
Navigate to Maps > Neighborhoods.
Click Edit next to the Neighborhood you want to delete.
Select Delete Neighborhood.
Confirm you want to delete the Neighborhood by clicking Delete.
Assigning a color to neighborhoods
By default, your neighborhoods are assigned colors at random. You can change the color displayed by editing the live map or a draft.
Open the map editor. Select the desk you wish to edit by clicking on it and opening the desk details panel.
Above the Neighborhood field, click View.
This brings up the Neighborhood details panel.
Here you can see:
The display color
The total number of desks in this neighborhood
Who can sit in this neighborhoods
Floors that have this neighborhood
To change the display color, click the color box above the neighborhood name to open a color picker.
✨Tip: You want your neighborhoods to be distinct colors. We suggest avoiding too many red-green colors to remain accessible.✨
Envoy will automatically assign colors at random. There are six potential colors.
Save your map after making changes.
Learn more about editing workplace maps.
Manually assigning employees to neighborhoods
Once you have uploaded a CSV that includes neighborhoods, those neighborhoods' names will populate as sections on Maps > Neighborhoods.
To add employees to each neighborhood, click Edit next to the neighborhood name, and begin to enter employee names listed in your directory to assign them to their corresponding neighborhood.
Click Save after assigning all employees to their appropriate neighborhoods.
Using SCIM groups to assign employees to neighborhoods
If your company uses one of our SCIM Directory integrations (Okta, Microsoft Entra, or OneLogin), you can use your SCIM instance to assign your employees to neighborhoods. In order to assign employees to a neighborhood using SCIM, employees must be provisioned to sync into the Envoy directory. If you use SCIM profile fields to categorize your employees, you can use those fields to assign employees to neighborhoods.
You can assign neighborhoods according to SCIM Department, Organization, Division, or custom group.
Populating and finding the Neighborhoods tab on the dashboard follows the same process as manually assigning neighborhoods
Instead of manually assigning employees by name, you can include the name of a group that you have included in your SCIM profile fields.
To assign these groups using SCIM profile fields, start typing the name of the group you input into your Department, Division, or Organization user fields in your SCIM provider into the "Specify groups that can sit in this neighborhood" field in Envoy neighborhoods.
Click Save after assigning all SCIM groups to their appropriate neighborhood
Important Notes
Only those assigned to a neighborhood, whether individuals or a SCIM group, will be assigned a desk in that neighborhood
If you do not assign any employees to a neighborhood, any employee can sit there. Employees who are not assigned to a neighborhood can sit in an open neighborhood, and employees assigned to a neighborhood can change their desk to an open neighborhood. However, if all neighborhoods have employees assigned, the employees not assigned to a neighborhood will not receive a desk upon sign-in
SCIM provisioning for neighborhoods is limited to Okta, Centrify, OneLogin or Microsoft Entra.
When using SCIM with neighborhoods, 1 department or group can be used in multiple neighborhoods. For example, your IT Department can belong to both Neighborhoods #1 and #2.
Using SCIM Profile Fields
The following SCIM profile fields are supported for neighborhoods: Department, Division, or Organization.
