How do you book meeting rooms?

How meeting room booking works

A meeting room is a room in the office for meetings and calls. If there are more meetings in a day than rooms, rooms are booked in advance. A booking is an entry in the room's schedule: who took it and from what time to what time.

The schedule shows an employee which rooms are free at the time they need and how many seats each has. The schedule can only be trusted if everyone in the office can see it and it won't let anyone book the same room twice for the same time.

Where to keep the meeting room schedule

Company calendar. In Google Calendar, Yandex Calendar and Outlook (Microsoft Exchange), an administrator adds each meeting room as a separate resource with its name, number of seats and office address. An employee creates a meeting and adds the room to it the same way as a participant, and the calendar shows whether the room is free at that time. In Google Calendar, a room declines the invitation by default if there's already a meeting at that time. The booking lives in the same event as the meeting, so participants see right away where it will take place. This option works if everyone uses the calendar. If part of the team arranges meetings in the messenger and never opens the calendar, they forget to book the room there, and rooms get taken without a booking.

Shared spreadsheet. Each meeting room gets a column in the spreadsheet, and the rows are the hours of the working day. A spreadsheet takes five minutes to set up and is enough for an office with one or two meeting rooms. But a spreadsheet doesn't check for overlaps: two employees can put the same room down for the same time and only find out at the meeting room door.

Bot in the team chat. A bot is a program that posts in the chat under its own name and responds to button clicks. An employee books a meeting room through the bot's form without leaving the messenger, and the bot checks whether the room is free. The schedule is stored by a handler — the program that receives the bot's forms — or by the company calendar if the handler is connected to it. Such a bot has to be set up once: built without code in an automation service or handed to a developer.

If everyone plans meetings in the company calendar, book meeting rooms there. If meetings are arranged in the team chat, book through a bot in that same chat: people take a room right after agreeing on a meeting and don't forget to book it.

Why book meeting rooms in the team chat

The meeting and the booking in one messenger. A manager agrees on a meeting with a client in the department chat and books a room right away in the "[Bot] Meeting rooms" chat. There's no need to switch to a calendar or a spreadsheet.

Free time in a single message. Every morning the bot posts a list of meeting rooms with their free time for the day. Employees don't have to open each room's schedule one by one.

Fewer questions in the general chat. Employees don't need to ask colleagues which room is free at three o'clock: the answer is already in the bot's morning message.

Two bookings for the same time won't go through. The bot checks a new booking against the schedule and won't save it if that time is already taken.

Example: three meeting rooms for one office

The office has three meeting rooms: for eight, six and four people. They used to be booked in a shared spreadsheet. A sales manager put a client meeting in the eight-person room at 3 pm into the spreadsheet. A colleague missed her row and entered a call with a contractor for the same time. They found out when the client was already on the way to the office, and looked for a free room through the general chat.

Now meeting rooms are booked through a bot in the "[Bot] Meeting rooms" chat. Every morning the bot posts the free time of all three rooms there. The manager books the eight-person room for 3 pm, and the bot removes that time from the message. When a colleague picks the same room for the same time, the bot replies that it's taken. The colleague sees in the bot's message that the six-person room is free and books it.

Booking rules

Pin the rules in the chat where meeting rooms are booked, so a new employee finds them on their first day.

Cancel the booking if the meeting is cancelled. Otherwise the room stays empty when another team could have booked it. In a calendar, remove the room from the meeting; if you book through a bot, cancel the booking there.

Agree on how many minutes until a booking expires. For example, if nobody is in the room 15 minutes after the booking starts, any employee can take it.

Set an end date for recurring meetings. Create a weekly planning meeting in the calendar for, say, a quarter. If the meetings stop and nobody cancels the booking, the room frees up when the quarter ends.

Order a pass together with the booking. If a guest is coming to the meeting, order a pass right after booking the room. How to do it through the office manager's chat is covered in the scenario "How do you arrange a visitor pass for a guest?".

How to book meeting rooms through a bot in Pachca

In Pachca, the bot posts a message with the free time of all meeting rooms for the day to the "[Bot] Meeting rooms" chat every morning. The message has two buttons: "Book" and "Cancel."

To book a room, an employee clicks "Book," and a form opens. In it they choose a meeting room from a list, the date, and the start and end time. The list shows each room's floor, number of seats and free time.

Book a meeting room

Meeting room *

Select a value

Baikal3rd floor, 8 seats · free 10:00–15:00, 16:00–19:00

Ladoga3rd floor, 6 seats · free 10:00–19:00

Onega4th floor, 4 seats · free 10:00–19:00

Date *

Select a date

Start time *

Select a time

End time *

Select a time

CancelBook

If the room is free, the bot saves the booking, removes that time from the morning message and adds a ✅ reaction to the message. If the time is already taken, the bot doesn't save the booking and asks to choose another time. To cancel a booking, the employee clicks "Cancel" and picks it from the list of their bookings.

How to set up meeting room booking in Pachca

1. Create a chat. Call it, for example, "[Bot] Meeting rooms" and add the office employees. The "[Bot]" prefix shows that a bot posts in the chat. How to name chats is covered in the article "How to organize communication in your team chat app".

2. Create a bot. In "Integrations," choose "Bots," click "Create bot" and add it to the chat.

3. Set up the message with buttons and the form. A bot in Pachca posts messages with buttons, and a button click opens a form. A form can have a dropdown, a date, a time and a text field. More in the help center articles on buttons and forms.

4. Connect a handler. The bot doesn't store the schedule itself. A handler program will check the time, save and cancel bookings, update the morning message and add the reaction to it. It's built without code in n8n, written with an AI coding assistant, or handed to a developer who works with the Pachca API. How a handler receives the form and buttons is covered in the scenario "How do you approve time off without paper forms?", and how to build a bot without a programmer, in the scenario "How do you build an AI agent without code?".

5. Pin the rules. Write the booking rules in the chat, right-click the message and choose "Pin."

Where to start

Make a list of meeting rooms with their floor and number of seats, and agree on booking rules. Then choose where to keep the schedule: in the company calendar if everyone uses it, or through a bot in the team chat if that's where meetings are arranged.