Neighbourhoods and restricting reservations

[Matt Forder]

Hoping somebody out there (I'm looking at you ServiceNow 🤔) can help me understand how Neighbourhoods can be used to restrict reservations in the Workplace Reservation 'Make a Reservation' experience.

My simple requirement is to be able create a neighbourhood that contains desks that can only be reserved by users associated with the Neighbourhood. Reading the docs pages for 'Manage Neighbourhoods' it is implied that this is possible:

Space admins and space planners can create a neighborhood and perform the following:

• Assign multiple neighborhoods to employees. An employee can be assigned to a space in a neighborhood or to the neighborhood itself. For more information, see Create a neighborhood for workplace users.
• Assign employees to a neighborhood using user assignment rules that can run on a schedule. For more information, see Execute User Assignment Rules.
• Employees can reserve a space in a neighborhood if they're part of the neighborhood or if the neighborhood isn't restricted.
• Add or remove spaces in a neighborhood.
• Add or remove users from one neighborhood to another.
• View and reserve neighborhood spaces using floor maps on the reservation portal.

The actual behaviour I'm observing in the portal:

• If 'Enabled Browse by Neighborhood' is selected in the reservable module AND
• If 'Restricted' is selected in the Neighbourhood THEN
• When the Browse by neighbourhood option is selected on the WSD Search page then the neighbourhood only appears in the list of neighbourhoods that can be selected if the user is a member of that neighbourhood, and therefore any space that is associated with the neighbourhood can't be searched/selected.

So far good... BUT... wait a minute... if the user isn't a member of the neighbourhood they can still select the Browse all option which lets them pick any space regardless of which neighbourhood it's in! And since there is no way to disable the Browse all option (happy to be corrected if I'm wrong about that) there's no way to stop them*

What am I missing or mis-understanding?

* yes, I know I could define a seperate reservable module but that seems to defeat the whole point of being able to define neighbourhoods in the first place.

[Gaurav Diwanji · Accepted solution]

Hi Matt,

This has been resolved in the Feb 2024 version of WSD:

·         Neighborhood restrictions enforced  

Before this release, employees were unable to select a restricted neighborhood from the "Browse by neighborhood" reservation path if they were not assigned to it. However, they could still select spaces belonging to a restricted neighborhood via other reservation paths and the quick reservation feature. This resulted in employees bypassing the restricted neighborhood rules, allowing them to reserve spaces in neighborhoods to which they were not assigned. 

With this enhancement, Employees will no longer be able to book spaces that are allocated to neighborhoods they are not assigned to as all reservation paths both for advanced and quick reservations can now enforce the neighborhood restrictions. 

To enable these restrictions, the Reservation Admin should check the ‘enable restricted neighborhood rules’ at the reservable module level. 

An Employee will no longer be able to view available spaces assigned to restricted neighborhoods he is not assigned to; however, they can still search for a colleague within a restricted neighborhood but won't be able to reserve a space adjacent to them unless they're assigned to that neighborhood.

[Matt Forder]

@Gaurav Diwanji  - Thanks, that's excellent news. I'll be sure to check it out!

[Jeff Jessie]

Hello Gaurav,

Quick question regarding the restricted rules.  This restricts users from seeing spaces that are assigned to neighborhoods that they do not belong to, however does it also block Global and Local Admins from seeing those same spaces as well?  Noticing some behavior differences from previous releases regarding Global/Local admin ability to see restricted spaces from restricted neighborhoods and wondering if this new change impacts that.

[Jeff Jessie]

@Gaurav Diwanji 

Previously Local and Global admins were permitted to see the spaces that were assigned to restricted neighborhoods. This is no longer working in the newest release. Is there specifics that need to be configured via ACL to bypass the new ‘enable restricted neighborhood rules’  so admins are able to see the spaces.

Admins can view restricted neighborhoods, just not the spaces contained within the neighborhood.

[Jenny Lachance]

Hi, 

I tried to create a restricted neighborhood, however the restriction is not working even if I click on ‘enable restricted neighborhood rules’. Do you have any idea how to make the restriction work properly?

Thank you !