BY REBECKA FERMANN
The Arctic University of Norway was the first MazeMap customer to install an integration with Microsoft Outlook, allowing them to automatically attach map links with directions at the bottom of their meeting invitations. The results surpassed our expectations.
How it works:
We’ve placed a transport agent in Exchange connecting the room name in Outlook with a room ID in MazeMap, and return a URL with directions to that specific meeting room. This URL gets automatically attached at the bottom of the meeting invitation, without any user interference. The result is that with the same booking procedures as before, you now get digital wayfinding included in the meeting invitation.
The results speak for themselves. The URLs were actually clicked in over 25 % of all invitations sent out. Remember that these meeting invitations are sent out to both external and internal parties, and the fact that one out of four people choose to use the digital wayfinding service is well above the expectations for the Arctic University.
“The Arctic University of Norway has engaged with MazeMap since the summer of 2015. The system is widely used, and integrated with our systems for room booking as well as our system for contact information. It is considered very useful by the users.” Aase Tveito, Senior Advisor
MazeMap is currently developing a similar link with the cloud-based Office365 as well to ensure that all organisations can enjoy effort free meeting room wayfinding, and avoid spending time on giving directions to guests arriving at their offices. The feedback from the market so far has been tremendously positive, and we’re looking forward to helping our customers connecting MazeMap to Outlook over the next years.
Taking it a step further, MazeMap will also be leveraging the Outlook calendar to visualize meeting room availability for users to provide an overview of bookable meeting rooms. We will do the same for other popular room booking services, such as Google Apps, and university-specific solutions such as Syllabus Plus and TimeEdit.
Let us know if this is something that seems relevant for your organisation!