Deskly: hot-desk booking
Prototype
A workplace product for planning in-office days, booking from a live floor map, coordinating with teammates, and protecting shared desks with office-only check-in.
Role and scope
Leadership: Project lead · Role: Technical Program Manager + product design · Product scope: Booking, presence, facilities, reporting · Platform: Next.js + Cloudflare · Identity: Cognito + Entra ID · Controls: Office-network check-in
The programme
I led Deskly from the workplace problem and product design through a working full-stack prototype. It demonstrates authenticated booking, persistent storage, office workflows, responsive views, and automated tests, with deployment configurations for Cloudflare Workers and Node.
Plan the week around people
The fortnight workspace combines in-office planning, booking status, teammate presence, and a live floor map. Employees can choose a date, see who will be around, and reserve an available desk without switching between a calendar, spreadsheet, and chat thread.
Protect shared capacity
Self check-in is enforced server-side against ValPay’s office network, so a desk cannot be held by someone who is not actually in the building. The experience names the network state, check-in deadline, and released-desk outcome while failing safely when the office range is not configured.
Office workflows beyond booking
Recurring schedules, same-day cutoffs, cancellations, waitlists, reminders, and booking history turn one-off reservations into a maintainable operating system. Cancelling a hot desk promotes the oldest waiting person, and reminder delivery can connect to Teams, Slack, email, or Power Automate.
A useful admin surface
Administrators can manage people and teams, check-ins, booking policy, desks, zones, attendance reporting, CSV exports, and a 30-day occupancy forecast by team and floor. These controls make the product useful to both employees and the people accountable for office capacity.
Delivery quality
Deskly supports Microsoft Entra ID, role-aware administration, persistent storage, responsive desktop and mobile flows, browser and API coverage, and deployment on Cloudflare Workers or a Node host. The gallery sketches are reconstructed from the repository with generic names and masked operational values.
Outcome
The working prototype demonstrates a complete planning flow for hybrid teams, from choosing an in-office day to booking and check-in. It provides a foundation for evaluating workplace needs and validating a future rollout.