SmartSpace
Foundation — SmartSpace
For new users — essentials to get up and running confidently.
SmartSpace turns the attendance data already captured by SEAtS Attend into a lens for understanding how your campus spaces are actually used — showing which rooms are consistently over-crowded, which are habitually under-used, and when peak demand occurs. This provides the evidence base for space planning decisions that previously relied on intuition or infrequent manual surveys.
- SmartSpace measures actual occupancy using attendance check-in data and, optionally, IoT sensor feeds
- Data is organised by room, building, faculty, and time period for flexible reporting
- Occupancy is shown as a percentage of room capacity — a lecture theatre with 150 students but 400 seats is 37% utilised
- The default view shows the current academic week; historical periods are available from the date SmartSpace was activated
- SmartSpace data updates daily from the previous day's attendance records — it is not a live occupancy display
Tip: Before your first SmartSpace report, set room capacities in Admin → Rooms → Capacity for each teaching space. Utilisation is calculated as a percentage of capacity — without accurate capacities, the figures are meaningless.
Q1. Which of the following statements about what smartspace measures is correct?
Q2. According to this lesson, what is the correct value or limit mentioned?
Q3. What is the recommended best practice highlighted in this lesson?
The SmartSpace dashboard gives an at-a-glance view of your estate's overall utilisation health — the percentage of room-session combinations that are over-used, well-utilised, or under-used. From here you drill into any building, floor, room, or time period for detailed analysis.
- The utilisation heat map colour-codes every room by average occupancy: red (over-utilised), green (well-matched), blue (under-used)
- Filter by building, faculty, room type, or date range using the filter bar
- The "Busiest periods" panel shows day-of-week and time-of-day combinations with highest average occupancy
- The "Most under-used rooms" list surfaces spaces with consistently low occupancy — candidates for repurposing or better timetabling
- Click any room on the heat map to open its detailed occupancy profile with a week-by-week trend
Q1. Which of the following statements about reading the space utilisation dashboard is correct?
Q2. Which of the following is accurate according to this lesson?
Q3. Which statement best reflects the guidance in this lesson?
SmartSpace uses several distinct metrics to describe space usage. Understanding what each one means — and what it doesn't — prevents misinterpretation and ensures space planning conversations are based on accurate evidence.
- Session utilisation — for sessions that took place, what percentage of capacity was filled? Excludes cancelled sessions
- Room utilisation — across all available hours, what percentage contained an active session? A room used 4 of 40 available hours is 10% utilised
- Peak occupancy — the highest single-session headcount; useful for fire safety and access planning
- Average occupancy per session — the mean headcount across all sessions; better for trend comparison than peak values
- Use 4-week rolling averages rather than single-week snapshots to smooth out timetabling anomalies
Tip: When presenting to senior leadership, use "room utilisation" rather than "session occupancy" — the former shows the full picture of how efficiently rooms are allocated across the whole timetable week.
Q1. Which of the following statements about underst is correct?
Q2. Which of the following is accurate according to this lesson?
Q3. What is the recommended best practice highlighted in this lesson?
One of SmartSpace's most valuable reports compares scheduled occupancy (timetable bookings and expected class sizes) against actual occupancy (attendance check-ins). Gaps reveal where timetabling assumptions are systematically wrong — and where room allocation is inefficient as a result.
- The Scheduled vs Actual report is at SmartSpace → Reports → Occupancy Comparison
- Large positive gaps (more students than the room holds) identify persistent capacity shortfalls driving timetabling changes
- Large negative gaps (rooms booked for 60 but only 15 attend) reveal over-specification in room booking — common in optional modules
- Filter by module to identify specific courses consistently over- or under-attended compared to enrolment numbers
- Export to CSV for use in timetabling system reviews or sharing with the academic scheduling team
Q1. Where in SEAtS ONE would you find this setting: "The Scheduled vs Actual report is at SmartSpace → Reports → Occupancy Comparison"?
Q2. According to this lesson, what is the correct value or limit mentioned?
Q3. Which statement best reflects the guidance in this lesson?
Practitioner — SmartSpace
For experienced users — deeper configuration and workflows.
Peak demand analysis answers the question timetabling teams struggle with most: when is the campus actually at its busiest, and when is capacity being wasted? With this data, timetablers make evidence-based decisions about when to schedule high-demand modules and which room types are systematically under-deployed at specific times.
- The Peak Demand Heatmap (SmartSpace → Reports → Demand Heatmap) shows every hour of every weekday, colour-coded by average occupancy
- Filter by building, room type, or faculty for specific campus area patterns
- The "Dead zones" filter highlights time-blocks where average occupancy across all rooms is below 15% — scheduling opportunities
- Compare current semester heatmaps against the previous year to identify shifting demand patterns
- Export heatmap data for input into your timetabling system's next scheduling cycle
Tip: Share the demand heatmap with your timetabling team 10–12 weeks before term. Data showing Monday 09:00–10:00 at 30% occupancy while Tuesday 11:00–13:00 is at 95% is exactly the evidence needed to justify rescheduling high-demand modules.
Q1. Which of the following statements about peak dem is correct?
Q2. According to this lesson, what is the correct value or limit mentioned?
Q3. What is the recommended best practice highlighted in this lesson?
Understanding differences in utilisation between buildings and room types helps prioritise maintenance investment, identify buildings for consolidation during lower-demand periods, and make evidence-based cases for new building projects.
- The Building Comparison report (SmartSpace → Reports → Building Summary) ranks all buildings by average utilisation across a selected period
- Room type breakdown shows whether the gap is driven by lecture theatres, seminar rooms, labs, or other types
- Seasonal comparison: Semester 1 vs Semester 2 patterns reveal whether underperforming buildings are consistently under-used or only in specific periods
- The capacity-to-demand ratio metric shows whether a building has structurally too much capacity for its demand
- Export all comparison reports as PDF for Estates Strategy and Space Audit documentation
Q1. Which of the following statements about building is correct?
Q2. Which of the following is accurate according to this lesson?
Q3. Which statement best reflects the guidance in this lesson?
For institutions with IoT occupancy sensors (PIR sensors, desk sensors, people counters, CO2-based proxies), SmartSpace can ingest live sensor data and combine it with attendance records for a more granular picture — capturing spaces where SEAtS attendance isn't recorded (study areas, libraries, social spaces).
- Supported sensor types: MQTT-connected PIR motion sensors, BLE desk occupancy sensors, network-connected people counters
- Configure in Admin → SmartSpace → Sensor Integration; sensors are grouped by room and validated against capacity settings
- Sensor data appears as a separate data layer alongside attendance-derived occupancy in room detail panels
- Sensor-only spaces (study areas, library, café) appear as "Unscheduled Spaces" with occupancy trends but no timetable comparison
- The live sensor feed (where real-time data is available) updates every 5 minutes — useful for facilities management responses to crowding
Note: IoT sensor data collection in student-occupied spaces requires a Data Protection Impact Assessment and appropriate disclosure in your Privacy Notice before activation.
Q1. Which of the following statements about iot sensor integration is correct?
Q2. Which of the following is accurate according to this lesson?
Q3. What is the recommended best practice highlighted in this lesson?
SmartSpace reports can directly inform capital investment decisions — new building business cases, refurbishment prioritisation, and estate rationalisation programmes. SmartSpace provides evidence-based answers to questions that traditionally required expensive manual surveys.
- The Estate Efficiency Report (SmartSpace → Reports → Estate Efficiency) summarises total available room-hours, utilised room-hours, and the efficiency ratio across the estate
- Use the estate efficiency ratio to establish a baseline and track improvement across successive academic years
- The "Candidate for rationalisation" report flags buildings with consistent utilisation below 20% over a full academic year
- Multi-year trend data quantifies the direction of space demand — growing, stable, or declining — across different parts of the estate
- Export any report in PDF with SmartSpace institutional branding for Estates Strategy, Capital Programme business cases, or governing body papers
Tip: Before presenting SmartSpace data to governors, sense-check figures against known timetabling patterns. A room showing 5% utilisation because a card reader was broken for a semester will undermine trust in the whole dataset if not explained.
Q1. Which of the following statements about space planning reports for capital investment is correct?
Q2. According to this lesson, what is the correct value or limit mentioned?
Q3. What is the recommended best practice highlighted in this lesson?
Expert — SmartSpace
For administrators and power users — integrations, governance, and advanced setup.
A SmartSpace IoT deployment requires a technical architecture ensuring data quality, network reliability, and active sensor health monitoring. Without active management, sensors drift, fail silently, or report plausible-but-inaccurate data.
- Deploy sensors on a dedicated building management VLAN segregated from student Wi-Fi — sensor traffic must not compete with student device connections
- Configure sensor health monitoring in Admin → SmartSpace → Sensor Health — alerts fire when a sensor hasn't reported for more than 2 hours
- Calibrate people counters annually and after any building entrance reconfiguration — an uncalibrated counter can under or over-count by 30%+
- Data quality thresholds: sensor data with a confidence score below 80% is flagged for review rather than used directly in reports
- Maintain a sensor inventory document (room, type, installation date, last calibration, network address) — essential for fault diagnosis and the DPIA
Q1. Which of the following statements about sensor network architecture is correct?
Q2. According to this lesson, what is the correct value or limit mentioned?
Q3. Which statement best reflects the guidance in this lesson?
Beyond the standard report suite, SmartSpace provides a custom dashboard builder for bespoke views tailored to your institution's specific reporting requirements and governance structures.
- Access in SmartSpace → Custom Dashboards → New Dashboard
- Widget types: utilisation heatmap, ranked building table, occupancy trend line, peak demand summary, sensor status grid, capacity-to-demand ratio gauge
- Dashboards can be shared with named users, teams, or roles — a Board-level estates KPI dashboard differs from a facilities manager's operational view
- Schedule automated PDF exports of any dashboard — weekly, monthly, or quarterly delivery by email
- Embed dashboard widgets in your institution's intranet or BI portal using embeddable URLs with authentication tokens
Q1. Where in SEAtS ONE would you find this setting: "Access in SmartSpace → Custom Dashboards → New Dashboard"?
Q2. Which of the following is accurate according to this lesson?
Q3. Which statement best reflects the guidance in this lesson?
Integrating SmartSpace utilisation data with booking data creates a closed feedback loop: rooms consistently over- or under-used relative to their booking patterns are flagged automatically for timetabling review.
- SmartSpace supports outbound webhooks to push daily utilisation summaries to any room booking system with a REST API endpoint
- The Booking Accuracy report compares rooms booked in your scheduling system against actual occupancy — highlighting systematic over-booking or under-booking by department
- Automated deactivation suggestions: rooms booked fewer than 5 times in a semester are flagged as candidates for temporary removal from the active bookable estate
- Inbound data from your room booking system enriches the Scheduled vs Actual comparison in SmartSpace
- API documentation for SmartSpace integration endpoints is in the SEAtS developer portal
Tip: Work with your timetabling team to agree a shared definition of "utilised" before setting up the booking accuracy integration. Some timetablers accept 40% occupancy; others require 60%+. Agreeing upfront prevents the integration producing reports neither team trusts.
Q1. Which of the following statements about integrating smartspace with room booking systems is correct?
Q2. According to this lesson, what is the correct value or limit mentioned?
Q3. What is the recommended best practice highlighted in this lesson?
The most strategic use of SmartSpace is building a multi-year evidence base that supports fundamental estate decisions — whether to build, refurbish, consolidate, or divest. SmartSpace data combined with student population forecasts provides the quantitative foundation that governors and funders increasingly expect.
- Establish a SmartSpace baseline in year one — total estate capacity, total room-hours available, and utilisation by building and space type
- Annual SmartSpace reports should be a standing item in the Estate Strategy Review — year-on-year trends are more powerful than any single-year snapshot
- Combine utilisation data with student number forecasts from Planning to project future space demand — the core input for any new building business case
- The Wasted Capacity metric quantifies unused room-hours per year — expressed as a cost per unused room-hour, this often becomes the most compelling metric for driving timetabling behaviour change
- Present SmartSpace data to the Estates and Environment Committee annually alongside the capital programme review
Tip: Calculate cost per room-hour by dividing total estate operating costs by total available room-hours. A room at 8% utilisation expressed as "£45 per hour of actual use" is far more compelling to non-technical stakeholders than "8% utilised."
Q1. Which of the following statements about estate strategy: building the evidence base for space decisions is correct?
Q2. Which of the following is accurate according to this lesson?
Q3. What is the recommended best practice highlighted in this lesson?