Location Usage Report

The Location Usage report shows how frequently locations are used. It can be seen as a combination of the Event Distribution and Location Inventory reports with its similar options for sorting and grouping data along with shading. In this report, only locations with assigned events are visible.

This report is appropriate for determining which locations are in use to which degree within a snapshot. It gives you an overall view of how effectively locations are being assigned to events. It is especially useful in combination with filtering by location features or other qualities.

Questions that the Location Usage report can help answer include:

  • How does average location usage compare among rooms of various capacities? Controlled by various organizations? In various locations?
  • Are there detectable differences in room usage patterns when you filter by room features?
  • How does the view of campus-wide averages compare with a view of rooms in certain campus locations, perhaps with certain features or controlling organizations?
  • How compliant with standard meeting patterns are the meetings/hours in various room groupings?

A bar chart showing rooms divided into groups based on their capacities and total number of scheduled occurrences. The bars are shaded to indicate which events conform to standard meImage: Location Usage report

Report Settings

The bar chart is influenced by several settings.

  • Sort By orders the bars are according to the names of each group or their total size.
  • Group By determines what group of locations each bar of the chart represents.
    • All: Every location in one bar
    • Individual Room: Every location, separated by room
    • Organization: The "owner" of the location (determined by the custom location attribute "X25 Owner Organization" in 25Live).
    • Capacity: The maximum capacity of the location (no layout capacity considered)
    • Building: The location's building
    • Room Use Code: The code for the location's "room type", typically matching FICM (Postsecondary Education Facilities Inventory and Classification Manual) standards
    • Partition: The location's partition
    • Breakpoints: Determined by predefined breakpoint lists
  • Size By sets what the size of each bar on the chart measures. The chart's axis automatically scales appropriately.
    • Meetings: The number of individual occurrences
    • Meeting Hours: The sum of all occurrence durations
    • Contact Hours: Headcount multiplied by Meeting Hours
    • Events: The total number of events
    • Room Utilization: The ratio of time when events are scheduled in locations measured against the total time available in those rooms
    • Seat Utilization: The ratio of attendees measured against available seats
  • Granularity determines if the average displayed is in total, daily, or weekly
    • Total: The average room use for the duration of time in the selection
    • Daily Average: The average room use daily
    • Weekly Average: The average room use weekly
  • Orientation arranges the bars from top to bottom or left to right.
  • Limit: Determines how many groups of events appear as bars in the report.  
    • Selecting Show Top Residual or Show Bottom Residual will display the top/bottom remaining groups, combined into a single bar

Colors and Shading

Further options are visible by clicking the More link to the right of the main settings:

  • Shading allows a user to choose to color the events in each bar according to its compliance with standard schedules. A legend above the chart indicates which color represents standard and nonstandard events.
  • Standard Schedules is a drop-down menu that allows you to choose any previously defined set of schedules.

When shading is enabled, each bar will be divided into two sections, representing the events assigned to those locations which conform (or not) to the selected schedule.

Reading the Report

Report data is displayed in bar chart format:

  • One shows the total usage. This can measure several different values such as the total number of events or total durations of all occurrences.
  • The other axis shows the locations in the snapshot. They can be grouped in several different ways, described above.
  • The color of each bar is determined by the shading options described above.

Mouse over any portion of a bar to see a summary displayed at the top of the chart.

Assessing the Report Results

  • What's the report showing you about room usage patterns?
  • What's unexpected about your results?