Space Planning & Management / Space Inventory & Performance (Transactional)

Calculating Data: Generating Snapshot or an Historic Average

When reviewing your reports and summary data, you must be aware of whether the data reflects a snapshot of conditions on a particular date, or reflects an average of data during a specified time period.

The following table compares historic average reporting and single-date reporting, which are each further detailed in the below sections.

	Single Date Reporting	Date Range Reporting
Date is Entered By	Choosing a Date from the report's prompt Using a timeline button.	Entering a Start Date and End Date when running Update Area Totals
Uses Archived Data?	Yes	No
Area Calculation is Based On	Room Area * Workspace Transaction's Percentage of Space value	Workspace Transaction records' Allocated Room Area values

Single Date Reporting

Date Range Reporting

Date is Entered By

Choosing a Date from the report's prompt

Using a timeline button.

Entering a Start Date and End Date when running Update Area Totals

Uses Archived Data?

Yes

Area Calculation is Based On

Room Area * Workspace Transaction's Percentage of Space value

Workspace Transaction records' Allocated Room Area values

Historic Average Reporting

To have your inventory reports show area and occupancy totals averaged over a time period, you enter this time period when you run the Update Area Totals action. For example, enter the previous calendar year as your Start Date and End Date, and you can see a department's average allocated room area for this year, a department's employee headcount averaged for the year, and so forth.

Reports that present historic averages do not have their own option to enter dates; you must choose the date range when you run the Update Area Totals action. Therefore, when examining these reports be sure that you are aware of the date range that they represent; that is, the date range that you entered the last time that you ran Update Are Totals. These reports derive area values from the Allocated Room Area field of the Workspace Transactions table. These reports do not take advantage of archived data.

Snapshots

You can generate a snapshot of space as of the current date or any particular date. For example, what is our exact space usage and allocation as of today? How many storage rooms did we have last year on this date? How many vacant rooms do I have today?

There are two methods:

For reports that don't offer their own date option, enter the same date for the Start Date and End Date when running the Update Area Totals action before running the report.
Some reports and tasks, such as the Allocation, Trends, and Benchmark report and the Worspace Transaction Console, offer an option for entering a specific date. The system does not use results from Update Area Totals in these reports, but it does generate results in a similar way. For example, a single-date look at department area examines Workspace Transaction records that are “active” on that date and the corresponding values for Room Area and Percentage of Space. In this way, you can easily navigate to different dates using the timeline buttons and get instant results, without having to run Update Area Totals all of the time. These reports can report on archived data.

Results for a single-date report will be the same as if you ran Update Area Totals for that specific date.

Example of Using a Date Range and a Specific Date

Suppose that Room 101 is 100 square feet and was split between two departments during September. It has two Workspace Transaction records:

Workspace Transaction	Start Date	End Date	Department Assignment
1	9/1	9/15	A
2	9/16	9/30	B

If you run Update Area Totals with a Start Date and End Date of September 1 (that is, you are taking a snapshot of space as of September 1), you will see that room 101's contribution to Department A's area (its allocated room area) is 100 square feet.

If you take another snapshot at the end of the month and run Update Area Totals with a Start Date and End Date of September 30, you will see that room 101's contribution to Department B's area is 100 square feet.

If you run Update Area Totals for all of September (with a Start Date of September 1 and an End Date of September 30), you will see that room 101's contribution to Department A's area is 50 square feet, and its contribution to Department B is 50 square feet.