Optimizing Office Space with IoT DoRA and Smart Solutions

Overview

As the Internet of Things (IoT) expands, its integration with smart office solutions becomes increasingly vital for process optimization. One such idea is IoT DoRA (Digital Online Room Availability), developed by CloudThat, a smart device that displays meeting room availability in real-time. This device, which incorporates an LCD screen, ensures no schedule conflicts and provides particular room occupancy information, improving office space management efficiency. This blog will examine IoT DoRA’s objective, implementation technique, real-world application examples, future scope, and more. 

Introduction

IoT DoRA is a smart IoT-based gadget that optimizes meeting room management by preventing booking conflicts and providing real-time availability data. The gadget, which a Raspberry Pi powers, has an LCD screen that shows important information about the availability of a meeting room, such as the meeting organizer, time length, number of participants, and if the space is over or underpopulated. IoT DoRA interfaces to Microsoft Outlook Calendar, securely gathering calendar data and displaying it for simple viewing.

Role of IoT DoRA in Meeting Room Management

Organizations must properly handle hotel reservations to sustain productivity and avoid scheduling conflicts. IoT DoRA contributes by providing real-time room availability.

• Organizing meetings in appropriate room sizes to prevent duplicate reservations and increase attendance.
• Assisting office administrators with room allocation and space efficiency.
• Designing a user-friendly interface for easy access to meeting information.

Architecture Diagram

Services used

IoT DoRA uses a variety of cloud and IoT services to provide ease of use and integration. The key services used are:

1. Azure Active Directory: This is for secure user authentication and to manage permissions for accessing calendar data.
2. Microsoft Graph API: To interact with Microsoft Teams and retrieve calendar information.
3. AWS Lambda: For serverless computation that fetches and processes data without traditional server infrastructure.
4. AWS Secrets Manager: To securely store and manage sensitive credentials needed for API access.
5. Raspberry Pi: The hardware that runs the IoT application and displays data on the LCD screen.
6. Streamlit: To create an interactive front-end interface to manage the device’s functionalities.

Implementation Process

1. Register an app in the Azure Active Directory

The first step is registering an app for our use case in Azure Active Directory. This is to access data form Microsoft Teams securely. In order to access meeting details form the Calendar, permissions like User.Read, Calendars.Read, Calendars.Read.shared are set.

2. Storing Credentials in AWS Secrets Manager

After the app registration, important credentials like client ID, Client secret, and tenant ID are obtained. Now, AWS secrets manager is used to manage these credentials securely. This ensures that sensitive data remains secure and is only accessible to authorized services.

3. Designing AWS Lambda function

The most important aspect of this project is the AWS Lambda function. It retrieves the calendar data from Microsoft Teams using the credentials stored in the secrets manager. The AWS Lambda function is customized with a layer having the secrets manager data. This ensures secure fetching and utilizing the app’s credentials.

4. Fetching and Displaying Meeting Data

The data is fetched through the AWS Lambda function that interacts with Azure AD using the Microsoft authentication library (MSAL). The following data is fetched and displayed:

• Organizer of the meeting room
• Duration of the meeting
• Total number of attendees of the meeting
• Room availability Status

This information is sent to Raspberry Pi and displayed on an LCD screen outside the meeting room. It also displays the occupancy status, whether the meeting room is overpopulated or underpopulated, depending upon the total number of attendees.

Working Model of IoT DoRA

Real-World Use Cases

IoT DoRA has vast potential in various real-world scenarios:

1. Corporate Offices: Be it multi-national companies of any size or start ups with multiple meeting rooms, IoT DoRA makes sure not to have any conflict in room bookings and also provides real-time room availability data to the employees of the organization.
2. Co-working spaces: By deploying IoT DoRA in co-working spaces that various clients use, client satisfaction is exponentially improved by providing transparency regarding room availability.
3. Educational institutions: Schools, universities, and colleges can use IoT DoRA to manage lecture halls. This ensures that the room’s size matches the total number of students attending.
4. Conference rooms: With a vast number of events being organized in conference rooms, IoT DoRA can help the organizers track and manage the room availability and adjust the bookings of the events accordingly.

Future Scope

IoT DoRA can evolve further in several ways to meet growing demands:

1. Predictive Analysis: The evolved versions of IoT DoRA can integrate machine learning. This would predict the trends of meeting room usage, optimize room allocation, and provide detailed insights for space management according to the total number of attendees.
2. Voice Integration: Adding this feature of voice integration and smart assistant features would allow employees to query room availability with the help of voice commands.
3. Mobile App integration: Developing mobile applications for IoT DoRA would help users book or check meeting room status remotely in real-time.
4. Environmental Monitoring: integrating sensors in the meeting room and linking them to IoT DoRA would provide information such as temperature, humidity, and air quality. This ensures that the room is available and comfortable for employees.

Conclusion

As efficiency is a key aspect in the corporate world or even other sectors, solutions like IoT DoRA will become essential in optimizing space management and thus enhancing productivity.

Drop a query if you have any questions regarding IoT DoRA and we will get back to you quickly.

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