Microsoft Places — workplace planning

Microsoft Places is the workplace-planning product in Microsoft 365 for hybrid-work coordination: helping employees plan their in-office days, book desks and rooms, see when colleagues will be on-site, and helping leaders understand space utilisation. It plugs directly into the Microsoft 365 surfaces people already use — Outlook, Teams, Outlook Calendar.

What Places provides

For employees:

Set your work location for each day (in office, remote, on holiday) directly in Outlook calendar.
See colleagues' in-office days so you can plan to be there when relevant collaborators are.
Book a desk in the office for specific days.
Book a meeting room with a richer experience than Outlook's room finder — see capacity, equipment, location.
Find the right space — book a focus room, a collaboration space, a phone booth based on what you need.
Outlook calendar integration — work-location information surfaces in colleagues' availability.

For managers and team leads:

See team utilisation — when team members are in office.
Recommend in-office days when most of the team will be present.

For facility managers and leaders:

Space utilisation analytics — which rooms / floors are over- and under-used.
Building occupancy trends over time.
Wayfinding integration with sensors and IoT in the building.

How it integrates

Places sits on top of Microsoft 365 infrastructure:

Exchange Online resource mailboxes continue to back rooms and equipment.
Outlook calendar is the source of work-location data.
Teams is the place collaboration around in-office days happens.
Viva Insights surfaces hybrid-work analytics.
Building IoT integration — for buildings instrumented with people-counting sensors, occupancy maps update in real time.

Where it's useful

Hybrid-work organisations trying to make in-office days feel intentional, not random.
Larger offices where finding the right space and the right people takes coordination.
Distributed teams that gather in offices occasionally — Places helps everyone coordinate.
Facilities teams wanting data on actual space usage.

Where it's less useful

Fully remote organisations — no office means no desk booking; Places is mostly irrelevant.
Small offices where everyone knows where everyone is.
Organisations with rigid in-office mandates — Places doesn't help if all days are mandatory; it shines when there's choice and coordination matters.

Licensing

Microsoft Places basic capabilities — setting work location, seeing colleague availability, basic room booking — are included with most Microsoft 365 plans.

Microsoft Places premium features — analytics, advanced room finding, wayfinding integration, custom workplaces — require a separate per-user licence or are bundled with Microsoft 365 Copilot in some plan combinations.

Realistic adoption

Like other hybrid-work tools, Places' value depends on the organisational practice more than the tooling. The product can suggest in-office days; the team has to actually decide together that Tuesday is the day, and then enforce that lightly. Without that cultural piece, even the best tooling just shows accurate but unused data.

For Microsoft 365 customers in hybrid mode, Places is worth piloting once the basic Teams / Outlook hybrid practices are established — not as the foundation, but as the optimisation layer on top.