Realtime Rooms Overview

Applies to: Housekeeping Managers, Room Attendants, General Managers, Front Office Staff, Corporate Housekeeping Managers

What is Realtime Rooms?

A component of Hotel Effectiveness by Actabl’s Housekeeping Optimizer, Realtime Rooms provides enhanced visibility and real-time room status updates for both managers and room attendants. 

After housekeeping boards are built using the Hotel Effectiveness Board Builder tool, rooms can be assigned as clean tasks directly to employees using their MyHotelTeam App on a mobile device. You can learn more about Board Builder in our Knowledge Base.

For managers, Realtime Rooms can be accessed through both their desktop site, as well as through the Hotel Effectiveness Manager App on mobile devices.

Viewing Realtime Rooms

To access Realtime Rooms via desktop:

1. Select Housekeeping Tools on the left main menu in Hotel Effectiveness.
2. Mouse over Board Builder on the top menu.
3. Select Realtime Rooms.

If you have just completed building the boards, you will be navigated to this screen automatically.

Arrival Ready Time - Number of rooms needed for arrivals are calculated by considering the forecasted number of arrivals as entered in the Rooms Sold Forecast and historical trends, as well as the number of clean rooms already in inventory.  This is combined with your labor plans for checkout cleans to generate the Arrival Ready Time.

Last Clean of the Day - Estimated based on minimum full cleans for arrivals and assigned full cleans.  This also includes unpaid break time minutes.

View by Room Attendant - see all rooms assigned, organized separately by each employee’s board. Boards are sorted by room number, using any priority sort configured in the Board Builder settings.  

View List - see all rooms assigned in one list. Sort by any column header or filter by specific criteria, such as assignee, room type, clean type, clean status, etc.

Team Summary - view a rolled up snapshot of each employee’s progress and estimated end of cleaning, with the ability to view a breakdown of room clean statuses by employee.

 

In all views, the indicator next to employee ID indicates if they have marked themselves as “Working” on their MyHotelTeam App and are using a digital board on a mobile device.

• Blue circle indicates working.
• White circle indicates they have not marked themselves as “Working” and are instead using a paper board.

Room Clean Task Details

With both View by Room Attendant and List View, clicking on a room will open more details about the room clean task.   

Modifiable Fields

Clean Status - managers can adjust on behalf of an employee using a paper board, or to communicate with an employee using a digital board (ie if the guest told the front desk they do not want service that day, the manager can set the Clean Status to “Declined Service”).

• Associates working digital boards through the MyHotelTeam or HE Manager App can also adjust the clean status

PMS Status - updating the PMS status may impact the Clean Type, based on hotel clean type settings 

Change Linen - indicator of whether linen should be changed in a room

Assignee - associate assigned to clean the room

Notes

Room-specific notes can be added by any user who has access to the room clean task (via desktop or mobile app).  These notes can be viewed in the Room Clean Task Details.  Managers can both read and add notes here, and can edit or delete notes they added previously.

Any field modified, including notes, will be immediately reflected on corresponding digital boards in MyHotelTeam or HE Manager App.  Managers reviewing Realtime Rooms on their desktops or in their HE Manager App will also be able to see any changes another user has made, in real-time.

In the room clean tasks list, icons indicate whether there are notes associated with a room:

History

Daily room history is displayed within the room clean task details.  This shows any changes to the modifiable fields mentioned above, by any user with access.  Changes are time stamped and shows who made the change.  

Previous days’ history can be accessed in the Room Cleans History report, under the Report menu within Housekeeping Tools.

Realtime Rooms Actions

After boards are published there may be scenarios when the boards need to be edited.

Within Realtime Rooms, manager have access to the following actions:

1. Delete All Cleans & Re-build Boards - this will unpublish the boards and any cleaning progress recorded will be lost.  You will navigate back to Step 3 Boards, where rooms can be unassigned, entire boards can be assigned to another employee, and additional boards can be added.  Make the necessary changes and Select Publish/Print Boards again. NOTE that previously recorded cleaning progress will not be restored.
2. Reassign / Re-order the Cleans - rooms can be dragged from one board to another, or re-ordered within the same board. Make the necessary changes, click save and re-print reports and any paper boards being used.
3. Edit All Clean Tasks - opens all modifiable areas of all room clean tasks for editing.  These areas include the PMS status, whether a linen change is required, and the progress of cleaning.  Make the necessary changes, click save and re-print reports and any paper boards being used.

Sending Room Cleans to Night Audit Entry

Based on hotel configuration settings in the initial setup of Housekeeping Optimizer, Room Cleans may be sent automatically to Night Audit Entry at 10pm local hotel time.

These cleans may either be the initial assignments for the day, or additional mapping can be completed to capture final room clean statuses for the day. Learn more about sending room cleans to Night Audit Entry in Step 1 and Step 4 of the Housekeeping Board Builder Setup article in our Knowledge Base.

Best Practice!

If hotel is configured to capture final room clean statuses for the day, the housekeeping leader responsible for closing housekeeping for the day should review the room clean statuses within Realtime Rooms and confirm all rooms have the correct final room clean statuses for the day.  Clicking “Edit All Clean Tasks” will allow all room statuses to be unlocked for modification at once.  This is especially useful if not all employees are using digital boards.