August 2026 release roundup. Summer is coming to a close, which for many organizations means a few things: work is about to ramp up, people are coming back from time off, and RTO conversations are about to get louder. Fitting, then, that its biggest release this month gives you the attendance data you need to have those tricky conversations with actual numbers instead of guesses. August's theme: know who's in your office. Bookings tell you what people planned to do. They don't tell you who showed up, who's really following your RTO policy, or how many people are in the building in the moment. This month's headline release closes that gap directly, and its other two releases make sure the data underneath it, and the people using its public-facing pages, are on solid ground. Here's what's new: Occupancy Insights. Booking history has never been able to fully answer the questions that actually matter for a hybrid office: how many people are in the building right now, is your RTO policy being followed or just written down somewhere, and which teams overlap on which days. Skedda's Wi-Fi-based Occupancy Tracking has long collected presence data to fuel things like auto check-in, but it's stayed mostly invisible. This release finally puts it on a dashboard, turning that data into answers for RTO and attendance instead of just automation. What's new. Skedda has added a brand-new Occupancy tab to the Insights page, turning presence data into clear, actionable reporting. Now you can: * See daily headcount at a glance, with trends against the previous period * Track attendance by person, over any date range * Spot patterns in which departments are on-site and when, broken down by user tag * Export a full attendance table to support RTO policy and reporting needs Under the hood, that's nine reports in total: headline KPIs like average daily headcount, unique people seen, and your peak day, plus a searchable, exportable attendance table and composition breakdowns by user tag and weekday. If you already have Occupancy Tracking enabled, your data is live right now. Just head to Insights | Occupancy. If you haven't turned it on yet, you'll see a preview with sample data and a quick way to get started. Available now for all Skedda accounts on Plus and Premier plans. In practice. * Know who's on-site at a glance: pull average daily headcount and peak day for any range, from today to the full quarter * Hold RTO accountable with real numbers: filter attendance by user tag, isolate a single team, and export the results straight to your reporting * Spot the pattern before it becomes a problem: compare attendance across teams and weekdays to see who's showing up and when, not just who booked AU data residency. Its team is working hard on supporting data residency beyond US borders. Hosting your data in the region where your business actually operates is good practice for any organization. It keeps your data under local law, simplifies compliance, and gives your security team a cleaner answer in vendor reviews. Skedda was founded in Melbourne back in 2013, so Australia felt like the natural place to start. Data residency for the EU and Canada is next on the roadmap! Skedda now supports data hosting in Australia, meaning Australian-based venues that opt in get their own Australian-hosted environment, with data staying in Australia rather than crossing borders. * Data stays in Australia: your venue's data is hosted entirely on Microsoft Azure servers in Australia, not the US * Core workflows are supported: SSO (SAML2 and OAuth2), SCIM, Stripe billing and payments, calendar sync with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, and Microsoft Teams all work in the AU region * More integrations coming soon: some tools, including Zoom, Slack, and the Companion App, aren't supported for AU-hosted venues in this Early Access phase. If your workflow depends on one of these, talk to your account manager. This is an Early Access release. If you're an Australian organization with data residency requirements, book a call with its team to learn more. Visitor page accessibility. Its Visitor Management portal is often the first thing a visitor, delivery driver, or contractor sees when they arrive at your office. For people who rely on screen readers, are color blind, or have motor impairments, that first impression only works if the page is actually accessible. This release is the first wave of a broader push to bring those pages up to WCAG 2.1 standards. Skedda audited its public-facing Visitor Management interfaces and shipped a batch of fixes across the visitor invite, check-in, and delivery flows: * Clearer visual signals: higher color contrast on form placeholder text and input borders, plus visible focus outlines on buttons so keyboard users can always see where they are * Keyboard and screen reader support: focus is now trapped correctly in modals and during page transitions, dropdowns work properly with a keyboard, and form fields, checkboxes, and QR codes all carry proper labels * Better structure underneath: proper heading hierarchy, semantic markup for visit and delivery summaries, and status announcements for things like an empty visit list This is an ongoing effort. Skedda is triaging issues in batches based on an internal audit, with an external accessibility audit planned to catch what Skedda might have missed. * A visitor using a screen reader can complete check-in start to finish: labels, headings, and status updates are now announced correctly across the flow * Keyboard-only users aren't stuck: focus moves predictably through modals, dropdowns, and page transitions instead of getting lost or trapped * Kiosk and low-vision use gets easier: higher contrast and visible focus states make the page easier to read and navigate at a glance That's august. A big release for anyone managing RTO, and two upgrades underneath it that matter just as much even if they're quieter. Skedda'll be wrapping up Q3 with a busy September, so stay tuned. Have questions or feedback for its team? Get in touch.

Skedda launches Booking Approvals. Introducing Booking Approvals. Some shared spaces shouldn't be first-come, first-served. Maybe it's your executive boardroom. Maybe it's a high-capacity event space. Maybe it's the one very expensive piece of lab equipment that mysteriously "breaks" whenever an inexperienced person uses it. Until now, teams handled these situations with awkward workarounds: locking down access so tightly that no one can self-serve, or letting bookings happen and then scrambling to edit or cancel them after the fact. Booking Approvals changes that. Now you can let people request certain spaces, while keeping full control over what actually gets confirmed. Admins get the oversight they need for sensitive, high-value spaces, without losing self-service for lower-stakes bookings across the organization. Let's take a closer look at how booking approval rules improve your space management: Approval rules let you add selective oversight for spaces that need a little more human judgment. These are usually the spaces that are high-demand, high-impact, or high-stakes: limited availability, sensitive access, heavier setup, or more consequences when plans change. In those cases, first-come, first-served simply doesn't cut it. In Skedda, you can choose which spaces require approval, and any attempt to book them is automatically routed through a request-first workflow. You can also fine-tune approval rules using user tags. Apply approvals only to certain groups, or exempt trusted teams so they can book normally while everyone else submits a request. Admin choice for fairer outcomes. Booking approvals work best when they aren't just a formality. Admins need to make a deliberate call based on context, policy, and priority. That's why booking requests in Skedda are non-blocking. Submitting a request doesn't put the space "on hold" for the requester. Multiple people can request the same space and time, and nothing is confirmed until an admin approves one. Once a request is approved, it becomes an official booking and the space is marked as unavailable. This matters because it prevents people from "reserving" availability with tentative requests just to grab a slot. Your most important spaces should go to the best-fit booking, not whoever clicked first. Admins can compare conflicting requests and approve the one that makes the most sense for the day. Clear workflows with fewer follow-ups. Running approvals outside a dedicated booking system gets messy fast. When decisions live across email threads, spreadsheets, and Slack messages, it's easy to lose context, miss updates, and create avoidable conflicts. With Skedda's Booking Request Dashboard, approvals are managed in one place. From the dashboard, admins can: * Review incoming requests with full details * Approve or reject requests in a click * Track request history, including approved and declined outcomes After a decision is made, Skedda automatically notifies the requester of their updated status. Users can also check their requests at any time to see whether they're pending, approved, or declined. Setting up Booking Approvals. Getting started is straightforward for Skedda Premier users: * Go to Settings | Rules | Booking Requests * Click Add a rule * Select the spaces the rule applies to * Choose whether approval is required for all users or only for users with specific tags * Start receiving requests and approving or declining them as needed Once set up, spaces that require approval are marked with a stamp icon across booking views. When users try to book those spaces, they'll be prompted to submit a request instead. They can track progress anytime in the Booking Requests dashboard in the left-hand navigation. What's next. Booking Approvals is a foundational workflow, and we're planning a few improvements next: * Support for spaces two-way synced with your internal calendar * More notification options for admins * Admin notes on approval or decline Try Booking Approvals. See Booking Approvals in action. Schedule a demo to learn how request-first workflows can bring control to high-demand spaces.