the one tool you need to run your coworking space
www.cobot.me
cobot was created to free coworking space managers from mundane tasks, giving them the time to do what is important: attending to their coworkers.
We are happy to announce that Cobot now integrates with Gocardless. Gocardless is able to charge extremely low fees (1% transaction value, max £2) by using direct debit instead of credit cards.
At the moment Gocardless is only available in the U.K. but we’ve heard they will be expanding to Europe soon.
To start using Gocardless go to Setup -> Payment Methods -> Add Payment Method and select Gocardless.
You can now charge members different rates for booking resources. To set it up add/edit a plan, click on the booking credits tab and enter a price per hour for the resource.
While we are all waiting for the next big new feature (it is in the works) here are some smaller improvements we recently added:
As always many of these were influenced by customers talking to us, so if you have something you need just let us know and we’ll see what we can do. Thanks!
At the beginning of the month I flew to Austin to attend the Global Coworking Unconference Conference, GCUC. This year’s event was my first and it was a great week during I got to learn a lot and meet many of people.
Liz Elam is the magician behind GCUC. She runs Link Coworking in Austin, organizes GCUC, and even drives a coworking car. She is really into it, and GCUC is filled with all of her high energy and passion. It was a very good conference, or, as Liz would say, a juicy conference. Many thanks to Liz, Amber, and Lindsey for making it happen. I am already looking forward to next year’s GCUC!
GCUC was a bit longer than two days for me. Alex Hillman (of IndyHall and a thousand more things), honored his Community Builder title and organized something more than a place to sleep at Kimber Modern. We made a home out of it, and some of us even made their own coworking corner in the kitchen. That’s what happens when you put a group of coworking space managers in a kitchen with huge windows and give them some post-its - they work together and think about the values that move them, their concerns, and their plans and resolutions for the future.
With nine panels about various topics, the first official day of GCUC was a great opportunity for new coworking space managers to learn, as well as for more seasoned managers to hear what’s new. The hottest topics were those about community building and funding/profitability, as well as the entry of business centers, real estate firms, and big companies like Jones Lang Lasalle into the market, many of whom were panelists in the conference. It was surprising to see so many vendors as well, in fact many more than I had seen before at the Coworking Spain and Coworking Europe conferences in 2012. The variety of profiles (space managers, people interested in opening new spaces, vendors, big companies, real state firms, business centers, universities, public institution, press…) made me realize that coworking must be getting there.
However, the coworking unconference on the second day of the event was where the magic happened. The great thing about unconferences is that they are organized from the bottom up and there are no speakers, panelists or moderators. Is there anything you’d like to talk about? Suggest a time slot and a discussion corner and meet with other people who are interested. This means that anything can happen. You can write a letter to Yahoo in the morning, talk with a huge group about software tools to manage coworking spaces (from billing tools like Cobot to cool door locking apps) before lunch, and spend the afternoon talking about women in coworking spaces and making plans to improve the Coworking Wiki.
But GCUC 2013 was so much more than this. Not only did we have time to talk about values, space, and community, to discuss how to attract more members to spaces, how Cobot can adapt to each space’s needs or how we see work in 20 years, but also to eat, drink, dance, harlem shake, play games, and enjoy SXSW. You’ll find some of these moments captured here.
The goal was to put faces, voices, and ideas to names, and to get to know the people with whom I work everyday better: the people behind this great thing called coworking. Mission accomplished.
After such a long post the least I can do is to use a few more lines to say a big thank you to everybody I met in Austin. You made it meaningful and you made it fun. I am looking forward to seeing you again! A special thanks go to all of you who are either using Cobot or tried it in the past and approached me to share your insights - or even helped other space managers get started!
And if you missed it, be sure to make it next year. It’s juicy.
Cristina
Pics by Deskmag
Cobot usually generates an invoice for each coworker once a month, collecting fees for booking conference rooms, day passes and any extra charges. In addition you can create a free-form invoice any time.
Starting today you can create an invoice based on the current charges of a member. For example, if someone booked a meeting room today you can send an invoice for that at any time instead of having to wait until the end of the month.
To do that go to the coworker and click on Invoice current charges in the invoicing box. On the following page you can select the charges you want to invoice:
Clicking the Send Invoice button will generate the invoice and email it to to the member.
We are happy to announce that Cobot now integrates with two more payment processors:
Stripe is available in the U.S. and Canada and is well known for its easy and fast sign-up process. Definitely recommended if you are lucky enough to be located in the right place.
Adyen is available almost worldwide and supports numerous payment methods depending on the country you are in, which allows them to offer very competitive rates.
To use any of them log in to Cobot and go to Setup -> Payment Methods -> Add Payment Method.
Adding to the recent deployment of our new wifi integration we are happy to release our RFID check-in system.
This system allows a coworking space to give each member a card and when they come into the space have them check in by swiping it. This gives the space the same benefits as the wifi integration such as automatically using the day passes of members with a limited plan and getting attendance statistics.
Here’s what it looks like using a USB card reader attached to a laptop:
You will need an old PC and a USB card reader which you can buy easily from most electronics stores for $50 or less.
We have created a page with detailed instructions on how to set up your own swipe card system.
Did you know that we run a coworking space? Well, we do! Actually, the space existed before Cobot.
Our coworking space is called co.up and we have 55 full-, part-time, and basic members, aside from the many others who just drop in once in a while. We started on the 5th floor of an old industrial building in Kreuzberg, a popular district of Berlin, and expanded to the 3rd floor last summer. Most of us work in software and web development, but there are also recruiters, marketers, translators… We also host a large number of (mostly tech-related) events, like user groups (Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, CouchDB, iOS), workshops (Rails Girls, OpenTechSchool, BeMyApp), and parties. We provide the space for free if the event gives back to the community and there is no admission cost involved, so we have events in the space nearly every day.
Aleks, our community manager, takes care of the space and us by helping new members get started, managing the events calendar, invoices and payments of the space, making sure we know what is going on in our community (events, meet-ups, and drink-ups), replenishing our Club Mate reserve, and keeping an eye on all the tiny details that would otherwise go unseen.
However, every human needs a break from time to time and the temptation of escaping somewhere warm while it snows in Berlin is… irresistible. Aleks booked a holiday and the space needed a caretaker. My work at Cobot is not a full day, so Aleks briefed me, created a list of tasks and contacts in Basecamp, handed me the keys and… I took over the management of the space for January.
Luckily for me, software needs no break.
The first day, just as I walked through the door I had that feeling again: “Ok, I paid attention to what Aleks told me, and I have been here many, many times. I have done this before. I know where things are and how this works. But what the hell am I supposed to do first?!” Viva Basecamp! The task list was there, so all I had to do was follow instructions.
I mentioned before that most of us are kind of technical at co.up, and so we tend to think technically when it comes to problem solving. One could say that we believe in the power of software. Personally, I believe more than anything in the power of clicks. The tasks list was just 4 clicks from my desktop. 3 clicks, considering that most times I already have my browser open.
There are many more things in co.up that we solve with a few clicks:
Thanks to an Arduino hack any coworker of the space can open our door in 1 click. I easily manage all my contacts using Streak, a complement to Gmail made by the Desk.com guys. We use Desk.com to manage the support queries you send us. We share documents using Dropbox, use Skype to talk online, and send our newsletter with Mailchimp. We also have a Facebook page and a Twitter Account. And a Cobot space. All in one click.
What I like the most about online applications is how easy it is to access them, and how fast it is to use them. For example, I love Streak, not just because it looks nice or they have a friendly support team (although this is important, too!), but mostly because it eliminates the feeling of jumping between many windows to save a contact. I tried other CRM tools before but always had to jump from my email to the new contact profile and copy-paste data. Instead, Streak lets me save contact details from Gmail to a form. From the same window in which I am reading the email. No friction. The details from this form are saved in a database that I can explore, edit, share, and export. The only thing Streak can’t do is answer the email for me, but hey, that’s the fun part, and my job after all.
As I see it, when you’re in charge of a coworking space your mission is to make people feel comfortable so that they can work at their best. This has been discussed thousands of times and an image is worth a thousand words, so just a tag line: for people to be comfortable, there are certain conditions that need to be met. Your job as a community manager is to help your coworkers with these needs. All the other stuff is secondary.
Some of you have already heard this story: I first heard about Cobot while helping my friends at Workether to find a tool that would save them time running their space - the time that was lost in invoicing and collecting money, and dealing with calendars, spreadsheets, and forms. I had worked in billing myself and later on in billing software, so my friend from school trusted me for this (outsourcing is another great example of how to get rid of boring tasks). After trying the app as a potential customer, I had the feeling that it would work for them, and I wanted to help other people get the best out of it, too.
After a year helping other spaces, I know what Cobot is useful for and what it can do. I understand how it understands data and I can translate plain English to its language fast - because I use it everyday to help new users get started or answer questions. I hear users saying that it works for them, and hear our team talking wonders about new features that I will then try to mention to our users. But the truth is that I had never used Cobot myself in a real scenario of my real world until this month. Now I can say that I have been convinced of its magic.
I was curious to see how I would get on with it on a day-to-day basis. I wanted to see how much time I would have to spend using Cobot each day and whether I would find many things that needed to change. I spent a lot of time logged in to Cobot as part of my job, but it is usually testing a specific functionality or working with the Setup section mainly - not with the Management part - so the experience was different. I wanted to see if I had the feeling of something taking too long or too many clicks, and see if the workflow I had in mind made real sense. I was also looking for new favorite and least favorite features, layout defects, and documentation gaps.
The first thing that annoyed me was the realization that I wouldn’t spend enough time inside of Cobot to actually have a chance to take a look at all this. I actually only used it to confirm new members (2 clicks, as Cobot already takes care of people’s administration details - like their postal code or their credit card expiration date or their VAT number - when they sign up to enter our wifi), to charge for services (4 clicks) and to check a ticket for a broken bulb in the 3rd floor (reported by a member and again emailed by Cobot, 2 clicks and a visit to the shop).
During this month, contact details have been updated, meeting rooms have been booked, invoices have been created and payments have been received, but I haven’t seen much of this process. Cobot couldn’t do everything for me (I carried crates full of bottles, answered emails, and scanned letters for coworkers) but because I didn’t have to take care of the most repetitive part of the job, I could make sure we didn’t run out of drinks, post Twitter and Facebook updates to remind people to come work with us, and what’s more important, I had time to do my work, meet real people sitting close - coworkers, visitors, and friends - and enjoy coffees, cheesecakes, breakfasts, and beers with them.
We recently released the next generation of our wifi integration. The feature formerly known as RADIUS allows coworking spaces to restrict access to their wifi by requiring members to log in in order to get internet access. In addition it automatically checks people in on Cobot which generates statics about attendance and uses up day passes.
While our old RADIUS implementation worked okay we were never really happy with it. First of all, the technical implementation was much more complex than we would have liked, requiring the use of an OpenVPN gateway, us running our own RADIUS server etc. This resulted in a less than optimal experience for our customers, i.e. they had to contact us to get activated and the process on their side involved filling out 5 screens of forms. In addition, development on this feature was rather difficult, resulting in only a few improvements over time. One annoyance for example that we were never able to fix was the lack of specific error messages - when members were unable to log in the error message would not tell them why - it could be a system error, missing day passes, a not-yet-confirmed membership - you never knew.
Our second generation solution to the problem we simply call wifi integration - we are getting rid of RADIUS as well as OpenVPN. Instead we have developed our own version of the Pfsense captive portal software that now talks directly to our API. This also means that anyone not wanting to use a Pfsense router can write their own/adapt an existing captive portal to work with Cobot.
This feature is now open to everyone without contacting us. Setup has become simpler, we need to support less infrastructure, resulting in fewer errors and we can finally give users specific error messages should there be a problem.
If you are using our old RADIUS feature: we will leave it running for a while but plan to shut it down at some point in the future. Please upgrade to the new system whenever is convenient for you. Your coworkers will thank you. If you have any questions about the migration please contact support.
You can read about our wifi integration in our guides section.
For space using our wifi integration feature, you can now set an expiry date for guest accounts.
This allows you for example to give the organizers of an event a guest account that they can use during the event. After that it expires automatically and you don’t have to worry about it anymore.
