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EMS, or Event Management System, is a versatile software solution widely adopted by colleges, universities, and organizations for …
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What is Accruent EMS?
EMS Software is an enterprise space management, event, class and resource scheduling application acquired and now supported by Accruent in June 2018.
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What is Accruent EMS?
EMS Software is an enterprise space management, event, class and resource scheduling application acquired and now supported by Accruent in June 2018.
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What is Accruent EMS?
Accruent's EMS Software connects people with the right spaces, resources, and technology, solving today’s workspace and scheduling challenges and enabling organizations to get the most from their modern work and learning environments.
Employees want the flexibility to work from anywhere and to collaborate using their preferred technologies in a safe and social environment. At the same time, leaders need to drive value for their businesses by making the best possible use of their real estate footprint. Multi-use spaces, hoteling or hot desking, and open floor plans can provide efficiencies, but not when burdened with redundant, outdated tools, and processes disconnected from the rest of a business.
So EMS Software is provided as an intelligent, enterprise-class scheduling and resource management software platform, configured and integrated to a unique office environment. The vendor describes it as a management tool that offers the flexibility employees demand, while providing users the visibility, control and insights needed to drive value for the organization.The vendor further boasts deep industry expertise, with over 35 years in the business .
Accruent EMS Features
- Supported: Self-Service Meeting Booking
- Supported: Desk Hoteling
- Supported: Digital Signage
- Supported: Video Conferencing Integration
- Supported: Web-Based Booking
- Supported: Managed Space and Events Approval Workflow
- Supported: Invoicing and Billing
- Supported: Utilization Reporting and Custom Queries
- Supported: Catering Management
- Supported: Academic Planning and Optimization
Accruent EMS Integrations
- Microsoft Teams
- Google Workspace
- Workday Student
- Microsoft Outlook
- Crestron Room Signs
- IAdea Room Signs
- Embrava Desk Signs
- Envoy Visitor Mangement
- Zoom Video Conferencing
Accruent EMS Competitors
Accruent EMS Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android, Mobile Web |
Frequently Asked Questions
EMS Software is an enterprise space management, event, class and resource scheduling application acquired and now supported by Accruent in June 2018.
Reviewers rate Availability highest, with a score of 9.1.
The most common users of Accruent EMS are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Business Problems Solved
EMS, or Event Management System, is a versatile software solution widely adopted by colleges, universities, and organizations for scheduling and managing events. The system efficiently books rooms, tracks conference room reservations, and facilitates communication between service providers. Users appreciate EMS for streamlining scheduling processes across the organization, from classes and meetings to events. It also helps with work assignment delegation and managing services for internal and external events.
Hospitals also benefit from EMS by using it to schedule conference rooms and manage room and catering requests. For example, TIAA integrates EMS with Outlook, creating a one-stop booking experience that includes features like Webex and attachments. EMS goes beyond room reservations and effectively manages non-room items like banner spaces and van usage.
EMS provides comprehensive support for academic scheduling, event management, and non-academic space management within universities. Many departments already use EMS for event scheduling, with plans to implement it in more departments in the future. In fact, the University of Kentucky relies on EMS more than any other university in the nation for scheduling across all buildings.
EMS is invaluable for risk management and logistical planning. It is utilized in conference centers and other school units with unique spaces. Real-time utilization data allows users to evaluate meeting spaces and classrooms' efficiency. By effectively managing resource allocation and service allocation, EMS enables efficient operations across different departments.
EMS plays a crucial role in enhancing safety and security efforts through essential reporting capabilities. It is used campus-wide for managing catering orders, facilities requests, IT requests, and room reservations. Various groups within an institution benefit from EMS implementation, including the Registrar's Office, Athletics Department, Performing Arts Department, Auxiliary & Event Services, among others.
Overall, EMS receives high praise from users due to its ability to streamline scheduling processes, allocate resources efficiently, and optimize space management within organizations. Its wide range of use cases makes it a valuable tool in educational institutions, conference centers, and organizations requiring efficient scheduling and event management.
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September 19, 2019
A Review from a Canadian Post-Secondary Institution
EMS is used to manage bookings from various room owners for different rooms such as classrooms, boardrooms, computer labs, and multipurpose rooms. Student group leaders use Virtual EMS to request bookings. EMS Web Client is utilized for users that are using Macs or a wireless connection.
- Transparency for all bookings
- Easy to view details of all rooms
- Minimizes double bookings
- Pushing events to a public calendar events
- EMS web client is slow and clunky
September 18, 2019
EMS tells story for those who do not use it every day!
We are currently using EMS in the business school at our university. We are also in the midst of bringing it onboard to use it across campus. We use EMS to book rooms, block rooms, upload classroom schedules, hoteling, breakout rooms bookings to host a variety of bookings (workshops, classes, internal meetings etc).
- EMS has the ability to create reports on room usage and booking rates. This assistance us in justifying expansions in our building.
- EMS also has the ability to show the rate of bookings, how many bookings are being creating, and by who. This allows us to hire more resouraces based on these stats.
- EMS can improve on their copy and paste feature. Currently you can not copy and paste on multiple bookings without losing the original content of the copy. I have made a report regarding this.
- Have more than two contacts on a reservation. For example, if there are three leads on a event, then we can only input 2 contact info
September 13, 2019
EMS is very flexible and a very powerful tool if you have a good training-- but not an accounting tool
EMS is used across Columbia University. My department is using EMS to manage four different departments, one of them is Catering which doesn't have any building related. I am working in finance, so I have a general view of the behavior of these department business and the final procedures like billing, invoicing, and analysis.
I can see how EMS is very flexible in terms of event management, daily reconciliations and implementing resources and categories for types of uses. However, in terms of analysis there's a certain lack of consistency. We are missing an alternative option to void invoices since we don't want our past revenue to change but rather have the alternative of having a credit invoice instead.
- I can see how EMS in very flexible in terms of event management, daily reconciliations and implementing resources and categories for types of uses.
- EMS has a very good tools of utilization analysis tools
- EMS is so flexible that almost any type of business can use for event/bookings purposes
- We are missing an alternative option to void invoices since we don't want our past revenue to change but have the alternative of having a credit invoice instead.
- We would like to have more tax detailed reports
- Query builder is a great tool but there is some room for improvement in terms of making even more easy to use
September 13, 2019
EMS Software Saves Schedulers at the University of Oregon
The University of Oregon is preparing to use EMS Software for event and class scheduling across our entire campus. Initial users will include the registrar's office, scheduling and event services, our alumni center and our business school; we hope to roll it out to additional departments within the next couple of years. This application and anticipated integration with other software will help aggregate our school's activities in a single source for better communication of information to customers and use by risk management services.
- The graphic user interface is well-designed and intuitive, which promotes productivity.
- It provides workflow functionality for schedulers and service providers to efficiently relay event details and status.
- The user-defined fields add the ability to customize reservation and space records to better meet campus business needs.
- Bookings contain a limited number of standard time fields (event start, event end, setup time, teardown time); more options here are desirable.
- Resource records are not as robust as some of the other areas, and could benefit from additional standard and user-defined fields.
- Applying blackouts to spaces (to prevent bookings during certain times) appears to be a challenge: we believe it can be done, but the process doesn't seem to be straightforward.
September 10, 2019
I could not do my job without EMS
EMS is being used to manage space and services in our Student Union Building. It addresses the the high volume of space requests, and inventory tracking. We use it to push a master calendar, bill for our event services as well as provide comprehensive space utilization reporting. With a 5 tier rat structure and varying access to different group EMS is the best tool for our job.
- It has excellent stock and customization reports. We have a responsibility to communicate the activity in the building to multiple stakeholders (dining, custodial etc) EMS allows us to create a custom report and automate it to send so we never miss a communication
- It has a robust amount of tools to assist you in both space and service management. The way the Process Templates (web intake forms) have been designed allow us to use logic based reasoning so that one form can handle complex events all the way down to a simple boardroom reservation.
- It has numerous integrations available to help make a seamless event management process including connections to 7pointOps and Campus Labs Engage which we use for our Student Organizations
- We desperately wish there was a simpler way to do invoicing notifications to our clients rather than the manual email process
- It would be excellent to simplify the rate schedule and pricing plan process. There are almost too many ways to change pricing. The ability to import an excel document of new pricing would make our lives much easier.
September 04, 2019
Review from a Guy "Behind the Scenes"
We use EMS Software primarily for room scheduling across our campus. Our courses are imported into EMS, which gives department heads the ability to see how their rooms are utilized. They can use this information to determine if more sections to a course can be added. It also allows other users across campus to search for and book a room without the worry of conflicting with a course. We started using EMS due to our old method of keeping track of room utilization becoming obsolete and no longer being supported.
- Being able to import our courses from our SIS system makes it really easy to see which rooms are getting used the most.
- The Virtual EMS component makes it really easy for anyone to search for and book a room on campus.
- When setting up new users, there is an option to allow Single Sign-On, which means users have one less password to remember (and log ins are faster).
- A few years ago, the automatic synchronization between EMS and our SIS system stopped working after an update. Support couldn't figure out the problem, so we were forced to use flat files, which is better than nothing but still a little annoying.
- If I recall correctly, you can't really delete bookings in EMS. That may be a good thing in terms of keeping track of room utilization and such, but it'd be nice to be able to delete bookings that are either several years old or were used for testing.
September 03, 2019
EMS Easy
Our firm has been using EMS software for the last 20 years. The software has streamlined our conference room booking and catering/hospitality services. We use many of the reports and email confirmation service.
- Automated Reporting
- Sign
- Mobile App
- Installing Signs for each conference room showing availability and on the fly reservations.
- Streamline reports
- Implementing mobile app in the future.
- Currently all of the features are meeting our requirements.
September 03, 2019
Pretty decent product
EMS Software has been great in helping several areas within our university schedule events as well as complete course classroom assignments which would otherwise be incredibly cumbersome.
- Easily assign rooms
- Find appropriate rooms for events
- Everyday use intuitive
- Multiple features to suit a variety of needs.
- It would be nice to have little information boxes for different fields/options that explained a bit about what that feature does and how it is important
- It can be daunting to try to explore possibilities of features that are currently not in use. It would be nice to have an option for a help section that easily allowed you to see how you might fully take advantage of the features you already have access to for learning/ exploring purposes.
- I can't open another window within EMS (activity book for example) without finishing my room assignment or reservation task. However, sometimes I really need to see two things at once and end up having to open another EMS entirely on a different monitor to be able to accomplish what I need to do (for example I may have two back to back classes that need to be in the same room or close, so I need to be able to see options for each class side by side.)
September 03, 2019
EMS Saves Money and Time
We use EMS across our whole university. We use it to schedule academic courses as well as events.
- Scheduling rooms and controlling traffic in the rooms.
- It is very helpful for resource providers to schedule their services in reservations within the system.
- It helps with safety and security by providing transparency of all the events happening on campus so that the university police department can see what’s happening.
- EMS does not provide a useful tool for scheduling people.
- Billing multiple clients is difficult for one event.
September 03, 2019
EMS Software
We use it for scheduling academic classrooms, and for Event Spaces both for in house and external customer. It is being used across the whole organization. It helps us maximize the use of our space, schedule, track & allows users to book space.
- Queries. I like the built in choices and the ability to make my own specific queries.
- Ease of Movement of space. This helps tremendously as we deal with frequenct classroom changes.
- Communication. Communication both internally and externally is very fluid in the program.
- I would like more clear notifications when there are conflicts across long standing classes and events.
- I would like more information about upcoming not definite bookings.
- More customizable colors and layouts.
September 03, 2019
EMS: Event planning made easy
We utilize EMS at our student center to help manage and schedule all of our event spaces on campus. It used by our department and our department alone. The registrar's office utilizes 25Live. EMS helps us keep track of our events in a nice organized fashion and helps make life easy as an event planner, especially with the automated reports.
- EMS Software is very easy to read if you're trying to get a quick scope of what is going on in your facilities.
- The system is super easy to use, manage and customize.
- Teaching others to utilize EMS is easy as user.
- There are a lot of underutilized features I wish I knew were apart of the software from the beginning.
- The book interface could be cleaner.
- Other than that I enjoy using EMS.
August 25, 2019
EMS the Easy Way
We use EMS to schedule all our classes in our NU System and State Colleges; we are utilizing Academic and event scheduling. We have also spread our use to individual departments and all colleges at each of our campuses. Some of our areas are still slowly growing into it but will be fully utilizing it within the next year.
- Academic Scheduling works really well with the Sync and Publish tools
- Event Scheduling and the ability to leverage templates to the specific user groups
- Workflows in the 44.1 version have improved greatly and help with the automated reporting is a great feature.
- A deeper workflow would be great to help with a few of our more complex issues
- Integrations of O365 to work more seamlessly with EMS web
August 24, 2019
EMS - our former room management system
We used EMS software to help manage our use of our facilities. As a church, it is critically important that we have a reliable way to reserve different rooms as well as communicate between our various teams about room usage (facilities, hospitality, event organizer, etc.).
- EMS is extremely powerful, can fit most organizations needs, and has several different offerings based on use
- EMS is a recognized industry leader and therefore integrates well with many third party packages
- EMS provides phone support
- It is hard to be all things to all people, over time we saw more focus on their larger clients in the design decisions they made.
- Their back end structure and support of their software was stellar; best in class - however in recent years I have seen that drop off.
August 23, 2019
I love EMS and think you should too
Our college has primarily used this to schedule all events and catering in campus. It primarily ran non athletic events, and we are now implementing the EMS course scheduling for the optimizations. A few specific departments really use it, primarily performing arts, and catering. Everyone else on campus uses it but not to its fullest extent and not if they can manage to not use it (no services or publicity required). The Grant and community outreach folks have finally discovered its usefulness for their reporting by principal investigators and for auditing purposes.
- Room optimization
- Parity for all users
- Reporting
- HVAC integration
- Support (recent not past)
- Customization of reports ( crystal or similar)
- I sometimes feel like it would be interesting to get sandboxed versions of other users' really well implemented environments for others to look at. And probe into.
August 23, 2019
EMS 44.1 has major perks!
EMS is used across the FDA organization for meeting room reservations and hoteling. By using EMS, users are able to confidently reserve a space for private meetings with colleagues, business officials and reserve temporary workspace for themselves with confidence that the space will be available for them when they show up at the reserved time.
- EMS makes is very simple to find rooms for multiple dates in a recurring meeting. Since users at our organization tend to book rooms far in advance, the same room isn't always available for the complete duration of a recurrence and with EMS conflict resolution it allows the users to find an alternate room for an unavailable date with a few simple clicks without having to leave the current reservation.
- EMS notifications are great for our users to remind them that they have spaced reserved. It's that extra reminder sometimes that pushes the user to cancel any reserved rooms that they no longer need. This enables the room to be reserved by others which is very valuable at the FDA.
- The new ability to select and reserve a room from Browse Locations in 44.1 is a time saver and is very valuable to our users. Often times people need a last minute room which can be hard to find at the FDA, so to provide them with a schedule view of all rooms and find an opening and select it is very convenient and makes the process less time consuming.
- EMS for Outlook 44.1 now has the ability to resolve any conflicts right from the add-in. This is the greatest benefit and improvement that has happened to the add-in. It very greatly reduces the number of conflicts created by users and helps prevent users from showing up to a room they think they have, but actually don’t.
- I do wish that EMS Room Sign App had some simpler ways to authenticate users. We would love to have the End Now button activated on our Signs, but do not feel confident that other users won't use it inappropriately. If there was a simple way to authenticate without RFID or a card reader that would be a huge help. Perhaps an authentication code attached to the meeting reservation?
August 23, 2019
Users about to incorporate optimizing
We use EMS for bookings for events and meetings and exporting academic schedules to the academic book. We will be implementing the automatic room scheduling for the academic book very soon.
- Virtual web-version for all --even non-users
- Campus planning site easy to use
- Great customization on our web reservations
- Web-app that gives option to view events or academic classes
- Virtual EMS web version shows academic class bookings as blocked out. Would be nice to see details of the booking.
August 21, 2019
EMS! Look No Further!
EMS is an integral part of the management of space on both the Allendale campus and our downtown Grand Rapids campus. It is used to manage equipment inventory, event specifics, internal record-keeping, and much more.
- Data collection and ability to access the data quickly
- EMS does an excellent job of responding to and considering feedback as they continue to make their product better and better
- The ability to use 7PointOps and Social Tables with EMS have been an invaluable to our operations
- We have connectivity issues at times. I am not certain this is due to hardware on our end or software issues.
- Regional customer groups are a good idea for us to take part in. This would allow us access to best practices of others
August 20, 2019
EMS Platform Services Review!
EMS software is being used across our whole organization. Our company has over 10,000 employees, different teams and locations. EMS helps us by allowing users to book room spaces for meetings or workspaces.
- I like that EMS has the ability to create different templates for different types of rooms.
- I like the ability to customize a templates experience for users such as allowing specific users to use the template as well as if room needs to be checked in to we can include this feature.
- I like the Platform services service, which provides most of the functionalities EMS has to offer to our custom applications.
- Platform services sometimes needs a little improvement such as compatibility and features that the web app has and platform services does not provide such as room types.
- Platform services needs to include the ability to include favorites rooms that you can find within the web app.
August 20, 2019
Rating EMS
I use EMS to book rooms in our conference center and it is also used throughout the whole organization to book rooms in other parts of the office.
Helps us book rooms more efficiently.
- We rarely run in to any conflicts while using EMS which is great for an organization that uses conference rooms regularly.
- There are numerous reports you can run to keep organized. Reports for catering, AV equipment needed, more tables, chairs, etc...
- Adrienne at EMS is always quick at responding and helping us troubleshoot any issues we may run in to.
- Although the reports can be very detailed, sometimes we need them to be more simple for quick and easy reading.
- We had issues with our panels with people checking in and it kicking them out of the room regardless.
August 20, 2019
IT is a scheduling option
EMS is a technological solution to centralize academic scheduling at WSU. We also use for event scheduling.
- It works well with scheduling events and has many features to execute events on campus
- EMS provides a central location to see all academic events and nonacademic events happening on campus
- EMS has a robust report tool
- It is difficult to implement and learn how to use the system. The user interface could be improved.
- It only optimizes location, which is only part of developing an academic schedule. I would like to see it optimize time as well.
August 20, 2019
Bucknell University Review
EMS is used across our institution. We use it for managing all classes and event spaces. We also use it to communicate needs with service providers - catering, event and classroom tech support, facilities, card services, guest housing, public safety, transportation, and card services.
- EMS allows us to communicate with our campus partners in a number of ways - via auto reporting, notifications or reminders, depending on the preference of each user/group.
- The customer service team is always well versed and extremely helpful in knowing the software so they can help us tailor the system to best suit our needs when we have questions.
- Reporting options are really flexible. Having the option to create queries outside of the canned report options is truly helpful.
- One area that needs to be better developed or looked into is the Master Calendar. As universities continue to looks for ways to provide one-stop shopping, it would be helpful to have a place that easily streamlines event data and event marketing in one place. Students want to go to one place to see events and plan events. Master Calendar was a good start but it is ancient and very disjointed from EMS.
- We would love to have the webclient back. We have several users that use an ipad or apple computer and the webclient allowed that functionality.
- One area for improvement is managing system changes. As the EMS administrator for the university, it would be great to be able to add a new building or category to EMS and add those items to all existing templates, reports, etc in one place.
August 20, 2019
EMS for University Use
I work at a University and my office manages all non-academic bookings on campus. The registrar populates classroom assignments and athletics adds their game/practice schedules and our office reserves everything else.
- Helps keep spaces and resources organized
- Easy to use once you learn the system
- Versatile
- Steep learning curve
- Can be clunky to use at times
- Wish there were easier ways to bulk edit
- Not always the most intuitive
August 20, 2019
EMS great for conference center space
We use EMS organization-wide. We have a small conference center plus internal meeting rooms and conference bridge lines that we book through EMS. We have different price structures for internal and external clients and use various resources including AV, catering, and facilities.
- Flexibility. We can easily have different rate plans for our internal departments and for our external clients.
- The new web app is extremely intuitive and makes it super easy for general staff to reserve space.
- We can’t automatically associate an additional resource with external reservations. We charge a facilities set up fee for every room and currently have to add it manually to every booking.
- There’s no “rapid entry” of resources. Example, our event coordinators enter an agenda for every meeting but can’t do it all at once—they have to go back and enter another line for each different agenda item.
August 07, 2019
EMS Everyday
Our organization uses EMS to book meeting space across the United States and abroad. We use it for reoccurring meetings, multi-site meetings, town halls, and everything in between. The integration with Outlook allows all of the employees to seamlessly book meetings in calendar invites and adjust the locations as times or needs change.
- EMS seamlessly manages time zones, so when booking across multiple time zones you do not have to do any conversion or look at any charts to book in the correct time.
- Manages inventory, so if you only have a specific number of tables for example, it will inform users when the max has been reached and it will set out a sheet detailing where the inventory is booked so it can be managed appropriately.
- Overall, customization is very nice with EMS. You can create your own views to group rooms together. You can pull a lot of different reports, or run queries to gather other information. You can change room names easily. You can add a pop up to individual rooms if there is information pertinent to users before they book that space. You can add features to rooms so someone can search for rooms that include only that specific feature. There is just a lot that can be done with the program to customize it to your needs--which can even be done differently from user to user, administrator to administrator.
- Catering reports could use some improvements. There is not a way to customize the catering reports to have it not only itemize the orders per booking, but also include tax. We have to pull multiple reports to be able to complete billing with our caterers.
- Adding a new Item such as a new building or a new catering menu can cause challenges because there are so many little areas that MUST be updated for the new item to be seen by all users at all stages. Not only do you have to create the building and all the rooms, but you also have to add those rooms/building to each individual template, add it to the CONFIRMATION of each individual template, add it to the custom views created, ensure Web Users can view the rooms/building, and a few other places you didn't realize you had to update until you receive communication from end users that there are challenges. It would be nice if there was more of a one-stop-shop for adding new items.
February 09, 2019
EMS Software at a Higher Education Campus
EMS Software is used by our campus to manage most academic spaces and other event spaces. We use it as a risk management tool as well as to avoid event conflicts with classes. It has enabled us to be prepared for multiple large events on campus as well as to mitigate anyone who is advertising an event on campus without reserving the space.
- EMS is user-friendly. The program for both the administrators and the end web user is pretty straightforward and easy to use.
- EMS is very customizable for all of the different entities who use the software.
- EMS has useful reports, and even custom reports can be created.
- EMS has almost too many customizable features. Some of the custom functions can be done at different levels, but do the same thing, so it's hard to determine what part of the process to customize.
- EMS Support isn't always the best for the end user who does not have access to the back end database or knowledge of the database functions.
- The custom reports are missing a feature to pull a report when the status of the booking has changed.