As hybrid work becomes the norm, workspaces themselves are becoming an increasingly fluid concept.
The days of every company having a fixed layout are gone. And because of this, organizations are now having to rethink how they deploy their communication tools. But with this fluidity comes complexity - Managing how people interact with hardware, how they access their setups, and how they can work efficiently has become a bit of a question mark, where before it was as simple as tying all of those aspects to a single desk or a single phone and calling it a day.
There is, however, an answer to all of these issues... And it’s a big part of the Dstny ecosystem. Enter free seating - A flexible way for users to log in to any shared desk phone and instantly access their personal settings, contacts, extension, and voicemail.
Why it matters
Free Seating is essentially hot desking for voice (in other words, nobody has a fixed workspace). It allows users to move freely between offices and work areas without losing their personalized phone settings or having their experience disrupted. For IT teams and Service Providers, this means:
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Less hardware waste: Instead of a dedicated device for every user, shared phones can now serve multiple employees.
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Simplified device management: Centralized control in the Service Management Portal makes it easy to enable, monitor, and support Free Seating across locations.
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Cost savings: Businesses reduce phone hardware spend while still offering a consistent user experience.
A use case for free seating
A facilities team for a medium-sized logistics company has recently redesigned their offices to accommodate hybrid work, asking their employees to be in the office three days a week. In addition to things like re-equipping meeting rooms with the latest tech and making some overall changes, the company also adapted its general workspace. In essence, their new office design had been made to cater towards fewer people being in-house at any given time, whilst making sure that usable workspaces are available for all those who are on-site at any given time.
With fewer desks than employees, assigning a fixed phone to everyone was no longer feasible. The company needed a way to let their staff share hardware in a way that was compliant, efficient, and secure, so they, of course, turned to Free Seating. By leveraging this capability, they ensured that any user could sit down, log in, and access their personal extension in seconds.
On top of this, the company’s IT administrator also used Free Seating to streamline onboarding. Instead of provisioning a new device, they simply trained users to authenticate to available shared desk phones. The result? Faster setup, lower cost, and better scalability.
Log in, get to work
Whether users are visiting satellite offices, rotating through a flex-desk schedule, or are part of a part-time workforce, Free Seating enables seamless transitions and has its own part to play in how Dstny helps Service Providers support modern, flexible work environments - without adding complication to IT operations.
How it works
Using Free Seating is easy and intuitive:
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The user walks up to a shared desk phone.
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They press the dedicated Free Seating login button.
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They enter their unique extension ID and PIN code.
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The phone immediately binds to their profile - loading their extension, settings, contacts, and voicemail.
Once logged in, users can make and receive calls with their business identity, just as if they were on their own assigned device. When finished, they can log out manually, or the phone can be configured to automatically release the session after a defined period of inactivity.
Flexibility and zero-touch value for partners
Free Seating delivers even greater value for Service Providers by supporting zero-touch provisioning through domain-based profile assignments. Providers can now:
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Create organization-level profiles for shared desk phones
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Assign a default profile per customer domain
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Ensure that users get the correct button configurations immediately after login, with no setup needed by the customer admin
This means that end customers only need to plug in a phone and log in. The profile assigned by the Service Provider automatically applies basic functionality. Of course, more advanced users or customers can still define unique configurations:
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Organization-specific profiles
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Vendor-specific or model-specific variants
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User-specific button setups for advanced use cases
The profile system is layered and flexible, supporting default organization profiles, variant profiles for models or vendors and user-level profiles and their own variants. The Free Seating Profiles interface in the SMP allows Service Providers and admins to manage, assign, and preview these profiles easily, with clear UI navigation and control over variant behavior and expansion modules.
This structure empowers Service Providers to deliver a consistent out-of-the-box experience to all customer organizations, while also enabling tailored setups where needed, striking a balance between efficiency and customization.
Free Seating connects directly to Dstny's brand promise - To make hybrid work
By letting users securely access their communications from any shared phone, you get a practical way to align IT policy with real-world employee behavior. Ultimately, this means lower costs, maximum efficiency, and a more productive working environment for businesses of any size or orientation.
Giving companies the capability to add Free Seating to their communications solution is just one more way Dstny is helping Service Providers deliver smarter, faster, and more reliable communication solutions. So if you’re looking to learn more about how Dstny can make hybrid work for your organisation, why not get in touch? Also, don’t forget you can follow us on LinkedIn to stay tuned for more product updates, or subscribe to our monthly newsletter for the latest insights.