There’s no doubt—hybrid work is the new norm. To adapt to the new world of hybrid work and achieve its vision of a truly modern employee experience, Microsoft is prioritizing the improvement of employees’ daily commutes. For a while now, Microsoft’s Puget Sound campus has provided workers with a system of shuttles and buses to travel between home, work, and other office buildings sprawled across multiple cities. Yet providing transportation alone hasn’t been enough. The transportation system needed a boost in user-friendliness to encourage new ridership and enhance the user experience.
To tackle this challenge head-on, Microsoft engineers in Puget Sound developed the Global Commute Service. The software comes in the form of a web and mobile app and has ever-improving features that streamline the commuting experience for employees.
One of these features is an upgraded user interface (UI) that is visually consistent with other Microsoft workplace applications. The familiar design and layout make the software more readily understandable and usable for employees. Riders are also empowered by the modern mobility platform with a trip-planning function, push notifications, real-time ETAs, and live vehicle map tracking for shuttle and Connector bus services.
Trip planner allows employees to plan for their multimodal trips and take the hassle of planning away. This allows employees to plan their end-to-end trips using Connector or shuttle, or on foot up to two weeks in advance.
At the same time as the UI upgrade, the entire backend of the experience was also updated. The updates gave Microsoft a scalable and extensible system that powers real-time updates and can be deployed globally. These improvements benefit the drivers and operators who manage these transportation services, giving them visibility into route usage, rider traffic, and automated vehicle dispatch.
[Find out what Microsoft is doing to create a digital workplace. Discover how Microsoft is reinventing the employee experience for a hybrid world.]
Switching up routes to deliver a new experience
For a long time, the booking platform known to the Puget Sound campus as MERGE (Manage Explore Reserve Go Anywhere) served as the main method for riders to get a seat on one of Microsoft’s buses or shuttles. It was the go-to for reserving a ride on a Connector shuttle, the fixed route shuttles that run on a loop around campus, and the on-demand shuttles that move people between offices.
The legacy booking platform served Puget Sound well but had a different interface than other services available to Microsoft employees, making for an inconsistent user experience. To further complicate matters, MERGE was closely tied to the local transportation services found exclusively in Puget Sound, meaning the app could not be easily replicated to other Microsoft campuses. It was also difficult to extract important and accurate data from the transportation system for operational insights.
The first thing we think about is the rider experience. We start with the physical world, the environment that we live and work in, then we think about the digital world. We want to deliver an experience that is centered around ease, flexibility, and choice.
—Esther Christoffersen, senior services manager, Real Estate and Facilities
All of this added up to one key takeaway—it was time to transform Merge into Global Commute Service, a new mobility experience that offers a consistent interface, modern features, scalability, and visibility.
Two teams worked in tandem to help upgrade transportation systems: Microsoft Digital Employee Experience, the organization that powers, protects, and transforms the company, and Microsoft’s real estate team who are responsible for managing and operating the company’s global facilities and services.
“The first thing we think about is the rider experience,” says Esther Christoffersen, a senior services manager with Real Estate and Facilities. “We start with the physical world, the environment that we live and work in, then we think about the digital world. We want to deliver an experience that is centered around ease, flexibility, and choice.”
The team knew that building a strong bridge between the physical and digital would empower riders with an improved transportation experience.
“We had to think about what really matters,” says Garima Gaurav, a senior product manager with Microsoft Digital Employee Experience. “That meant building something modern, real-time, and fast for riders. But we also wanted operational agility for the Real Estate and Facilities team.”
Improving mobility at Microsoft
The two organizations started brainstorming new rider experiences in 2019, but a few months into the project, the Puget Sound campus shifted to primarily remote with only essential employees working onsite.
“This was an opportunity to pause and really dive into the feedback to see what we could do better,” Christoffersen says.
We built a service that is robust, reliable, and scalable.
—Ram Kuppaswamy, principal software engineering manager, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience
With campus services pausing, Microsoft could disassemble the front-end (the web and app interface riders engage with) and the back-end (the operational workhorses that manage transportation services) without creating disruption.
Work started by decoupling Global Commute Service from the Puget Sound’s established back end. This allowed Microsoft’s new service to integrate with any transportation system. If, for example, a campus uses a new transportation system, Global Commute Service will connect seamlessly, offering riders a consistent experience no matter which Microsoft campus they were on.
“We built a service that is robust, reliable, and scalable,” says Ram Kuppaswamy, a principal software engineering manager with Microsoft Digital Employee Experience. “Now we can launch similar experiences for the rest of Microsoft’s campuses globally.”
Vehicles used to be dispatched manually. By selecting this partner, technology is driving everything from booking, managing dispatch, and assigning vehicles. It has also empowered us to provide features like real-time updates and communications with drivers. We can do it now.
— Garima Gaurav, a senior product manager with Microsoft Digital Employee Experience
Having separated the booking interface, Microsoft could transform the back-end management of its transportation system. This would give much needed visibility and ownership of operating data, the kind that enables real-time status updates and introduce new efficiencies, like automated vehicle dispatch and data-driven service scaling.
To get there, Microsoft engaged with a new partner to help introduce these new data-driven optimizations across Puget Sound. Having onboarded the partner into Microsoft Azure, Microsoft now had access to transportation data that was once lacking.
“Vehicles used to be dispatched manually,” Gaurav says. “By selecting this partner, technology is driving everything from booking, managing dispatch, and assigning vehicles. It has also empowered us to provide features like real-time updates and communications with drivers.
We can do it now.”
This data introduced other benefits as well.
“In the past, we didn’t have a common dashboard for operations and engineering,” Kuppaswamy says. “There was no easy way to understand why an error in the system was occurring. We can have consistent understanding now.”
Access to this technology is also giving Microsoft’s transportation service more operational agility. Data can be augmented, and machine learning can be applied for better operational insights.
“We can share this data with our partners to adjust routes, increase or decrease the number of buses we have, and prioritize service and operational adjustments,” Christoffersen says.
Microsoft’s enterprise shuttle simulator
Microsoft was able to get a lot done with the majority of employees working remotely during the height of the pandemic. Unfortunately, it also meant there were few employees on campus to test the new service.
“That was an unexpected part of the lifecycle,” says Jessie Go, an application manager with Real Estate and Facilities. “With the pause in services, we had to do a lot of testing virtually. No one was traveling.”
How a rider books, how long it takes a driver to get to a stop, and how a rider is verified by a driver all needed to be tested for bugs. To ensure it worked in a real usage scenario, the Microsoft Digital Employee Experience’s engineering team worked onsite at the Puget Sound campus to run everything through the steps.
“We followed all the COVID safety protocols,” Kuppaswamy says. “One or two engineers would book a trip with a shuttle. We tested all the major use cases. It’s a new experience for the drivers as well. They got trained for the new technology.”
One trip at a time, Microsoft was able to validate the upgraded transportation experience. When employees came back, they loved the new experience. It was consistent and intuitive.
Booking a seat to a new future
Microsoft has launched a seamless transportation experience for riders.
Whether they want to use the web or a mobile app, riders have a consistent interface akin to other workplace services. Global Commute Service was deployed across Puget Sound’s new kiosks, giving users more options for how they want to schedule transportation.
“We want to provide Microsoft employees the best commute option for reaching any destination between home, office, or any building on campus,” Kuppaswamy says. “The first step was to make the experience consistent.”
We can make almost real-time updates in terms of routes and how often we hit them in our schedules. We weren’t able to do that before. The work we’ve done so far is impactful for scalability and insight.
—Jessie Go, application manager, Real Estate and Facilities
Riders will have access to real-time status updates on their transportation plans. When you’re moving Microsoft’s Puget Sound employee population around, that’s a big deal.
“We have around 55,000 employees or more in Puget Sound. We run a small city,” Christoffersen says. “Everything is organized; nothing is ambiguous. I can now see a shuttle on a map that’s moving in my direction. That creates a sense of confidence that reduces the stress of getting from point A to point B.”
Data visibility gives Microsoft the operational agility that was once lacking, allowing Real Estate and Facilities to give riders an even better transportation experience.
“We can make almost real-time updates in terms of routes and how often we hit them in our schedules,” Go says. “We weren’t able to do that before. The work we’ve done so far is impactful for scalability and insight.”
Now that modern transportation experiences exist for Microsoft’s campuses, the teams are thinking about how to further empower riders.
“The next big step is to combine every type of commute option, to provide a more holistic trip plan—be it the Microsoft offered transport options, driving, walking, or public transport” Gaurav says. “There are so many ways to move around campus. How can we support that? What’s the total length of time for walking, biking, or even using public transportation? Let’s give employees options so that they can decide the best way to get around.”
- Meet riders where they are: mobile, desktop, or kiosk. The new transportation experience can be accessed in a variety of ways.
- Testing at various stages of development is critical though difficult due to the offices being closed down.
- Employees expect modern transportation experiences to be like what they see when booking a cab or some other mode of travel.
- Digitally transforming a real-world service starts with the physical experience. Finding that intersection between physical and digital creates outcomes for users.
- Ease, flexibility, and choice—those are three priorities for creating a better employee experience.
