When you create your office on Gather, you'll start with a template perfectly sized for your team. As your team changes, however, there may come a time where you need more or less desks for people to claim as their own. 

This guide will explain the different methods you can use to add and remove desks in your office. 

Option 1: Add/Remove Individual Desks

This option is best if you only need to add or remove a small number of desks. 

Start by opening the Mapmaker. 

Adding a Desk

To add a new desk, search the Object Picker and select the one you'd to add. Place it in the desired location in your office. 

This step adds the visual of the desk; now we'll add the functionality with Tile Effects. 

Switch to the Tile Effects tab at the top. 

To prevent people from walking through the desk, add Impassable Tiles over the top of it. 

Then to make it a claimable, personal desk, you need to add Private Area Tiles around it. Click the Private Area Tile Effect and fill out the information. Be sure to click the bottom toggle for Enable claiming / personalization.

Last, click on the map to place your Private Area Tiles around the desk. Sizes of 3x2 or 3x3 tend to work well!

Save the map, and your new desk will appear in the office! If you hover over it, you should see the option to Invite team or Claim desk if you don't have your own already. 

Removing a Desk

To remove a desk from your office, open the Mapmaker and click the Eraser tool. You'll need to Erase the both the desk object and the Tile Effects. 

To erase the desk object, make sure you're in the Objects tab at the top and simply click the desk while the Erase tool is selected. 

To erase the Tile Effects, switch to the Tile Effects tab. Select the type of Tile you want to erase, and then click on the map to remove it. 

If you remove a Member from the your space, their desk will automatically be unclaimed but remain in the office. Any personalization they added will also remain, so you'll need to delete the objects on their desk if you want to "clean it up." 

Option 2: Switch Templates

This option is best if you need to add or remove a large number of desks at the same time. 

Open the Customize Tool from the bottom navigation bar, then click Map at the top of the panel that opens. 

From here, you'll see your current office template and can easily switch to a new one that's larger, smaller, or a different style. 

When you switch templates, we create a backup of your current map and customizations just in case you need to roll back to the previous version. 

Option 3: Convert Existing Private Areas Into Desks

This option is best if you're currently using an older office template that was released before our updated Desk experience, or if you simply want to convert a private area into a "desk" (such as turning a meeting room into someone's personal corner office)!

Open up the Mapmaker and switch into the Tile Effects tab at the top. 

Select the Private Area Tile and search for the area you'd like to convert. 

Once selected, turn on the toggle at the bottom for "Desk Area." 

This will allow the Private Area to be claimed and personalized by a member of your team. 

If you ever need to convert it back to a Private Area instead of a desk, simply turn the toggle back off. 

That concludes our guide about adding or removing desks in your office. To learn more about claiming and personalizing desks, click here. 

Troubleshooting Desks

If you see large or overlapping desks, this likely means you have overlapping or disconnected Private Area Tiles. Please review the video below for detailed instructions on how to resolve this problem.