Daily Work

The virtual office

Overview

The virtual office is a single floor built from your company's own data — your teams, employees and rooms — not something you lay out yourself:

• Team corners in the middle of the floor: each team has its corner, each member a desk inside their team's corner, and the corners are laid three to a row. Anyone with no team sits in a corner called No team. Anyone in more than one team sits in the first.
• Meeting rooms along the top and bottom edges, alternating between them.
• Personal offices down the left and right columns, alternating likewise.
• Every door opens inward — towards the team plaza in the middle.

Every new company gets four rooms seeded automatically: General, Meetings, Focus and Break. Seeding happens only when the company has not a single room — so delete some and they won't come back, but delete them all and the four are seeded again the next time the page opens.

Every employee has a character they move with on the floor: walk into a room and you join it and hear whoever is inside; walk out and you leave it.

What's the difference between Map and List?

The floor has two views, switched from the two buttons at the top of the page:

• Map — the interactive floor with characters and movement. This is the default view. In it the page headings fold away and the floor fills the screen, with the buttons floating above it.
• List — the same floor as cards, in two sections:
  • Shared rooms — a card per unowned room: its icon, name, type, capacity, how many are inside and their pictures, and a small lock if it is a private room. And if someone inside is sharing their screen or has raised a hand, that shows as a strip on the card.
  • Offices — a card per colleague, grouped by team: their picture, name and status (online, offline, or in a named room), the pictures of whoever is visiting them, and a lock badge if their door is shut, described as "Door closed — knocking required." Clicking the card enters their office — or knocks if it's shut — and the small wave button on it sends a greeting without entering.

How do I open the office and move around it?

As an employee: from the HR workspace open the Office row in the sidebar.

As the company administrator: the row has become a tab — open the Team Chat row, which opens on Messages first, then press the Office tab beside it.

Then move:

1. The arrow keys or WASD — as the on-screen hint says: "Move with the arrows or WASD — or click the floor to walk."
2. Or click any point on the floor to walk there (it avoids walls automatically).
3. Double-click = a faster run to the destination.
4. Use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out; zoomed in, the camera follows your character.

What happens when I zoom all the way out?

The more you zoom out, the closer the floor comes to being smaller than your window — and at that point it folds itself into a blueprint instead of the detailed drawing:

• Furniture, walls, room floors, doors and seat signs disappear.
• The desk rows remain as faint grey ghosts, so you can read the floor's layout from above.
• Rooms and corners remain outlined rectangles, their names in a large fixed type that doesn't shrink as you zoom out.
• Rooms with someone in them are highlighted in a distinct colour — including your own.
• And each person becomes a disc carrying their picture (or the first letter of their name) with their name beside it.

This blueprint is for reading quickly: who is in which room right now, at a glance. It has no button — zoom back in and the floor returns in full detail.

How do I sit on a chair?

• Walk until you stop beside the chair — the moment you halt next to it, you sit on it by yourself.
• Or click the chair directly, and you walk to it and sit on arrival. This works on any empty chair: your own desk, an absent colleague's desk, or a chair in a meeting room.
• Click the floor to stand and walk — or press any movement key, and you stand and walk in that direction.

Sitting has two explicit refusals: "Seat taken" if someone is already on it — a seat is for one, not more — and "That seat can't be reached" if there's no spot left around it to stand in (a chair wedged between two solid pieces).

How do I enter a room?

• Walk into the room — crossing its boundary is the signal to join: you enter it and hear whoever is inside.
• Your mic and camera start off in every room, until you turn them on from the bottom bar.
• And audio is lazy: it doesn't actually connect until there are two or more people in the room, and until then you read "Audio connects when a colleague joins."
• Leave the room — the moment you step outside it, you've left.
• Locked rooms (knocking): some rooms and personal offices require knocking, and their door is knocked from the List view: click the room's card or the colleague's office card. You read "Knocking…" and "Waiting for the members inside to accept", and whoever is inside gets "is asking to enter" with Accept and Decline buttons. If accepted you read "Your request was accepted — entering…", otherwise "The members declined your request."
• And if the room has a capacity and it's full, your entry is refused with "Room full."

And if the administrator has placed a whiteboard inside a room, approaching it while you are an actual member of that room shows you an "Open the whiteboard — Enter" button. Press Enter or click the board itself to open the room's shared canvas.

What's in the bottom bar?

While you're inside a room a bottom bar appears above the floor, carrying the room's name and status and then icon buttons. The names below are what you see written inside the expanded room view:

• Unmute / Mute — your mic.
• Start video / Stop video — your camera.
• Share screen / Stop sharing — sharing your screen with whoever is in the room.
• Raise hand / Lower hand.
• React — the same eight symbols, floating for everyone in the room.
• The door button — which appears only for the office's owner while inside their own office (see the personal offices section below).
• Room view — expands the room to full screen, and Leave takes you out of it.

In the expanded room view the buttons carry their names in writing, and a header appears with: Attendees (a side panel of their names), Devices (a camera preview, a mic meter, and pickers for microphone, camera and speaker), a button toggling between speaker view and grid view, open in a separate window, and minimise to return to the floor.

How do I set my mic for meeting people?

Beside the map tools is a mic button that sets your preferred behaviour:

• Mic open on meeting — it opens automatically when you meet a colleague.
• Mic muted on meeting — you stay silent until you open it yourself.

This preference is saved for you in your browser, and applies to automatic proximity bubbles alone: rooms you always enter with your mic muted until you open it from the bottom bar.

How does audio open by itself when I'm near someone?

When you come close to a colleague (who isn't busy, and where neither of you is sitting at your own desk) a talk bubble forms linking you by voice automatically, and a ring appears around you.

The numbers that govern it are deliberate:

• The bubble opens when the distance becomes 72 units or less — about one desk's distance.
• It holds out to 96 units, then gives you a second and a half before it breaks — so one step sideways doesn't cut off your conversation.
• Up to eight people in one bubble.
• And anyone who enters a real room or turns on busy leaves the bubbles immediately.

How do I interact with a colleague?

Click any colleague's character to open their card, and from it:

• Wave — a quick greeting that floats above their character, and you read "Your wave arrived."
• Invite to my room — appears only while you are inside a room, inviting them to join you, and you read "Invitation sent." The invitation reaches them both on the floor and in the notification bell, so it finds them even on another page of Duwam.
• Quick message — opens a compose line reading "Write your message…", up to 120 characters. Press Enter and you read "Your message arrived."

And on the map toolbar:

• React — a panel of eight emoji, one of which you send to float above your character for everyone on the floor to see.
• Busy — turn it on to withdraw from automatic proximity bubbles; colleagues see that you're busy and audio isn't drawn to you. Turn it off and you read "Available." The state stays with you across a page reload until you turn it off.

How do I choose my character?

Click your own character on the floor and the Choose your character panel opens with fourteen: Adam, Alex, Amelia, Bob, Omar, Layla, Khalid, Sara, Yousef, Noura, Faisal, Reem, Tariq and Huda. Pick one and your appearance changes immediately for everyone on the floor, with no reload.

How do I stay in the office while moving between pages?

When you enter a room and then move to Tasks or Chat or any other page, you stay in the room through a mini player in the corner of the screen:

• It shows the room's name and a line reading the count and in the room, plus picture tiles of those present (up to four, then a number with a plus for the rest, turning into live video when a camera opens).
• Buttons for mic on/mic muted, camera on/camera off, and Leave.
• Audio is lazy here too: it doesn't connect until there are two or more people in the room, and until then it tells you "Audio connects when a colleague joins." — so the player consumes nothing while you sit alone.

How do I start a meeting from a conversation?

You can start a voice/video meeting straight from a conversation without opening the office page — the Meet button in the conversation header:

• From a one-to-one conversation: described as "invite them to your office" — it invites the other party to your personal office, and a clickable notification reaches them.
• From a group channel: described as "start or join the channel's meeting" — it creates a permanent room on the floor for the channel the first time, then reuses it every time after. When someone is inside, the button becomes Join with the pictures and count of who's in the room beside it.

The meeting opens in place inside the conversation through the mini player; you're only moved to the office page if that isn't possible.

See Chat for more on the conversation buttons.

How do I create or edit a room? (company administrator)

At the top of the page is a Manage rooms button — visible to the company administrator alone, and working in both views (on the map it floats above the floor):

1. Add room, then fill in: Name (Arabic) and Name (English) (so the name follows each user's language), the icon (type "a Lucide name such as building-2, or an emoji character", or pick from the row of ready icons beneath it), the type, and capacity (optional).
2. Type has six options in this order: Open, Meetings, Focus, Break, Desk, Personal office.
3. Desk is a simple shared work room, and it alone has a desk size field: standard — a table and four chairs, which takes a slot in the meeting-room row, or small — a table and two chairs, which takes a slot in the side column.
4. Office owner (optional) — turns the room into a personal office for its owner, who always enters without knocking. The make me the owner button beside it picks you and ticks private room with it. Leave it on no owner — shared room for general rooms. And read the caution below before believing the explanatory line under the field.
5. Capacity (optional) — the maximum who can be in the room together; anyone arriving once it's full reads "Room full." The platform caps actual capacity at ten people by default however large a number you write.
6. Edit and Delete on any room. Deleting asks: "Delete this room permanently?"

Personal offices and their doors

Personal offices are no longer created ahead of time when accounts are created. An office exists because somebody wanted it: it's created at the first Meet launched from a one-to-one conversation in the company, or when the administrator creates a room and assigns it an owner.

And the door's state follows how it was created:

• An office born from a conversation's Meet starts locked (knocking): colleagues — and administrators too — knock and wait for its owner to accept them.
• An office the administrator creates from Manage rooms starts open: colleagues walk straight in until its owner locks it.

A locked office carries a lock badge on its card in List, described as "Door closed — knocking required."

To switch your own door: enter your office, and the door button appears in the bottom bar — visible only to the office's owner while inside it. Press Open the door and you read "Door opened — colleagues enter directly", or Close the door and you read "Door closed — colleagues will knock first".

How do I edit the floor? (company administrator)

On the map, and for the company administrator alone, is an Edit floor button:

1. Press it (movement freezes while you're in it, and you're announced as busy until you leave).
2. Move a room, a team corner or a piece of furniture by dragging, or resize a room from its bottom-right corner — the only handle. (Resizing is for rooms alone, not for team corners.)
3. From the side furniture library pick a piece then click the floor to place it. The library is split into sections: Interactive (the whiteboard and the screen), then Chairs, Desks, Tables, Sofas, Plants, Cabinets, Shelves, Display, Windows, Rugs, Devices, Kitchen, Decor, and Other for the unclassified — and finally Floors.
4. The "Search furniture…" field filters the whole library by name, and sections with no results fold away.
5. The Floors section works by painting: pick a tile then click a room, a team corner or the central plaza to colour its floor.
6. To delete a selected object press Delete/Backspace.
7. Press Save and you read "Floor saved", or Cancel to undo.

How do I return the floor to its default design?

In the edit bar is a third button: Restore default. It asks first: "Your saved layout will be deleted and the floor will return to the new default design. Continue?" — and if you agree, your saved layout is deleted and the floor returns to the generated design, and you read "Default design restored." If the operation stumbles you read "Restore failed — nothing changed" — so you're never left in doubt.

What is the "office theme"? (company administrator)

Beside the edit button is an Office theme button, which opens Choose the company's theme and says: "Changes the building's surroundings for everyone — you can switch it later." There are three options: Green garden, Green fields and Tropical island. After choosing you read "Theme saved", and if the save stumbles, "Save failed — try again." The panel opens automatically the first time an administrator enters, before a choice has been saved.

What are fixed seats?

If your company's floor is a pre-drawn office — a map the Duwam team prepares for your company instead of the generated floor — it may carry fixed seats: named chair positions, each of which the administrator assigns to an employee.

What you see as an employee: a sign with the name of each assigned seat's owner. And your own seat works exactly like your desk: walk to it or click it to sit.

What the administrator does: they see the vacant seats too — each by its position's name in the drawing, or "Vacant seat" if unnamed — and a click on any seat opens Assign seat: a "Search for an employee…" field and the employee list, with a Remove assignment button on an assigned seat. The assignment reaches everyone on the floor instantly.

What the virtual office does not do

So you don't go looking for what isn't there:

• It doesn't clock anyone in or out. Being on the floor is not a punch and not a shift, and it doesn't appear in the attendance report — see Attendance.
• No recording. No audio, video or screen recording, and no transcript of what was said.
• No meeting scheduling, no calendar invitations and no reminders. A room is a place you enter, not a time you book.
• No report inside your company on office usage: not how long someone spent in a room, and not who met whom. (Duwam itself keeps a brief usage record — room entries and exits, knocks and screen shares, with no content at all — for ninety days, to measure adoption. That is for the platform, not for your company, so neither you nor your administrator sees it.)
• No participation from outside the company. No guest link and no anonymous participant — everyone on the floor is an employee of your company.
• Presence is always temporary and never stored: a server restart empties the rooms, and nothing is lost by it.
• No choosing the floor from your end. A pre-drawn office is assigned to your company by the Duwam team, not from your settings.
• There are four characters and no fifth, with no clothing customisation and no layered character builder.
• The office theme doesn't touch the interior — nor the exterior today either, as its section's caution says.

FAQ

Q: Why don't I see the Office in the sidebar? A: Either your plan is Basic (or your trial ended without subscribing) — the office is available from Professional up — or the platform owner has switched the feature off for your company. And if you reach the map another way you read: "The interactive map is available on Professional and above."

Q: I used to open the Office from the sidebar and the row has disappeared. A: If you're the company administrator it hasn't disappeared, it has become a tab: Team Chat → Office. The row opens on Messages first.

Q: I entered a room but I can't hear anyone. A: Audio is lazy to save resources — it doesn't connect until there are two or more people in the room, and it tells you so outright: "Audio connects when a colleague joins." And remember your mic starts muted in every room: open it from Unmute in the bottom bar.

Q: How do I share my screen inside a room? A: From the bottom bar, the Share screen button, and from it Stop sharing. Your share shows as a strip on the room's card in List, so colleagues know there's something to watch in there.

Q: How do I stop colleagues pulling me into conversations I don't want right now? A: Turn on the Busy button on the map — it withdraws you from automatic proximity bubbles. Or enter a room: anyone in a real room is outside the bubbles already.

Q: A colleague is sitting in their office but I can't get in. A: Their office is on knock mode. Walking to it will do nothing — move to List and click their office card, and the knock dialog opens and waits for their acceptance. Only the office's owner switches its door — and the administrator knocks just like you.

Q: I sat next to my colleague at adjacent desks and audio didn't open. A: That's intended. The bubble doesn't open between two colleagues each sitting at their own desk in their team's corner — one of you has to stand. Stand and walk over.

Q: I redesigned the floor and regret it. A: If you haven't saved yet, the Cancel button restores everything. And if you have saved, the Restore default button in the edit bar erases your saved layout and returns the floor to the generated design — touching neither your rooms nor your employees' desks.

Q: I added a new room and it appeared in an odd place on the floor. A: The floor distributes rooms itself: meeting rooms alternating along the top and bottom edges, and offices down the two side columns. Move it from Edit floor if you want it elsewhere.

Q: I got the message "You've used up this month's virtual office minutes — upgrade for more." A: You're on the trial, which has a monthly ceiling of 120 minutes of audio/video. Professional, Advanced, Business and the Custom plan have no monthly ceiling on office minutes. Contact the account owner to subscribe.

Q: How long does my wave or quick message last? A: A wave and an emoji float for a moment and then go — they leave no trace. A quick message, though, is saved into your private conversation as a permanent record, and reaches them the same way any Duwam message does.

Q: Why don't I see seats named for each employee on our floor? A: Fixed seats exist only on pre-drawn offices, which are assigned to your company by the Duwam team. The generated floor gives every employee a desk inside their team's corner automatically.

Quick reference

Related articles

• Chat — the Meet button that opens the room from inside a conversation
• Teams & permissions — teams are what draw the desk corners on the floor
• Employees — who appears on the floor and who gets a seat
• The whiteboard — the same canvas that opens from inside a room on the floor
• Plans & billing — which plan opens the virtual office