How does Zoom Room "Display room occupancy status" work?

Heartily agreed - we need thorough, accurate, and regularly maintained information for EVERY feature inside the platform - Zoom's documentation is rough in general, but this is especially true for Rooms. Consistency of nomenclature between the admin portal and the KB isn't even a given.

Regarding occupancy status, ostensibly there is a supported hardware list somewhere (source - release notes for Rooms):

However, the admin portal says only the following:

There is an article on people-counting, but this is a different feature (I would imagine all hardware capable of attendee-counting, which, btw, is not even listed in the 'requirements' section of this article, is capable of occ sensing): https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0066963
But we'll never know until Zoom publishes timely documentation.

I have mentioned this multiple times to Zoom in the past - the second a feature is released (GA), it is the documentation team's responsibility to make cohesive documentation to support it. 

@Jeff - can you address this particular ask or point to a KB article that we might have overlooked?

Thanks @bstrelko. Finding Zoom Room documentation has often been a struggle.

Regarding occupancy my first though was cameras but mine are off when a meeting isn't running. Perhaps microphone input, but this could be problematic in some noisier rooms. Hopefully we'll find out. This isn't a critical feature for us, but it would be nice to know when a room is in use, but no reservation was made. 

Being that occupants can be silent and we can't rely on audio cues to gauge occupancy, I would imagine that the occ value is based on hardware's built-in occ-sensors via API (some hardware like Crestron's UC-2, Neat Appliances, next-gen Poly, etc have these built-in), while a software-based sensing option using camera visuals and short-term snapshot caching may be used for generic hardware. This seems to be how people-counting is being done for non-appliances.

Let's see what the Zoom folks say.

 it would be nice to know when a room is in use, but no reservation was made. 
Yup, I would say that this is an issue for 100.00% of colleagues I've spoken to who work client-side.

How It Works:

1. Room Occupancy Detection: The Zoom Room system integrates with sensors or room management tools (such as room booking systems, motion sensors, or door sensors) that detect whether the room is in use or vacant.

2. Status Display on Devices: On the Zoom Room display (usually mounted outside the meeting room), the status is shown with clear indicators:

   • Green/Available: The room is free and can be booked.
   • Red/Occupied: The room is currently being used.
   • Grey/Unavailable: The room is reserved but not in use, or it might be marked as unavailable due to maintenance or other reasons.

Coming back with a few data-points.

• Occupancy sensing must be configured at the Workspace level (not Zoom Rooms level, even if the 'workspace' is just a Zoom Room). 
• When configured and compatible hardware is used, room status will change to 'Occupied' on its respective scheduling display when people are detected in the room, which differs from 'Busy'. We have only tested with Android appliances - Neat Bars, Logitech Rally Bars, and a variety of AOSP scheduling displays.
• People counting may be used in conjunction with occupancy sensing, but people counting may remain disabled for the ZR and occupancy-sensing/reporting will still work. Not a requirement.

We would REALLY appreciate more in-depth documentation and REALLY REALLY appreciate both a.) a Webhook for occupied/vacant status changes b.) an API input mechanism for using 3rd-party occupancy sensors to inform a ZR that a room is occupied when hardware outside of the approved appliance shortlist is used for compute.