Microsoft Bookings Manual

Author(s): Team DLE

Main source: Microsoft 2023
Version: 1
Introduction

Save time by scheduling with Microsoft Bookings. Customize appointment details and reservation requirements
and specify service providers to streamline the booking process for you and your students.

Bookings is integrated into your Microsoft 365 calendar to help your students quickly find available times and
avoid duplicate appointments. With Bookings you will spend less time scheduling and more time meeting with
students.

This manual is based on information obtained from Microsoft 365.

What is Microsoft Bookings?

Microsoft Bookings makes scheduling and managing appointments a breeze. Bookings includes a web-based
booking calendar and integrates with Outlook to optimize your staff’s calendar and give your customers
flexibility to book a time that works best for them. Email and SMS text notifications reduce no-shows and
enhances customer satisfaction. Your organization saves time with a reduction in repetitive scheduling tasks.
With built-in flexibility and ability to customize, Bookings can be designed to fit the situation and needs of many
different parts of an organization.

Use Bookings to make your organization’s meetings virtual with online meetings via Microsoft Teams. Each
appointment booked as an online meeting creates a unique meeting link that is sent to attendees so they can
join via a web browser, phone dial-in, or Teams app.

Bookings is made up of these components:

• A booking page where your students can schedule appointments with the staff member who should
provide the service or run the appointment. This web-based scheduling page can be shared via a direct
link.
• A web app that contains a set of web-based pages where Bookings calendar owners and
administrators within an organization can define appointment types and details, manage staff
schedules and availability, set business hours, and customize how appointments are scheduled. These
pages allow for versatility and the ability to customize a Bookings calendar to fit the diverse needs of
the person or organization.
Contents
Introduction 2
What is Microsoft Bookings? 2
1 Create a new Booking page 4
2 Add staff to a Booking page 5
3 Create a new service 7
Basic details 7
Availability options 9
Assign staff 10
4 Three types of availability 11
Staff availability 11
Business hours 12
Service availability 13
Bottlenecks 14
4.1 Different availabilities in the same service 14
5 Scheduling policies 15
Time increments 15
Lead time in hours 15
Maximum days in advance 15
Notify when a booking is created or changed 15
6 Make a booking for your customer 16
7 Cancel an appointment 17
7.1 From the Bookings calendar 17
8 Manage your booking page 18
Business page access control 19
Customer data usage consent 19
Default scheduling policy 20
Customize your page 21
Region and time settings 21
1 Create a new Booking page

If you want to set up your own/new booking page, you can select the ‘+’ Create button on the top right of the
personal booking page.

When you have clicked on Create, a window will show providing you with the option to Create a shared
booking page from scratch. When you have selected the option to create from scratch, you can start giving
your new page the preferred name, add a log and decide your business type, and change the business hours.

The second step, from the total number of four, is adding staff members to the page and assign their role. The
third step is setting up a service. A service is an appointment type, and you can set the first one up here, later
you will be able to add more and customize them.

In the last step you can decide who can book appointments. You can set permissions for who can see the
bookings page, check availability, and book appointments. For Buas this option will be for People in my
organization.
2 Add staff to a Booking page

The staff on your booking page are the people that are bookable for your page and services. The people that
make a booking, are referred to as the ‘customers’ in Bookings.

1. Go to your Booking page to which you want to add the new staff.
2. Go to staff option in the left pane and select Add new staff.

3. When adding staff from within your organization, type their name in the Add people field and select
them when they appear in the drop-down menu. The other fields will automatically populate.
4. To add staff from outside you organization, manually fill in their email and other information.
5. For each staff member, select a role: Administrator, Team member, Scheduler, Viewer or Guest.
• Administrator can adjust all settings of the page.
• Team member can manage bookings on their own calendar and their availability in the
booking mailbox. When adding or editing a booking in their calendar, they’ll be assigned as
staff.
• Scheduler can manage bookings on the calendar and customer details. They have read-only
access to settings, staff, and services.
• Viewer can see all the bookings on the calendar, but they can’t modify or delete them. They
have read-only access to settings.
• Guest can be assigned to bookings, but they can’t open the bookings mailbox.
6. Select Notify all staff via email when a booking assigned to them is created or changed to enable
staff emails.
7. Select Events on Microsoft 365 calendar affect availability if you want the free/busy information
from staff members’ calendars to impact availability for bookings services through Bookings.
• For example, if a staff member has a team meeting or a personal appointment scheduled for
3pm on a Wednesday, Bookings wills how that staff member as unavailable to be booked in
that time slot. That time will appear as busy or tentative in the Bookings calendar view.
8. Select Use business hours to set all bookable times for your staff members to be only within the
business hours that you set in the Business hours section on the Business information page.
3 Create a new service

When you define your service offerings in Microsoft Bookings, you set a service name, description, location
(choose whether you want to meet in person or have an online meeting), duration, default reminders to
customers and staff, internal notes about the service, and pricing (pricing is not applicable for Buas). You can
also tag employees who are qualified to provide the service. Then, when customers (students in the case of
Buas) book an appointment, they can see exactly what types of appointments are available and choose the
person they want to provide the service.

1. Go to the Booking page where you want to add a new service.

2. Go to the service option in the left pane and select Add new service from the top left of your screen.
On the following page the steps are continued with a picture as example.

Basic details
3. On the Basic details page, see picture shown above, you can add your selections.
• Service name: Enter the name of your service. This is the name that will appear in the drop-
down menu on the Calendar page. This name will also appear when anyone manually adds an
appointment on the Calendar page, and it will appear as a tile on the Self-Service page.
• Description: The description you enter is what will appear when a user selects the
information icon on the Self-Service page.
• Default location: This location is what will be displayed on confirmation and reminder emails
for both staff and customers, and it will be displayed on the calendar event created for the
booking.
• Add online meeting: This setting enables or disables online meetings for each appointment,
via Microsoft Teams.
i. When enabled: A link to a Teams meeting, unique to the booking, will be added to
the calendar event on both the staffs and the customer’s calendars, along with dial-in
information. The link to join the meeting will be added to all confirmation and
reminder emails.
ii. When disabled: Appointments will not contain an online meeting option, and all of
the meeting-related fields that appear when Add online meeting is enabled will not
be shown.
• Duration: This is how long all meetings will be booked for. The time is blocked beginning from
the start time, which is selected during booking. The full appointment time will be blocked on
the staff’s calendars.
• Buffer time: Enabling this setting allows for the addition of extra time to the staff’s calendar
every time an appointment is booked.
i. The time will be blocked on the staff’s calendar and impact free/busy information.
This means if an appointment ends at 3:00pm and 10 minutes of butter time has
been added to the end of the meeting, the staff’s calendar will show as busy and
non-bookable until 3:10pm.
• Price not set: Select the price options that will display on the Self-Service page. If Price not
set is selected, then no price or reference to cost or pricing will appear.
• Notes: This field appears in the booking event for booked staff, and on the event that appears
on the Calendar tab in the Bookings page.
• Maximum attendees per event: This setting allows you to create services that require the
ability for multiple people to book the same appointment time and the same staff (such as a
fitness class). The appointment time slot for the selected service, and time will be available to
book until the maximum number of attendees, specified by you, has been reached. Current
appointment capacity and attendees can be viewed in the Calendar tab in the Booking page.
We refer to this as 1:N booking service.
• Let the customer manage their booking: This setting determines whether or not the
customer can modify or cancel their booking.
i. When enabled: The Manage booking button appears on the customer
confirmation email. When this button is selected by the customer, three options
appear:
▪ Reschedule: Selecting this option brings the user to a service-specific Self-
Service page, where they can select a new time and/or date for the same
service and same staff member from the original booking. Note that even
though the original staff member is attached to the rescheduled booking by
default, the user does have the option of changing the staff member as well.
▪ Cancel booking: This cancels the booking and removes it from the staff’s
calendar.
▪ New booking: This option brings the user to the Self-Service page with all
services and staff listed, for scheduling a new booking.
ii. When disabled: The use will have no ability to reschedule or cancel their booking
when they book through the Calendar tab on the Bookings web app. When booking
through the Self-Service page (most common by Buas), however, customers will still
have the Manage booking button and all its options, even when this setting is
disabled.
Availability options
4. On the Availability options page, you can see the options you’ve selected from your Booking page
for your scheduling policy and availability for your staff.
• Time increments: Time increments determines the intervals between appointments. You can
set your time increments from 5 minutes to 4 hours. You can also set your own customized
time increments. An interval of 15 minutes, for example, means a customer could schedule a
60-minute appointment at 8:00, 8:15, 8:30, and so on. Conversely, a 60-minute interval means
that appointments are only available on the hour.
• Minimum Lead time (hours): You build your staffing plan based on the appointments that
are scheduled so it's important to know in advance how many customers are coming in for
service on any particular day. The lead time policy enables you to specify the number of hours
in advance that customers must book or cancel an appointment. The minimum lead time is
based on regular hours and not business hours.
• Maximum lead time (days): If you want to limit how far in advance customers can book
appointments, then this is the setting for you! You can set the maximum for 365 days or more.

5. The dropdown shows the different types of availability you can add.
 6. You can also set a different availability for a date range by selecting the ‘+’ followed by Set different
availability for a date range at the bottom of the window.

Assign staff
7. On the Assign staff page as shown above, you can assign and remove assigned staff members from a
service. There are two more controls added on this page:
• Single staff: When this option is selected, the booking will be scheduled with a single staff
member.
• Multiple staff: This feature allows you to create a service with multiple staff members. The
booking will be scheduled with all of the assigned staff members of the service. You can refer
to this as a N:1 booking service.
4 Three types of availability

Setting employee working hours ensures that their availability is accurately shown when your customers try to
book them. By default, the working hours for each of your employees match the business hours you've
established in the Microsoft Bookings app.

Staff availability
1. In the navigation pane, select Staff, and then select the staff member whose hours you want to set.
2. Under Working hours, clear the Use business hours checkbox.
3. Use the dropdowns to select start and end times for each day. Times are available in 30-minute
increments.

4. Select + to add start- and end-time selectors.

5. Select Save changes.

When you schedule a day off for a staff member, that employee will appear unavailable on the booking page.
Customers using the booking page will be unable to schedule him or her for service on that day.

1. On the working hours screen, select the bin icon next to the day that the employee will have off.
2. If you want to schedule a day that was previously marked as a day off, select the + sign next to the day
you want to schedule.
Business hours
When you go to Booking page via the menu on the left, here you can select the option Default scheduling
policy and the window underneath will open. Form here you can regulate the default scheduling policy,
availability, notifications and staff settings.

Availability – this is an option to set specific time and date ranges of availability for all your services combined.
Otherwise, Bookings will default to your business hours. You can use the availability option here for scenarios
such as holidays or extended hours.

Keep in mind that this is the overall availability, and not on a service of staff level. If a service referrers to a
default setting, this is where you create your own default.
Service availability
There are two different types of service availability, general availability, and different availability for a date
range. For the first, General availability¸ there are three options; Custom hours (recurring weekly), Bookable
when staff are free and, Not bookable. Underneath the option Custom hours (recurring weekly) you can add
the schedule for the service as seen in the picture below.

If you want to intertwine holidays, or a period that the service is not offered, you can use the option Set
different availability for a date range. Here you can set the date for the period of time that the service is not
available. Underneath you can add the days and specific hours – if you decide to select the option custom
hours (recurring weekly). When setting the date range for a holiday, you can select not bookable for that
period. This means that the service is still published and will be available again after the end time has
exceeded.
Bottlenecks
4.1 Different availabilities in the same service
If you have a service, where multiple people can be booked, but who have different availabilities – regardless of
their work schedule, it cannot be built in within 1 service.

This means that, for example, Marian and Peter can both be booked for the “management deep dive” service
and are therefor together in the service offering it. Marian and Peter both work Mondays from 9-17, however,
Peter only want to be able to be booked in the morning from 9-12 and Marian the remaining hours from 12-17.
In addition to this service, they both have another service open – Peter from 12-17 for his mentor students, and
Marian from 9-12 for her mentor students too.

So, the Monday in their staff profile for their work hours looks like this:

Because they should be bookable throughout the day for various services. Their mentor students and the deep
dives.

However, what cannot be done is to specify your own hours within the service. This service itself cannot be split
between staff, it can only take the overall time and link the business hours (from your staff profile) to it. To
ensure that the same service can be offered by both Marian and Peter, they will have to create the same service
separately and incorporate their own available hours for that particular service. Below you can see an example
of how this could be done.
5 Scheduling policies

Time increments
Time increments determines the intervals between appointments. You can set your time increments from 5
minutes to 4 hours. You can also set your own customized time increments. An interval of 15 minutes, for
example, means a customer could schedule a 60-minute appointment at 8:00, 8:15, 8:30, and so on. Conversely,
a 60-minute interval means that appointments are only available on the hour.

Lead time in hours

You build your staffing plan based on the appointments that are scheduled so it's important to know in
advance how many customers are coming in for service on any particular day. The lead time policy enables you
to specify the number of hours in advance that customers must book or cancel an appointment. The minimum
lead time is based on regular hours and not business hours.

Maximum days in advance

If you want to limit how far in advance customers can book appointments, then this is the setting for you! You
can set the maximum for 365 days or more.

Notify when a booking is created or changed

Select this option when you want to receive an email anytime a customer books an appointment or changes an
existing one. The email will go to the mailbox specified on the Business information page. See Enter your
business information for details.
6 Make a booking for your customer

1. Go to Customers on the pane on the left and select from the list which customer you would like to
make a booking for.
2. Select Book appointment.

3. Select from the list which service you want to book for your customer

4. Fill in the time and date at the Service details.

5. You can add customer information but usually the information is already automatically filled out.
6. On the right you can select the staff member for the meeting – only the staff members that are
assigned to the service are visible.
7. Select Create booking to finalise the booking.
8. When created successfully, you will receive and confirmation – or you colleague if you booked for
them.
7 Cancel an appointment

7.1 From the Bookings calendar

1. Double click on the appointment form the calendar.
2. A window shows will all the information about the appointment, and in the right corner you see
Cancel, select cancel.

3. You will see a pop-up where you can add a message to your cancellation, for instance due to the traffic
jam I won’t be able to make the appointment on time.
4. When clicked on Send cancellation, the message will be sent to the customer and the appointment is
removed from both your and the customers’ calendar.
8 Manage your booking page

The window underneath is what you see when you go to booking page via the menu on the left. The first
configuration (the drop-down with ‘Available to people in your organization’) should remain untouched.

You can easily copy the link of the booking page by selecting the copy icon next to the URL of the page, visible in
the picture above. There is also a possibility to copy and send the link via an email by clicking on the envelope
icon followed by ‘Email’. In case of embedding the link, you can click on the ‘Embed’ button.
Business page access control

In this menu you can, through the ‘disable direct search engine indexing of bookings page’ checkbox, prevent
you page from appearing in the search results for Google, Bing, or other search engines. Selecting this box will
ensure access to the page is limited to the generated page link.

The second checkbox option is to ‘require a one-time password to create bookings’. This will not be applicable
because in the menu above we have selected that the booking page is only available to people in your
organisation.

Customer data usage consent

When selected, text requesting the students consent for your organisation to use their data will appear on the
Self-Service page. The box will have to be checked by the user/student in order to complete the booking.
Default scheduling policy

The time increments is the time blocks of the appointments, as the picture above shows, every 30 minutes you
can book an appointment. The lead time is the time you are bookable beforehand. In the example above, you
can be booked ad last 24 hours beforehand and 365 days upfront.

You can also adjust your email notification preferences though the checkbox and the same applies to the staff
control. All these settings are similar to the ones available for each service on the Services tab.

Availability – this is an option to set specific time and date ranges of availability for a service. Otherwise,
Bookings will default to your business hours. You can use the availability option here for scenarios such as
holidays or extended hours.
Customize your page

One style is adopted by Buas, so it won’t be necessary to adjust your page. But in the case of a special occasion,
you can customize the colours of the Self-Service page and adjust the logo.

Region and time settings

Here you can set your time zone and language preferences for the Self-Service page. We recommend setting
your local time zone. For visitors to your Self-Service page, Bookings automatically detects their time zones and
will show availability to them in their own time zones. For example, if an appointment is available at 1:00pm
PST, someone in CST will see the available time displayed as 3:00pm CST.