How to use Microsoft Bookings?

Microsoft Bookings is a scheduling tool part of the Microsoft 365 family. It has been released by Microsoft in March 2017, Bookings allows customers of small businesses and companies to book appointments with the company.

Microsoft Bookings makes scheduling and managing appointments a breeze. Bookings include 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 enhance 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 and Skype for Business. 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 the Skype or Teams app. Bookings is also available as an app in Teams, which allows you to create Bookings calendars, assign staff, and both schedule new and manage existing appointments without ever leaving Teams.

Bookings is made up of these components:

• A booking page where your customers and clients 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, your Facebook page, and even through link embedding within your website.
• A web app that contains a set of web-based, business-facing 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.

Microsoft Bookings is available in the following subscriptions:

• Office 365: A3, A5, E1, E3, E5, F1, F3, G1, G3, and G5
• Microsoft 365: A3, A5, E1, E3, E5, F1, F3, Business Basic, Business Standard, Business Premium

How to enable Microsoft Bookings in your Microsoft 365 tenant?

Bookings can be turned on or off for your entire organization or for specific users. When you turn on Bookings for users, they can create a Bookings page, create a calendar, and allow other people to book time with them.

1. Sign into the Microsoft 365 admin center as a global admin.

2. In the admin center, go to Settings > Org settings.

3. Select the checkbox for Allow your organization to use Bookings to enable or disable Bookings for your organization.

4. Select Save Changes.

Then if you go to your personal page in https://outlook.office.com/bookings/homepage you will be able to see personal Booking page.

Here you can see already existing booking pages, create a new one, search or go to your personal booking page where you can share it with other people, customers or clients:

By default, Microsoft creates a meeting type Office hours for you, which is scheduled to be 30 min with 2 available slots 13:30 and 14:00 where you can discuss concerns, share feedback or ask questions.

Apart from that you can create a new meeting type and specify the title, category, add a description, add a location, enable or disable Teams meeting, duration, privacy of the meeting: public (this will appear on your booking page) or private (only people with link can view this meeting), enable the users to schedule meetings with you in your regular office hours or custom availability hours, buffer a time before and after the meeting, specify start time intervals, minimum and maximum lead time:

You can share your Microsoft booking page via email, add it to your email signature or just copy the link and send it to end user(s).

The end users will see the following when they open your booking page: available slots and different type of meeting you are offering.

When you find the right slot for you, you just need to provide a description for the organizer to be prepared properly for your meeting and book the session. If everything is well you will see a confirmation page where you can reschedule, cancel or book a new meeting:

Confirmation email is sent to both parties and the meeting appears in your email calendars:

Microsoft Bookings easily integrates with other Microsoft applications including Microsoft Outlook Calendar, Microsoft Teams and more. Microsoft Bookings integrations allows you to easily integrate your appointments with your personal and professional calendars.

The Bookings app in Microsoft Teams provides a streamlined workflow for scheduling and conducting virtual appointments.

Schedulers can manage multiple departments and staff calendars, as well as communications with internal and external attendees, from a single experience. The virtual appointments themselves are held via Microsoft Teams Meetings, which offers a robust videoconference experience.

If you don’t see Bookings app in Microsoft Teams that means it is not installed for you and you just simply need to add Bookings from the Apps and you are ready to schedule the next session with your clients or customers:

Scheduling a booking involves filling out a simple form and adding attendees. You can add optional internal notes and set different reminders for external attendees and staff, too. You can save time by creating different Appointment types. Once you do, every time you select an Appointment type for a booking, the information you’ve included (e.g., parking directions, appointment prep details) will automatically be emailed to attendees.

Attendees can join a booking, with or without a Teams account. Attendees, both internal and external will have a Join your appointment link inside every email or calendar event related to their booking:

On desktop, attendees can join on the web or download the Teams app (recommended). On mobile, attendees do need to download the Teams app, though they have the option to Join as a guest or create an account.

Conclusion

Microsoft Bookings gives you the opportunity to stay in contact with your clients and customers, allowing them the schedule meetings with you in a convenience time for both parties, reschedule already scheduled meetings if needed or simply cancel them. Bookings is an ideal solution for both Enterprise and small business customers, across various industries. Some of the use cases include:

• Financial services
• Healthcare
• Government & Public Sector
• Education
• General Enterprise and small business needs
• And many more.

If you still don’t know how to include Microsoft Bookings offering in your portfolio get in contact with us. We at Impactory GmbH will deep dive and understand your business needs and help you to be more connected with your clients as ever before. With Bookings your clients will feel well supported and closer to you.