Office 365: Microsoft Bookings
Overview
What is Microsoft Bookings?
Microsoft Bookings is a scheduling tool that assists with booking appointments, and it is now included with your UCLA Office 365 license. Bookings allows users to set up calendars and manage availability for themselves or a group, so that others can book appointments with them efficiently. Bookings can stand alone or integrate with Outlook to ensure the accuracy of individual’s availability, send event invitations, and reminders.
Bookings has three primary components:
- A booking page where your users can schedule appointments with the staff member who is providing the service. You can show this page on Facebook, where your users can schedule appointments, or on your web site.
- A set of web-based, business-facing pages where administrators can record user preferences, manage staff members and schedules, define services, set business hours, and customize how services and staff are scheduled.
- A mobile app where administrators can see all of their bookings, access user lists and contact information, and make manual bookings.
Figure 1: The process of booking an appointment using Bookings on both mobile and desktop.
Image source: Microsoft (2019)
Why Use Bookings?
Staff can use Bookings to provide their availability to both internal and external colleagues, students, or faculty and allow them to schedule a time for a meeting or event. Instructors can use Bookings to provide their availability for office hours and allow students to book appointments.
Schedule a Booking
Did you receive a link to a Bookings page so you can schedule an appointment? Learn more about scheduling a booking by reading the Solution Article: Office 365: Schedule an Appointment using Microsoft Bookings.
Setting Up Bookings
This section will guide you on setting up your Bookings page. There are several items that need to be customized before your users can start creating appointments.
Getting Started
1. Log in to the Office 365 portal and click on the application "waffle" area on the upper left of the screen.
Figure 2: The Office 365 waffle.
2. In the applications area, locate the icon that looks like the one below called Bookings. Click on it to open the Microsoft Bookings. If the Bookings icon does not appear, click on the "All Apps" link at the bottom of the application area. The Bookings icon should now appear. If not, please contact the IT Service Desk for help.
Figure 3: The Bookings logo.
3. The website to Microsoft Bookings will now open to a welcome screen. Click on the "Get it now" button to begin.
Figure 4: The Bookings welcome screen.
4. In the next window, enter the name of your new Bookings calendar. Then click Add a booking calendar. If you are joining an already created calendar, you can search for it in the provided search box.
Figure 5: The Bookings calendar selection.
5. The Setup process continues with a request for more information about your business. When complete, click Continue to begin the site build. This may take a few seconds to complete.
6. The new Microsoft Bookings site now appears and is ready to use.
Figure 6: The Bookings home page.
Enter your Department, Office and/or Business Information
The business information page lets you configure the overall name of your calendar as well as the the contact information, logo, and hours of operation for your Bookings page. The information you provide here will be displayed on the page your users use to book appointments (known as the booking page) and in messages and reminders sent to them by Bookings.
Define Service Offerings
Set up what types of services or appointments users can book with you and your team members, as well as the location and scheduling polices for those services and appointments.
Customize Booking Site
Customize the theme and logo of your site, and how users will interact with your bookings. For convenience, the UCLA Anderson logos have been attached to this document.
Figure 7: The customization options found on the Booking page tab.
Managing Staff
Bookings allows you to add a team of staff members with whom your audience can book appointments and customize your staff's availability.
NOTE: Bookings refers to anyone on your team as "Staff".
Create a Staff List
Manage multiple people’s calendars and availability within Bookings. Anyone can be part of your Bookings team, and if you want someone to help manage your site you can add them as an administrator.
Set Staff Working Hours
Customize each team member’s availability within Bookings.
Figure 8: A sample staff list.
Booking and Calendar Management
Once your basic features and staff list are all set up, the next step is to customize your scheduling policies.
Set Scheduling Policies
Define the increments of available times, length, lead time, cancellation policies and automatic notification settings for different types of appointments.
Set Up Closures, Vacations, and Time Off
Set up your Bookings calendar to account for campus closures, holidays and any other time off for your whole team or members of your team.
Set Up Buffer Time
Some types of services and appointments require travel or set-up time. Build in buffer time for different services so it is automatically accounted for when a user sets an appointment.
Sync your Staff's Outlook Calendars to Bookings
Sync your team's calendars to Bookings so they can only be booked when they are truly available.
NOTE: This step is optional and will only sync an individual’s main calendar. Additional calendars will not be accounted for.
Figure 9: The Bookings page calendar showing each staff member's booked appoinments.
Image Source: Microsoft (2019)
Publish Your Bookings Site and Start Booking Appointments
Once you've set up your site, added your staff, and customized your scheduling policies, you are ready to share your site and start booking appointments.
Publish or Unpublish Your Booking Page
Make your Bookings site available to others or take it down while you make changes.
Create and Staff Your Bookings
Schedule appointments on behalf of users and/or team members. For example, when a student calls to make an appointment.
Get a Report
Export your appointment data from Bookings to an Excel document.