Microsoft Bookings

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Overview

Microsoft Bookings is a web-based scheduling application that integrates with your Outlook calendar. Bookings allows people to view available times on your calendar, select a service, then create an appointment on your calendar that works best for them. Bookings is intended to be a flexible tool that can be used for many services such as exam sign ups, tutoring, student services, office hours, and more.

Accessing Bookings

Bookings is not available to everyone by default. If access to Bookings is needed, please request access by submitting a ticket to the NIC IT Help Desk – www.nic.edu/it.

Bookings can be accessed from the App Launcher in Cardinal Mail. Bookings can also be accessed directly with the following URL – https://outlook.office.com/bookings.

If this is your first-time accessing Bookings, you will be taken to a page that introduces the app to you. Click on the ‘Get it now’ button to proceed to your Bookings page. You will then be prompted for information about your first Bookings calendar. Enter the name of your calendar in the Business Name field and click continue (the Business type is not required).

Bookings Home Page

Below is a short description of each option available on your Bookings homepage.

Home: This page will show a quick summary of the Booking activity on your calendar, and allows you to export data from your Booking appointments.
Calendar: This is the booking calendar with all the appointments included. Bookings can be viewed, created, and canceled from this page.
Booking Page: This is where you can configure options for the public facing page your clients will use to book appointments.
Customers: This page will list the contact information and details of people who have signed up for a Bookings appointment.
Staff: This page is where you can invite and manage staff associated with your Booking calendar.
Services: This is where you can define the services that clients can sign up for.
Business Information: This is the basic information for your Booking service, such as business hours, contact information, and logo.

Configure your Bookings Site – Step by Step

When you set up your Bookings site for the first time, there are several items you will need to customize for your audience. Below is a list of recommended items that need to be configured, along with some information to help get you get started quickly.

Enter business information.
Add staff.
Create and define services.
Customize and publish your booking page.

Enter business information

Open your Bookings Home Page.
In the navigation pane, select Business Information.
Enter the relevant name, address, and phone number you would like to use for your calendar.
In the Send customer replies to field, enter the preferred email address where email replies to booking confirmations and reminders should be forwarded.
Enter your business hours.
Upload a logo that will appear in booking page, messages, and reminders.

Add Staff

Open your Bookings Home Page.
In the navigation pane, select Staff.
Click on the Add Staff button at the top of the page, then fill in the relevant staff details.
You can search and add staff through our directory, or by entering a personal email account. An NIC account is not required to be Staff in Bookings.

Create and define services

Open your Bookings Home Page.
In the navigation pane, select Services.
By default, Bookings will add a service called “Initial Consult”. You can click the pencil next to this service and make it your own, or you can create a new service by clicking the “Add a service” button at the top of the screen.
Enter the relevant service details including name, description, and location. Below are descriptions of other options you may want to configure.

Duration: Enter how long the appointment/booking should last.
Reminders: You can have Bookings send customers email reminders before their scheduled appointment.
Publishing Options: Leave this checked so that your service will appear on your Bookings page.
Online Scheduling Options: This is where you can manage settings for when someone can book your service.

Customize and publish your booking page

Open your Bookings Home Page.
In the navigation pane, select Booking Page.
Select and enter the relevant details for Booking page access control, scheduling policy, email notifications, staff, and availability.
Select the Save and publish button at the top of the page to make your booking page available online.

You should now have a live booking page that clients can access and sign up for. This would be a good time to access your booking page and create a couple test bookings, just to make sure everything is working as expected.

Business Information

The Business Information page contains all the details you would usually find in the “About Us” page on a website. This is where you can enter details such as your name, address, phone number, website URL, logo, hours, and more. This information will be displayed on your booking page, and in messages and reminders sent by Bookings.

The business hours on this page should be set to your operational hours. These are the hours to which all bookings are restricted. Additional time restrictions can be configured for each service and for each staff.

Services

Services are the appointments or events that your clients can sign up for. When you create a service, you can set a service name, description, location, duration, customized reminders, pricing, assign staff, and create internal notes. When customers book an appointment, they can see exactly what types of appointments (services) are available, select a person they want to provide the service, and how much their service will cost.

Additional information for each service detail can be found below.

Share your page for this service: This provides a URL that’s tied directly to a single service. This can be helpful if you have multiple services configured, but only want to share a link to one service in particular.

Service name: This is the name of the service that will appear on your bookings page. This name will also be used on calendar appointments that are created in Bookings.

Description: This is the description that will appear when clients click on the information button on your bookings page.

Default Location: This location is what will be displayed on email reminders, confirmations, and calendar events created by Bookings.

Add online meeting: This setting creates a unique meeting in Teams for each booking. If this setting is enabled, a link to join the Teams meeting will be added to all confirmations and reminder emails for this booking. If this setting is disabled, the appointments will not contain any online meeting information. Note: Students at NIC do not have access to Teams.

Default Duration: This is how long all booked meeting be for your service. This setting also determines the duration of the Bookings appointment on your Outlook calendar.

Buffer time your customers can’t book: When this setting is enabled, it will allow additional time before or after appointments where people cannot book appointments. For example, if someone booked a 1-hour appointment at 2:00pm with a 30-minute buffer after the appointment, the next available booking time would be 3:30pm.

Let customers manage their appointment when it was book by you or your staff on their behalf: When this option is enabled, it allows clients to reschedule, cancel, and create new bookings for themselves. Any changes that the client makes will be reflected on the Bookings calendar, and email notifications about the change will be sent.

Maximum attendees per event: This setting defines how many people can sign up for a service at one time. For 1 on 1 services, set the maximum number of attendees to 1. Otherwise set the number to however many is necessary.

Default Price: This is the price that will display on your bookings page. If “Price not set” is selected, then no price or reference to cost will appear.

Notes: These are internal notes associated with the service.

Custom Fields: This option allows questions to be modified when clients book an appointment. Questions can be added, removed, and marked as mandatory. Note: Custom fields and answers will not appear on reports generated by Bookings.

Reminders and confirmations: This will allow you to customize the email confirmation clients receive when booking appointments, and create additional email reminders.

Enable text message notifications for your customer: This option will allow text messages to be sent to the client’s phone number, but only if they opt in when booking the service.

Publishing options: This setting determines if the service will be listed on your booking page. If you don’t want a service to appear, but don’t want to delete the service, uncheck this box.

Online Scheduling options: This allows you to create a custom schedule for a specific service. The default scheduling policy references the schedule defined in Business Information section.

Staff: Selecting this checkbox allows customers to choose specific staff for their appointment. If this option is unchecked, staff will be chosen randomly.

Availability: This setting provides additional options for when services can be booked.

Assign Staff: Select the staff who will be bookable for that specific service. If no staff are selected, all available staff will be bookable for this service. Additional staff can be added from the Staff option on your Bookings homepage.

Staff

The staff page is where you can manage and edit information about your staff members. The information about your staff includes their name, email address, phone number, permissions, availability, and schedule.

There are three permission levels available for Bookings staff:

Administrator: Full access to the bookings calendar and home page. This permission is required for making any changes in Bookings.
Viewers: Access to view the bookings calendar and settings, but cannot make changes.
Guest: Can be assigned to a service, but cannot open the booking calendar or home page.

Customers

The Customers page contains information entered by clients when they book an appointment. This information includes their name, address, email, and phone number. Notes about the customers can also be entered on this page.

Booking Page

The Booking Page is where you can configure the page your clients will be opening to book an appointment. There are also additional scheduling options and customizations that can be done from this page.

Below are some additional details for the options on this page.

Booking page status: This option allows you to publish or unpublish your Bookings page, and also provides a URL to your page. This URL will display all the services available.

Booking page access control: This setting determines who can access your Bookings page. If you only want people with NIC accounts to be able to access your Bookings page, check this box. If you want non-NIC people to access your Bookings page, leave this unchecked. Checking the box to disable direct search engine index is recommended, unless there is a specific reason why it should be unchecked.

Customer data usage consent: When this setting is enabled, a pop-up message will appear when clients try to book a service. The clients will need to consent to the data usage policy before the booking can be completed.

Scheduling policy, Email notifications, Staff: All these settings are similar to the ones available in the services tab.

Availability: Bookings will reference the scheduled configured in the Business Information section. This availability can be used for scenarios such as holidays or campus closures.

Customize your page: Allows you to set a color scheme for your booking page, and choose if you want to display your logo.

Region and time zone settings: Here you can set your time zone and language preference. It’s recommended to configure these settings. Bookings will automatically adjust times if clients are booking from other time zones.

Calendar

The Calendar page displays your booking calendar, along with any appointments that have been booked. From this page, you can manually create bookings, cancel bookings, and specify time off for your staff.

To schedule time off for your staff, select the Time Off button at the top of this calendar, select the start and end times, select the staff, then click Save.

Bookings and Teams Integration

Bookings is also available as an app within Microsoft Teams. This allows you to create Bookings calendars, assign staff, create new appointments, and manage existing appointments, all within Teams. There are some advanced features and settings that are not yet available in the Teams app.

Note: Anyone using the Bookings app in Teams must be licensed for both Teams and Bookings.

FAQ

1. If I have staff assigned in Bookings, and those staff do not have a Bookings license, how can they view details about the appointments?

When someone books a service with your staff, the staff member will receive an Outlook calendar appointment containing the booking information and customer contact information. The staff member can also open the Bookings calendar within Outlook to view all appointments. The steps for opening and adding calendars in Outlook can be found our Knowledge Base - https://nic.teamdynamix.com/TDClient/1783/Portal/KB/ArticleDet?ID=18947.

2. How can I have notifications about Bookings appointments sent to another email address, or to a shared email address?

This setting can be configured on the Business Information page, in the “Send customer replies to” field. The email address entered here will receive all notifications about booking appointments.

3. Is it possible to generate a report of activities for a Bookings calendar?

A report can be generated by opening the Bookings page, selecting Home from the navigation pane, then clicking on the link labeled “Export 120-day view using a TSV file”. This file can be opened using Excel, and will contain the past 120-days of activity. This report will only contain basic information about the customers and services, and won’t report any custom questions.

4. Is there a way to add a Zoom link to my Booking services?

Bookings currently does not integrate with Zoom. However, a Zoom meeting link can be added to a service using the “Additional Information for Email Confirmation” field. A personal meeting ID can be used here, as long as you have waiting rooms enabled on your Zoom account. Additional information about Zoom can be found in our Knowledge Base - https://nic.teamdynamix.com/TDClient/1783/Portal/Shared/Search/?c=all&s=Zoom.

5. How can I block out a day so that no one can book appointments (Campus closure, vacation, etc.)?

This can be done by opening the Bookings page and selecting Calendar in the Navigation pane. From here you can select the Time Off button at the top of the window, check the box for all day event, select all your staff, then click save. This will create an all-day event on each staff calendar with a busy status, which will make it so no booking times are available.

6. Can I create multiple Bookings calendars? How can I delete a Bookings calendar?

Additional calendars can be created from your Bookings page by clicking the down arrow next to your calendar and selecting New. If you need a calendar deleted, please contact the NIC IT Help Desk at helpdesk@nic.edu, or by submitting a ticket at www.nic.edu/it. We will need to know the name of the calendar to manually remove it from Office 365.

Additional Information

Microsoft Bookings documentation - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/bookings/bookings-overview?view=o365-worldwide

Microsoft Bookings blog - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-bookings-blog/bg-p/Office365BusinessAppsBlog

Bookings UserVoice - https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/314907-microsoft-bookings

NIC IT Help Desk Knowledge Base – https://www.nic.edu/it