Microsoft Bookings

Bookings is Microsoft 365 online scheduling tool. Bookings allows users to schedule appointments with staff using real-time availability.

Bookings is available to all staff.

1. Go to www.fvtc.edu > Employees > Email Login & Docs. If prompted to login, sign in with FVTCID@fvtc.edu
2. Under Apps, click Bookings (if not listed, click All Apps)

Staff can turn on a Personal booking page to allow external users to see when they are available. After turning it on, you can add the link to Outlook signature or copy the link to share with people as needed. Learn more: Create a new meeting type in Bookings | Microsoft Learn

Shared Booking pages allow customers to schedule with different staff members from one place.  Can also add other staff members to manage the staff, services, and calendar. 

Set-up

1. Enter your business information.
   1. Click on the Create shared booking page button.
   2. Enter a descriptive name so when staff search for calendars, they will be able to easily select the correct one (all bookings pages will be listed but users will only be able to open ones they have access to).
   3. By default, the email address entered under ‘Send customer replies to’ (defaults to user who created the page) will get notifications when appointments are booked.  If this email is the same as Staff, this can be turned off at the service so two emails aren’t sent.
2. Set your scheduling policies.
   1. Set default length of appointments, minimum/maximum lead time, etc.
   2. Customers don’t have an option to schedule a longer appointment, but Staff can schedule longer appointments.  See Create a manual booking.
3. Add staff to Bookings and set employee working hours.
   1. Typically want to check the box for ‘Events on Office calendar affect availability’ so that staff are not bookable if Outlook calendar is busy.
   2. Can set days/hours on a service and days/hours that staff are available, but can’t set the hours staff are available for specific services, so separate bookings calendars may be needed.
   3. Non-FVTC users can be added as Staff, but can’t access the bookings settings to manage anything, and their calendar availability does not sync with Outlook (except for meetings scheduled in Bookings) so someone would need to manually block time off when they should not be bookable during set hours.
4. Define your service offerings.
   1. All services MUST have Staff assigned.
      1. If a Service has no Staff assigned and there are no Staff with working hours, then nothing is bookable.
      2. If a Service has no Staff assigned but there are Staff that have working hours, Services are booked with Staff that are free (even if they aren’t assigned to the service).
   2. Can’t change a Service from allowing multiple attendees to only allowing a single attendee or vice versa.  Must delete the service and recreate as appropriate.
   3. Buffer time adjusts the start times of available options.  If appointments are 1 hour starting at 8 am with a 5 minute buffer, originally available times will be 8, 9 , 10, etc.  If someone books the 9 am opening then available times will show 8, 10:05, 11:05, etc.
   4. Text Reminders
      1. A Premium Teams license is required for each staff member who will meet with customers.  If this feature is needed/no longer needed, please submit a ticket at https://servicedesk.fvtc.edu/ to add/remove a Teams Premium license.
5. Schedule business closures, time off, and vacation time.  (separate from busy time on Staff Outlook Calendars)
6. Customize and publish your booking page.
   1. Manage who can access, customize the page, set Time Zone, publish the page, and more.
7. Create a manual booking.  (if customer can’t book online and you must create for them)

You can export up to four months of Bookings appointments at a time.

1. Login to Bookings
2. Under Shared Bookings Pages, click on the calendar you want to open (if not listed, click Search)
3. Click Calendar
4. In the upper right, click Export
5. Select up to a 120-day date range
6. Click Export
7. To view the file, open Microsoft Excel
8. Click Open > Browse
    
   
9. Select the Downloads folder
10. In the file type drop down, select All Files
11. Select BookingsReportingData.tsv
    
12. Click Open
     
    
13. On the Text Import Wizard, click Next
     
    
14. Make sure Tab is selected and click Finish
     

Customers are automatically created when users book an appointment.  Can import, but not export from within Bookings, however, see steps below for how to get Customer data in Excel:

1. Open a new Excel file.
2. Click the Data tab.
3. Click Get Data > From Online Services > From Microsoft Exchange Online
4. For the mailbox address enter <BookingsName>@bookings.fvtc.edu and click OK
5. Click on People
6. Click on Edit
7. Scroll over to EmailAddresses column.
8. Click the split button to the right of the column name.  
9. Deselect all except EmailAddress1 and click OK.
10. Scroll over to the PhoneNumbers column.
11. Click the split button to the right of the column name.
12. Deselect all except OtherTelephone and click OK.
13. Click Close & Load (upper left corner)

Customers only receive text notifications if all of the following are true:

1. The service has text notifications turned on
2. The staff member who the appointment is booked with has a Teams Premium license
   
   Note: There is no alert that text messages won't be sent because the staff doesn't have a license, texts just won't be sent even if the customer selects to receive them.
3. The customer opted into receiving text messages when they booked the appointment

Learn More: Configure SMS text notifications and reminders in Microsoft Bookings | Microsoft Learn