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

Bookings is available to all staff.

1. Go to fvtc.edu>Staff>click on the Email Login & Docs>Login> and then sign into your FVTC account.
2. Click the App Launcher in upper left corner and click Bookings (if it’s not listed click “All apps”, on the right side of that page), or just search for Bookings using the search box at the top of the page

Staff can turn on a personal booking page to allow external users to see when they are available.  After turning it on, can add the link to Outlook signature or copy the link to share with people as needed.  Bookings with me: setup and sharing - Microsoft Support

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

     NOTE: Anyone can create a Booking page, but there is no way to delete it within Bookings.  Please submit a ticket at https://servicedesk.fvtc.edu/ if a Booking page is no longer needed and should be permanently removed.

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 license is required to send text reminders to 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)

Calendar allows you to view appointments made through Bookings.  To see appointments for specific Services/Staff, check/uncheck items in the left pane. Can also change between Day/Week/Month view and export up to 120 days (60 days in the past and 60 days in the future).  To see more appointments than that in Excel do the following.

1. Open Excel
2. Click the Data tab
3. Click Get Data > From Online Services > From Microsoft Exchange Online
4. For the Mailbox address, enter the email address of the Bookings page and click OK
   1. To find the email address, go to the Bookings published page (URL where customers go to book an appointment) and copy the text after calendar/ and before /bookings EXAMPLE:https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/EMAIL@foxvalleytechnicalcollege.onmicrosoft.com/bookings/
   2. Click Microsoft account
   3. Click Sign in and sign in with your account (FVTCID@fvtc.edu)
   4. Click Connect   - IMPORTANT: You need access to the Bookings page to be able to connect to it
   5. Select Meeting Requests 
      (it seems like it would make sense to select Calendar, but that option doesn’t include the body of the appointment to get the name of the customer)
                    
   1. Click Transform Data
   2. If you’ll be connecting multiple Bookings sites to one excel file, each connection should have a unique name so under Queries, right click on Meeting Requests and select Rename.
   3. If desired, show only columns that are needed (on the Home tab click Choose Columns and only check box for columns to show)
   4. Suggested columns:
                    
   1. Click Close & Load
   2. A worksheet will be created with the name entered in step 10
      1. If a Service is set to ‘Send a meeting invite to the customer’, there will be 2 rows for each appointment for that service – one sent to the customer (doesn’t include customer name in the Subject) and one sent to the Staff (includes customer name in the Subject)
   3. If the data should be refreshed when the file is opened:
      1. Click the Data tab
      2. Click Queries & Connections
      3. Right click on the connection and select Properties
      4. Check the box for Refresh data when opening the file.
      5. Click OK
   4. Repeat steps 2-14 for all desired connections.

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>@foxvalleytechnicalcollege.onmicrosoft.com 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)