Bookings
Getting Started with Bookings
Microsoft Bookings is a web-based application that can be used within Teams, Outlook, or on Office365.utoledo.edu. The platform gives the ability, to those you share the link with, to book an appointment that syncs with faculty, staff, and student Outlook calendars. Once a Bookings is created, a URL is provided to send the link via email or publish onto a web page to provide clients with open available time slots to choose from.
Benefits to Bookings
Bookings can help individuals schedule training slots, office hours, one-on-ones, support sessions. The possibilities are expanded upon in a shared booking. Shared bookings offer the ability to load-balance appointments, manage attendees for regularly offered trainings, offer the range of a department’s services, and assign specific staff to those services. Best of all, you can manage it on your own, or your department’s time, and avoid the double-booking.
Create a Personal Bookings Meeting
Personal Bookings has been turned on for faculty and staff effective May of 2024. You may access Bookings by visiting https://office.com/bookings. Alone, this feature offers creating your own meetings, selecting how long the meetings may be set for, using your own business hours, set buffer times between meetings, and send out email reminders. Create the meeting, send the link, and let your students or colleagues book.
Requesting a Shared Bookings
To have multiple people on your Bookings, a shared booking may be set up for you. Please contact the IT Help Desk to request a shared booking, and we’ll set one up. The information we would like to know…
- What would you like the name of the shared booking to be?
- What department email would you like replies and appointments forwarded to?
BOOKINGS - FAQ
Here are the answers to some of the questions you may have with Bookings. While we have tried to account for most questions, if you feel you need more information, please reach out to our IT Help Desk for assistance.
Q: How can I request a new Shared Bookings page?
You may request a Shared Bookings page by submitting a ticket with the IT Help Desk. Our team will set the starting ground for the page, and you may continue to design it in the way that you wish. We would need to know…
- What would you like the name of the Booking page to be called?
- You may have multiple services on a page, we recommend keeping the name generic such as the department or building.
- Where should the emails be forwarded to for the page?
Q: What is the difference between my personal Bookings page and a Shared Bookings page?
Personal Bookings pages allow people to schedule with you directly and around your calendar availability. Shared Bookings can allow people to schedule with one of many people assigned to the service that is set up. You cannot directly transfer your appointments between personal and shared bookings.
Q: Will Bookings create Teams meetings?
Bookings does have integration to allow for creating Teams meetings. This is enabled by default on personal meetings and Shared Bookings services.
Q: Will people be able to choose who they have their meeting with on a Shared Booking?
By default, people will not be able to choose who they may book with. This can be turned on for services.
Q: If I am a member of a Shared Bookings, are team members, schedulers, or administrators for the Shared Bookings able to see my personal appointments?
With how the calendars are set up for the institution, people within the institution can see when you are free or busy. However, others cannot see what the title of your appointments are, details of the appointment, or other identifiable information. Being a member of a Shared Bookings is no different for your personal appointments. If the appointment is scheduled through the Shared Bookings page, members of the page will be able to see details of the event.
Q: Can I be a part of multiple Bookings pages?
Absolutely! You may be added to as many Shared Bookings pages as you may need. You may even create as many personal bookings as you wish. Please note, if a person schedules a Booking on one page, it will block out your time in other pages for your schedule.
Q: Can I be double-booked?
By default, you cannot be double-booked. However, with Shared Bookings pages, it is possible to have the page ignore your individual availability. This would mean that your personal appointments wouldn’t be considered. However, enabling this is ill-advised.
Q: I am taking a vacation or a few days off. Can I have a block on receiving meetings for these days?
You should be able to mark that you are busy on these days in your personal calendar. You can even use the “Add time off” action on the Calendar of your Bookings page.
Q: Are all staff that are members to a Shared Bookings page also assigned to all the services?
When you set up a service, you can select the members of the Bookings page to be staff for that service. This can allow a department to have a Booking page with people of different specialties handle those individual services. However, if a service does not have a staff member assigned, Bookings will try to assign a random staff member from the page.
Q: When I create a service with the maximum attendees as one, I can not change it afterward. How would I allow more attendees?
Unfortunately, the service will be locked to one attendee. You can make a use the Copy Service button and increase the number of attendees before saving changes. Likewise with multiple attendee events cannot be reduced to single attendee events, the service must be copied to be made single. You may then remove the unwanted service from display or delete it.