Microsoft Bookings
** Under Construction **
Microsoft Bookings is a scheduling tool that assists with booking appointments. It is part of the Microsoft 365 suite available to current employees of PennWest Clarion. There are many ways to use Bookings in a University environment. For example, an individual faculty member could use it to create a calendar that students can access to request office hour appointments. Or a department chair or administrator could create an office hours calendar with slots for multiple faculty or staff members.
Access to Bookings is managed by Computing Services. To request access please complete for request form below (form pending) If you are interested in creating a Bookings calendar with multiple participants, please also provide the list of users. Someone from Computing Service will then contact you with any questions and enable access to Bookings.
Bookings basics
Once your Bookings calendar has been created and you have been made the owner, you should be able to open the Bookings application by logging into Office 365 Email and clicking on Bookings under the waffle menu.
Bookings appointments can be scheduled by anyone that has the link to your Bookings calendar. You can setup a Booking Page that allows users to schedule their own appointments, similar to what you might see if you have booked an appointment online for a haircut or have your car serviced. As a Bookings user you can also enter appointments manually when your customers call for an appointment.
The Calendar section lets you manually create and assign new Booking slots to users and staff members. It’s also where you can view all slots in your Bookings Calendar.
The Booking Page tab lets you make changes to and publish or unpublish the Bookings Calendar. It also provides you with notification and scheduling settings that you can customize to your calendar.
The Customers tab will show you any customers that have booked appointments. You can also manually add customers.
The Staff tab shows you the people and resources that can be scheduled with the Bookings calendar. The Customers tab shows you all of the customer that have scheduled an appointment. Use the Services tab to define the services, schedules and staff for your bookable services. There is a built-in service called "Initial Consult" that you can either modify or remove as needed. To add staff members to your Bookings Calendar, navigate to the Staff page and select Add Staff Member. This will bring up details you can edit for each member you wish to add. You can edit a staff member’s availability, contact information, and role: Administrator, Viewer or Guest (see Bookings User Roles below).
The Services tab is where you can edit the name of the service you are providing through your Booking Calendar. This is what customers see when a Booking Calendar is published – it should define the purpose of the Booking. If we use the example of a department using bookings for faculty office hours, this might be “Office Hours.”
The Business Information tab lets you configure the overall name of your calendar as well as the business/office hours, contact information and logo so that customers can easily identify the group associated with the service.
Bookings User Roles
- Administrators - Can open and configure the Booking Calendar. If we use the example of a department using bookings for faculty office hours, this might be the department chair or administrative assistant. It could also be the faculty members if they want to manage their own booking calendar.
- Viewers - Can open the Booking Calendar and view settings, can’t make changes. If we use the example of a department using bookings for faculty office hours, this might be a student worker who you want to be able to view, but not change, appointments.
- Guest - Can be assigned to a Booking slot, cannot open the Booking Calendar. If we use the example of a department using bookings for faculty office hours, this might be a faculty member who is not managing the entire Booking calendar.
- Customers - Are users that are Booking the slots in the Calendar with a staff member. If we use the example of a department using bookings for faculty office hours, this might be the students booking office hours appointments.
Bookings knows your availability by accessing your Exchange calendar. This way you won't be available for a Bookings appointment if you already have another meeting scheduled. So it's important to keep your calendar as current as possible, including your days off.
additional resources
Microsoft provides a number of great training resources for Bookings users:
Be sure to explore all of the capabilities of Bookings before publishing your calendar. Any questions can be directed to the Computing Services Help Desk.