Microsoft Booking
What is it – it’s a virtual assistant for appointments. It gives Faculty and Staff the ability to set hours for appointment and automatically looks at your CWU outlook like a free busy search for the hours you specify. This is a Microsoft O365 product including in our license for Faculty and staff.
To access bookings, as with all O365 apps, login to your Microsoft account at microsoft365.com. Use the same username@cwu.edu and password you use to login to your computer. example: (wildcatw@cwu.edu)
Below are some quick links to information on setting up Bookings.
Best practices is to name the booking something like "Book with xxxx or Schedule with xxxx" as the name you choose for the "Business Name" at set up will create an email address. By choosing something like Book With... it will not accidentally come up in searches by name in the Global Address book. You don't want someone to accidentally email your bookings calendar when they should be emailing a person. Those emails will go to the email used as the business email. You can always go back in and rename the business to your name, the email address is determined by the name you choose at set up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsFofCLoUJE – 112 second Microsoft You tube on setting up a bookings page.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=647C4gZt9Fo - Detailed video on bookings 28 minutes.
This is Microsoft support page that walks through the set up.
There is a new interface for booking that was released June 1st, 2021. You can use this by switching a toggle on the top of the Home screen if you are in the Original Bookings or top of any screen if the new bookings. The new interface adds two more roles, a Scheduler and Team Member role. The scheduler is a good role if you have someone who manages your bookings and Team Members allows staff members to be in control of their own schedule without accessing anything else.
This will take you to a CWU training page updated with additional relevant training on Microsoft products
FAQ
Can I set custom hours for each staff member?
Yes
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/set-employee-working-hours-0968717e-b61f-4b06-987c-6c1464541782
Can I have meetings of different lengths depending on the type of advising?
Yes, you would manage it by service.
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/define-your-service-offerings-in-microsoft-bookings-4a1c391e-524f-48e0-bef8-185df3a9634b
Can I create a QR code.
I wasn’t able to find a way from Bookings to create a QR code, but did find a free online source to create QR codes.
https://www.qrcode-monkey.com/
My students are getting an email error, but when I check the booking still was made.
This is an error that happens if an email was not required. You can ask for an additional email like the CWU email, but the default email needs to be required if you want the student to receive an email confirmation.
If you choose to modify a service and not require the email then you would also need to turn off email confirmations. That is why the students booking still work, but they received the email error. If you want bookings to send the students a confirmation email, the default email field is required.
From Microsoft:
I cancelled the meeting on my calendar, but the student wasn't notified
Think of bookings like a third party setting up the meeting. If you cancel the meeting on your calendar the other people in the meeting are not notified. Bookings looks at your calendar but does not take over your calendar. It looks for free time to schedule services. To cancel a meeting, cancel the meeting through the bookings calendar so Bookings will notify the student of the cancellation the cancellation must be done from the bookings calendar. Go to the calendar page in Bookings click on the meeting and cancel. This will send a cancellation notice to all parties.
What if I have meetings I have not accepted yet on my calendar.
Bookings will not book appointments if a space has been held on your calendar by Tentative. Example someone sent you a meeting request, but you have not seen the meeting yet to make a decision. It only looks for free time. I think there might be some settings to override this in the set up if you want, but it would need to be a choice you make. Default set up will only look for Free time.
Bookings does not recognize working elsewhere as a booking on your calendar. Use Busy or Tentative and Bookings will recognize it as something that can not be booked.
Sync personal calendar with bookings calendar
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sync-staff-s-personal-calendar-with-microsoft-bookings-23ee9b4c-0241-40ff-b663-67a309c378f8?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us
Add Bookings calendar to your outlook calendars
Add bookings calendars to your outlook calendars by choosing add calendar and search for your booking name.