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Microsoft 365 Blog
2 MIN READ

Take Care of Your Scheduling Needs with Microsoft Bookings and Scheduler in Microsoft 365

Sally_Richardson's avatar
Sally_Richardson
Former Employee
Nov 03, 2021

The digital intensity of workers’ days has increased substantially with the average number of meetings and chats steadily increasing since last year (source: The Next Great Disruption is Hybrid Work). We want to make it easier to manage the volume of meetings while also continuing to drive key touchpoints with colleagues or customers. See how in our skilling session.

 

Two new features planned for launch will be key to this goal:

 

  1. Scheduler will be launching dynamic recurring meetings. Where recurring meetings are scheduled one event at a time to work around your availability at the frequency of your choosing.
  2. Microsoft Bookings is planning to help you understand if your customers are booking from Bookings links included in your digital marketing materials.

 

Scheduler on Dynamic Recurring Meetings

 

Scheduler’s goal is to reduce the amount of time and back and forth when scheduling meetings.

 

Scheduler has enabled users to leverage a virtual assistant using natural language to set up meetings and focus time. Now, with the latest update your virtual assistant can set up dynamic recurring meetings. Scheduler’s dynamic recurring meetings work around the user’s busy schedule. Recurring meetings managed by Scheduler behave differently than traditional recurring meetings in Outlook. To keep your future calendar open and minimize conflicts with attendees, Scheduler will schedule one event of a recurring meeting at a time.

 

How to use dynamic recurring meetings in Scheduler: Simply send an email to the meeting attendee and copy Cortana. Ask Cortana to set up a meeting at whatever recurrence is preferred. Cortana will process the request and send.

 

 

Helpful Resources:

 

Microsoft Bookings Conversion Tracking

 

Bookings' goal is to ease the hassle of scheduling and managing appointments. Bookings is a product that your organization can use to book appointments with internal or external attendees. Simply share a link to a Bookings calendar and recipients can pick an available slot. Bookings plans to allow customers with a Bookings calendar to track digital campaign conversion.

 

How to track conversion in Bookings: Customers will be able to append an ID to the Bookings calendar link. If the link is clicked on and a user books a service through that link, the ID will be passed and included in the export data available.

 

 

Helpful Resources:

Updated Nov 05, 2021
Version 3.0

19 Comments

  • dagspot Thank you for the feedback. It's always helpful to hear from users.  Thank you for taking the time to share your suggestions! 

  • MarkDavies's avatar
    MarkDavies
    Copper Contributor

    The bookings system app shows promise but the rest of this post is not going to be pretty - sorry to rain on your day Sally_Richardson but this is past frustrating.

     

    The Graph API behind it is terrible. 

    • Missing or blank fields in Graph
    • Significant Elements that can be added by the UI but not added or retrieved via Graph (i.e. the new Customers array, Service notes field,  Timezones, and + many more)
    • No search of filtering other than a non O-Data date action (calendarView) for date filtering (why?  why???).
    • Had to write an "available appointments" api because the one in the UI is not exposed in Graph.
    • The beta and the V1 release are on different end points - no explanation of what "solutions" will be.
    • No release notes for any beta versions and we don't know what you are working on.
    • No sensible single place to provide developer feedback, see others feedback and where there is a location, no response from msft to virtually any of it.  You'd think this was a dead-end product on life support.
    • + more

    I don't understand how the Graph APi for bookings got released to V1 in December (unless someone's performance review depended on it of course).  It is nowhere near a release feature level or quality bar.

     

    I have spent 5 weeks on this building a solution for scheduling service installations and thinking all the time "I am not getting it, it must be me" but just coming to the realization that the Graph API implementation is unusable.  It would have taken me less time to build a scheduling database and rest api.  Grrr.

     

    Please do something with BookingsBusiness Graph - take it down or make it usable.  I hope people see this post and save wasting their time until MSFT is ready to release something usable by developers.

     

    Thanks, Mark.

  • dagspot's avatar
    dagspot
    Copper Contributor

    Sally_Richardson

    • option to see/select ‘first available’ slot across multiple staff/service slots is an absolute must. 
    • The text fields and customisable sections are still a bit rigid and clunky. Need more ability to customise/move/delete fields
    • integration with Bookings app needs sorted
    • ability for client to combine and allow selection of multiple slots within a service
    • get rid of choice of old’ and ‘new’ Bookings experience now - confusing
    • ensure adequate ongoing development and updates
    • coordinate to ensure links with Power Automate for MS Bookings to all expanded functionality
  • Chaz Weber's avatar
    Chaz Weber
    Iron Contributor

    The scheduler service is a fantastic feature but tough to justify an additional monthly cost, especially for customers subscribed to E3 and E5 licenses. Any consideration to bundling at those license levels?

  • Shaun_SIA's avatar
    Shaun_SIA
    Copper Contributor

    We would like to use Microsoft Bookings but the SMS notification feature is still not fixed.  The initial text notification that an appointment has been set, has the incorrect time.  For example, I set an appointment for 11/09/21 at 11 a.m. and the text message displayed the appointment as 11/09/21 at 3 a.m.  

  • richardatmace's avatar
    richardatmace
    Copper Contributor

    Question for someone @ MS, what would users be gaining with Scheduler that is worth £7.50 a month versus just using FindTime?