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JarrydMoore's avatar
JarrydMoore
Copper Contributor
Jan 28, 2020

Adding a room/resource as a staff member to Bookings

Is it possible to add a room/resource at Bookings as a staff member? We're trying to setup a booking page where people can book a service (e.g. a meeting) in room (i.e. a room setup as a staff member).

When creating a new staff member I get the option to add any of the rooms/resources in the "add people" field. This ticks the "events on office 365 affect availability" option. However after I save the staff member and go back into the record, it now shows as a "guest" (where it originally was "viewer") and the "events on office 365 affect availability" option is no longer ticked and greyed out as an option.

Is there a way to do this? Or do "staff" have to be real users to sync availability?

  • JarrydMoore I am not sure if this was not available in 2020 but it does work now and I do it regularly.  It has been a while since I setup a new calendar with a resource account but I think you need to be able to log into the account directly, not using the proxy of your main account, to accept the invitation.  Once it is accepted, I haven't had any issues.

    • tkeller2904's avatar
      tkeller2904
      Copper Contributor

      aaron_anderson_IL Not sure if I got you right. Do you say, you have set up the room as a resource in Exchange Admin and used that in Bookings? Or did you set up the room as a regular Exchange user?

       

      I want to use my existing resource (room) and have that bookable in Bookings. But of course, it needs to be synced with free/busy of internal bookings done with the Outlook calendar.

      • arifvase's avatar
        arifvase
        Copper Contributor
        The room resource needs to added as a "Team Member" to the bookings page. Initially, the room resource account gets added as a "guest". We need to go to "Manage staff" and delete and re-add the room resource and set the role as "Team Member". This may take couple of tries, but I can confirm it works. The room is now bookable through bookings page/link and is syncd with room's existing calendar entries.
  • sjp_uom's avatar
    sjp_uom
    Copper Contributor
    Adding to the list of replies, also encountered this problem and would like a fix or info on whether this is supported.
  • prieditis's avatar
    prieditis
    Copper Contributor

    Hi, have you managed to solve this problem? JarrydMoore I have the same problem with a room resource downgraded all the time as a guest so when the room is booked via outlook or email, it doesn't synchs with reservations booked via booking website.

    • Basbei's avatar
      Basbei
      Copper Contributor

      Hi all, any news on this? I have the same behavior. I was not able to officially find an article from Microsoft that indicates if rooms are actually supported or not?

      Would really appreciate any feedback. Best regards.

  • DrNoo's avatar
    DrNoo
    Copper Contributor

    I am currently test driving Bookings in hopes I can setup to have external (outside of our network) people book a room . I have that working the way I want by assigning a room as a service and the administrator of the booking calendar as the sole staff member. I have set "General Availability" as hours I want the room available for booking.  The room is sometimes book by internal staff but that is rare. I will remove the existing booking in our Exchange server and have any internal staff use the booking website if they need the room. Not sure if that works for your requirements?  JarrydMoore 

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