Forum Discussion

kurtz103's avatar
kurtz103
Copper Contributor
Apr 14, 2021

Handling in-person vs virtual appointmerns per service and staff

We are looking at having a hybrid office. We will have some staff in person on certain days and remote the others. Our staff members are tied to multiple services. Is it possible to customize a service so that if a students selects a service they can choose if the appointment will be in person or virtual and appointment type will display that for both the student and staff member? How do you set up what days a person would be in person as opposed to virtual on those day. If a student picks in person it would only display the availability for an in-person appointment and if they selected remote... they could schedule any days of the week that person is available?

  • rober1ba's avatar
    rober1ba
    Brass Contributor
    Happy to have run across this thread and would like to +1 the request for this feature addition/improvement. The only similar thread that I could find was https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-bookings/microsoft-bookings-staff-member-availability-different-across/m-p/1700048 so I will cross-post my response in hopes that Microsoft will see and address it one way or another.

    The same scenario as others have eluded to, I have staff that work certain days in the office and other days from home. Of course, this means they can offer virtual and phone appointments any day of the week, but can only offer in-person appointments on the days that they work in the office. To solve the problem utilizing the existing Bookings features, we are forced to maintain two separate Bookings calendars, each with intricate availability set for each individual staff member. Far from ideal, and a fair amount of work to juggle with a dozen staff involved.

    It would be incredible if we could adjust individual staff availability by day, times, and modality within a single service. C'mon, Microsoft... you can do it!
  • jfaber3's avatar
    jfaber3
    Copper Contributor
    Is this not a thing? I have been desperately searching for days to figure out how to do this for the same reason.
  • pegasusPJ31's avatar
    pegasusPJ31
    Copper Contributor
    It should be easy with 'Working Elsewhere' settings in individuals calendars... except Bookings does not considers that at all and therefore books in person for people that are not in the office.
    It means we cannot use Bookings basically.
  • kurtz103 

    I've solved this a variety of different ways for faculty members at our university who want to be able to offer online office hours when they're working elsewhere. Here's the workaround I've helped build that seemed to have the most functionality.

     

    1. Create two services: One for Online visits only. The other for in-person visits.
    2. Assign staff and set appropriate schedules for the two services.

    This way, the student/customer gets to choose whether they prefer an in-person or online meeting, and the information for each meeting is set at appropriate times. no need for separate calendars or multiple links. 

     

    • pegasusPJ31's avatar
      pegasusPJ31
      Copper Contributor

      MSUM_Clifferton 

      This works for 1 person with set hours. 

      but if hours can vary (between online and in-person) that becomes unwieldy (having to remember to change hours on the service too rather than straight in the outlook calendar).

      And that is even worse when you try to organise a service for a team (who all can be allocated the appointment) and their variable schedule, which is why we looked at doing that double service and gave up.

       

  • benjaminwoo's avatar
    benjaminwoo
    Copper Contributor
    Is this functionality still not available, two and a half years later???
  • RiversideKid's avatar
    RiversideKid
    Copper Contributor
    Each service needs to respect this optionally. Some services can be scheduled for remote staff and some services require on-site staff.

    Currently we have services titled "Remote..." and "On-Site..." Our customers need the ability to schedule with all our staff who are available for each type of service.

    Our current plan is to only offer "On-Site" services on select days when we have the most staff on-site, but this is not ideal.

Resources