Forum Discussion
Microsoft Bookings-Staff Member Availability Different Across Services
In Bookings, can a staff member have differing availabilities across different services?
For example, on one service a staff member should be available basically all day. But on another service that same staff member should only be available for a couple 1-hour timeslots.
Thank you,
26 Replies
- I just thought of another workaround that will work for some, but not all. If you are the administrator for your account, you could create service accounts that will appear in bookings as a different/duplicate staff member. If that service account is listed under the original account as an alias, I believe that all calendar events and emails will be routed to the original account.
MSUM_Clifferton that won’t work. You have to connect it to a user calendar. It won’t allow an alias to be selected. That my friend would be another obvious flaw in the programming decisions by MS on this. But, it would not necessarily addressed the topic at hand.
A service account should have a user calendar, right? What I don't know is if a service account can be made an alias to another account. It sounds like you're saying it can't.
Another, more complicated, idea is to create the service account and then use the new bookings connector and power automate to sync the two user calendars. sounds like a lot of work, but someone might find it worthwhile.
MSUM_Clifferton I don't know enough about aliases to give that try myself. Is this something you're likely to attempt? I'd be keen to know how it goes if so.
Unfortunately, I'm not an Admin, and our institution does not allow service accounts. I'd be excited to hear if this works if anyone else is willing to try.
- 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/handling-in-person-vs-virtual-appointmerns-per-service-and-staff/m-p/2273141/thread-id/2370 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! Agreed. This is a huge problem for us. We have a small team - just 4 people - but some of prefer to work in the office full-time while others work from home half the week. We have two different services to allow for this this - In-Office and Remote Service.
However, as Bookings currently is, a staff member cannot be assigned to a service for only certain days. It seems to be an 'all or nothing' approach.
'Customised Hours' will close off booking opportunities to those working every day if it is set to suit the work from home staff, but 'bookable when staff are free' opens up every single day regardless of whether that staff member will be present or not.
We're just discovering this as we (intended) to move more fully to online booking after an otherwise positive experience - but this is gonna scuttle the whole thing. Huge disappointment.- We are having this same issue. We have a Service that is available to be booked Monday through Friday, but different staff members are available to attend these appointments on different days.What we need is to be able to go into the Service settings and then pick what days and times each assigned staff person is available to attend the meetings.The current solutions either have us crating extra calendars or extra services. Not very efficient or simple for our clients to navigate.
yes, i also have 1 active staff member but different people will do the role. for example staff 1 will work monday to wednesday and staff 2 will work thursday and friday. i have not figured out how a booker will get the correct staff member. Does anyone know?
Siobhan_S this is where I am at as well. Almost the exact same scenario.
It's is poor customer experience, but it looks like the the work-around is to set up a service per person, then disable "allow customer to select staff" (so it looks a little less stupid). Unfortunately, this is a clunky. But, with only a few staff, it temporarily accomplished the goal without totally confusing customers or doing crazy work arounds with staff calendars to set unavailability.
DaveH2 gflanik sadly I don't think this is possible.
I also need this. One of the sales team has availability for F2F/Site Meetings on a Wednesday, but online only Thursday/Friday.Unfortunately, when looking at the individual Services you can't set day and time availability.
It would be a perfect addition to the system though.dnokhl
In each Service, you have the option of setting up availability. So if your Service is Listed as Online Meeting, you could make the availability Not Bookable for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and then use your available times for Thursday and Friday.My example below is for a service we only want offered at 11:00, 1:00, and 3:00 on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.
I hope this helps!
- This will only work if there is only one staff member assigned to that service. If the service has 3 staff members available this will restrict all 3 instead of just the one person who needs the restricted hours.
DaveH2 I have a similar scenario where I have a staff member who is available in person for services on Monday and Wednesday but not available in person on Tuesday and Thursday. On Tuesday and Thursday though they can do virtual appointments. For your case you would check the box and make a custom schedule that is outside of the normal business hours for that person.
gflanik Thanks for the reply! Not sure I'm following you... Which checkbox? On the Staff or Services options?
Also, not sure if it makes a difference but I wasn't very clear in my original question in that we have multiple services with the same staff members(~15) in each service. I'd like just one of those staff member's available hours to be different across two different services. I'd like the other staff members available hours to remain as is, same hours across each service they are a part of.
For example;
Adam, Bob and Cody can all have their own unique availabilities to fit what works best for them. Each of them currently have the same availability across 3 different services. (we have this established and set already)
Dan, however, needs to be available basically all day for one of those same 3 services and available for just a couple hours on another one of those service. (this is what we don't know how to do)
Thank you,
