Microsoft Bookings now has multi-day bookings and customizable time increments
Published Jan 18 2018 09:00 AM 62.2K Views
Microsoft

We love reading your feedback in User Voice. It gives us insight into what we need to do to make Bookings better and helps us prioritize our work.  Today we’re introducing two highly-requested features to Bookings related to flexibility and customization.  

 

Support for all-day and multi-day services

There are many businesses that provide all-day and even multi-day services—things like complex projects, lodging, tours, and extended excursions.  With this new feature you can now using Bookings to let your customers book you for these types of events.

 

To set up all-day and multi-day services, click the “Services” link in the left side of the Bookings web page.  Create or edit a service and look for the “Default duration” label on the relevant Service details page. You will see a “Days” option - just select the number of days your service requires and click Save.

  

All day image 1.1.PNG

 

Default duration on the Services tab

 

Customizable time increments

Every business is unique. That’s why we provide customizable options for your Bookings page to make sure the booking process meets the specific needs of your business. We recently added more granular and customizable booking time increments. This gives you full control over exactly when your appointments are available, for situations when the standard set of booking time increment options we previously offered doesn’t meet your needs.

 

To customize bookable time increments, first, click the “Booking page” link in the left navigation bar of the Bookings Web app. Then, click on the drop-down arrow next to “Time increments” in the Scheduling policy section of the page. You’ll see that we added several new choices to our list. Scroll all the way down to see the “Custom (in minutes)” option and click on it. You will see an additional text box where you can enter the number minutes you want your appointments’ time increment to be.

 

All day image 1.2.PNG

 Customize time increments for your services

 

Using these new features, your booking page could look something like the one below. Notice that there is one service (Kitchen basics) which lasts 2 days but for regular 1-hour services, the time slots are in increments of 10 minutes.

 

All day image 1.4.PNG Booking page with new features showing

 

Keep in mind that when using the all-day and multi-day feature, the Office 365 calendar availability for your staff members does not work like it does for shorter services. We assume that you want your customers to be able to book you for valuable, longer-term services even if key staff have short, personal conflicts on a day that a customer needs you. This means that staff members can be booked for that service even if they are busy with short, personal appointments.

 

We'll start rolling out these new features in the next week and we hope they help you deliver a better online booking experience to your customers and make Bookings a more powerful scheduling solution for your business.

 

We want to keep hearing from you so please, let us know what you think in UserVoice.

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

39 Comments
Copper Contributor
These changes are awesome! Thanks for listening!
Copper Contributor

Fantastic! When specifically, is this rolling out?

Microsoft

Hi Juliet - These features are already rolling out but it can take a few weeks to reach every user.

Thanks!

Copper Contributor

Hi I have just starting using this and it works well.  When a client changes a booking day/time then the change is automatic, it flows through to Outlook straight away.  However if a client decides to cancel then it is removed from the Office365 calendar but remains in the Outlook calendar.  Can anyone help me with this issue?

Copper Contributor

Hi'

 

In regards to the role out of the new and upcomming days/multible days.
Do you got a roadmap?

 

My boss is very eager to have this added to his booking system.

When it comes to the admin center, do I have to do anything to activate the upgrade?

 

/Brian

Copper Contributor

These are great features, but when will the ability to create recurring bookings be available?

 

We currently have bookings/contracts with the same clients that take place nearly everyday for the entire year. Microsoft Bookings is great, but this is a feature (along with many of users I see) who are desperate for this to be made available.

 

Many thanks,

 

Mike

Microsoft

Hi @Michael Scullion - Could you please give me more details on the recurring bookings scenario? Would this be similar to the recurrent meetings you can set up in the calendar in Outlook? I.e. "This meeting occurs every Tuesday from 1-2pm until 12/7/2018"?

 

Thanks!

Copper Contributor

Hi @Gabo Thank you for getting back to me.

 

I haven't got that far with the Outlook calendar yet, we have only just began merging the day-to-day operations of our business with 365. It sounds slightly similar to something we are after, yes.

 

For example, we have a booking with a client everyday Monday to Friday, between 08:00 - 09:00 and again later that day between 14:30 - 15:30. This can go on every week for 6 month - 12 months at a time. So, instead of manually inputting these bookings in every day, it would be nice to set it up for one week - then copy that week to whatever date when the contract with the client ends.

 

I have been setting up StaffHub and that has something similar... where you put a member of staffs shifts in for that week then you can copy that week to months in advance.

 

I hope this makes sense?

 

Microsoft

Hi Michael - I think I understand your scenario, but that is something for which Bookings was not really designed. Bookings was designed for an external customer to make an appointment with your business/staff, so asking them to know the recurrence and length of the project doesn't make sense for the common customer. I agree that creating manually that many appointments would not be ideal.

 

To get around that (assuming you want your staff or yourself busy during that time), you can create a recurring meeting in Outlook and set as a recurrent event, in specific time and days, for a specific length of time.

 

Capture10.PNG

Once your staff accepts the invite (or they create it themselves), Bookings will block that time from being available from booking in your Bookings page.

Hope this helps!

 

Gabriel.

Copper Contributor

Hi Gabriel. I understand and thank you for your detailed explanation.

 

I am aware bookings focuses on external use, but it wasn't something we intended on using it for (the booking page, email notifications, etc..). We just needed a solution for our office staff that had the same sort of setup as bookings does, but for internal use. Unfortunately, the majority of our staff are not office based, nor require access to 365 features. It was more for our office staff to manage our bookings, predefined services, and the allocation/working hours of our drivers.

 

I don't think Outlook's Appointments would do the trick, but hopefully I can find a solution somewhere in what 365 has on offer.

 

Thanks again,

 

Mike

Copper Contributor

@Gabo like Michael, our business would really benefit from a way to either use a Recurrence-like feature or the ability to pick multiple of the same SKU, so that personal calendars are still accounted for.  In my situation, a customer may want to book 3 days with a staff member, but we span multiple time zones and have erratic calendars.  Ideally, I could have a SKU for an 8-hour engagement, and the customer could choose 3x 1-Day and then pick the 3 slots that work for both them and single staff member.

Copper Contributor

When a booking is "cancelled" either by the end user, or by the manager of the booking calendar, the corresponding schedule entry in my linked Microsoft Outlook calendar is not deleted. Is this a bug, or is there a setting somewhere for this?

Copper Contributor

I was hoping to use the booking app for my pet care business and recurring appointments are really a key part of the job and something that customers definitely understand.  For example, if a customer needs a dog walked Monday thru Friday from 12:00-12:30 that would be the perfect thing for them to request through the self-service page.  Ideally, that customer request would create five appointments (one for each day) that could then be individually assigned to a dog walker (not always the same walker every day).  That enhancement along with a field to track the amount that the dog walker would be paid for the service would make the booking app just about a perfect fit, but without those two items it is just a little too cumbersome to use. 

 

Power Apps with the O365 integration is possible next solution although it will be a lot of custom development work.

Copper Contributor

Is it possible to do same day scheduling? I haven't been able to find an answer although I am guessing it will be no as I have not been able to set the same day appointment in my setup.

Brass Contributor

Hello is it possible to set appointment times in 30min increments but allow users/customers to block 2 appointments together, so they get a 1 hour slot?

We want to use the App to book meeting rooms, so we have set the min time as 30mins, but some users might want to book 1hr, 2hrs etc.

Brass Contributor

@Gabo  is it possible to set appointment times in 30min increments but allow users/customers to block 2 appointments together, so they get a 1 hour slot? We want to use the App to book meeting rooms, so we have set the min time as 30mins, but some users might want to book 1hr, 2hrs etc.

Copper Contributor

I wish that Microsoft had thought this through a little more... You sell non-profit subscriptions but have not considered community centers and the like. There will be times that someone might want to book a room for 2 hours, but the time increments might have a default of 30 mins. So a multi select option is very much needed or someone has to book the same room 4 times to get 2 hours! I really hope that an option to select multiple time slots in a single booking is available soon. Just trying to figure out why it wasn't considered to begin with. If it's a class or something else you could end up having to make 12 bookings! Multi select is a must.

Copper Contributor

We are currently using the Bookings product but users are now requesting the functionality to have reoccurring events (eg: every Wednesday) does this feature exist today or any plans on incorporating this functionality. 

 

 

Copper Contributor

Thank you for the Bookings app!
It works great for us. And saves a lot of hassle and time.
An option for recurring reservations is definitely the "most wanted feature". I suggest Outlooks recurrence model as a design template.
That would really take it to the next level Smiley Happy

 

 

Copper Contributor

I'm an A3 licensed Educational user.  How do I had MS bookings functionality to my environment.  We have multiple use cases where this would be an effect tool. (ie: Dept. services bookings, Advisor appts, etc).

 

Please advise as to how I get this on in my environment.  I am the admin for our Higher Ed tenant.

 

Thanks.

Copper Contributor
@Gabo I am having a challenge configuring Bookings to meet my needs, and I am undure if its a limitation of functionality or user error. Q1 - Simple Booking. I have a holiday home business where bookings are for 1 week AND only start on a Saturday. Is it possible to make the start of the booking be only a Satuday i.e a guest could not book for 1 week starting on Wednesay. Q2 - Complex Booking. I have a holiday home business where bookings are for 6 weeks and 20 hours, where check in is always from 3pm on a Saturday and checkout is always at 11am on a Saturday, allowing cleaning staff 4 hours to perform house keeping prior to the next guest AND to make the start of the booking be only a Satuday i.e a guest could not book for 1 week starting on Wednesay. Are either of these options configurable in MS Bookings? Thanks Leon
Copper Contributor

@Leon Godwin , If you set the standard appointment day/time for Saturday and make the default appointment length of time to 7 days, this should work. 

Copper Contributor

Hi I am a personal trainer and I have been using Bookings successfully for 12 months now although the experience would be even better if my clients could block book. I sell my sessions as blocks of 5 or 10 - my client wants the same day and time until the sessions expire. It’s an overhead for me/my client creating a booking for each session and I also have to number each booking so I can manage the block. Although recently I have been searching on the client’s name in my Outlook calendar to get the number of sessions. This can be an issue though if me/my client forgets to cancel any bookings.  Also there is no validation on booking name so I end up with multiple variations of the same client name in my customer contacts.

Copper Contributor

Bookings Improvements / Suggestions.

We use it for a small digital theater, but there's three issues we have with the system that would be great to get addressed.

1. When viewing the calendar you can't see details of the school that is in a booking, just that there is a booking. So to find the school to confirm numbers or details on the booking, is time consuming going in and out of each entry to find the correct one you want.

2. you need to have admin rights on the whole system to see the calendar, I'd love the ability for reception to book the bookings and other staff to see the bookings but I can't see how. So everyone has to have admin rights and this means anyone can make a mistake on any booking.

3. we have 40 seats in the theater, if we have a school of 10 kids, I'd love the ability to know there's 30 seats left for other similar aged schools, currently it's very manual and need to go into every booking that day, then add them up, then see if the school looking to attend can fit that day. if not, try the next day and repeat! Takes a lot of time when if you hovered over the booking, you could see capacity used or free that would be great.

Copper Contributor

Outlook Web App does not allow searching Booking shared calendars

Copper Contributor

Hello, 

 

Thanks for the update- we often book multi day services.  However, can I ask why the personal calendar avialability isnt accounted for in multiday bookings? It now makes it possible to double book personnel? Thank you

clipboard_image_0.png

Copper Contributor

Can someone please help?  I've changed the time increments to 15mins in my settings, but if we try and load a booking - they are still in 30 minute increments - even though the default time increments is unticked and it is set at 15minutes.  It just doesn't seem to drag through?  What am I doing wrong?

Brass Contributor

Please is it possible to book a duration from the bookings page for example 9am to 11am? how can my customers do that?

Copper Contributor

We needed to change the time increments from 30 to 15 minutes.  I did this in both the Booking page AND in the actual Services page under Default Duration.  After saving those changes when I go back to view my Bookings page it is still showing 30 minute increments and not 15.  

 

Why isn't the duration change working and where do I go to fix this?

 

 

Copper Contributor

I'm trying to see if Bookings can allow my external customers to make recurring bookings. Is this feature available?

Copper Contributor

Have you considered recurring meeting for a set time.  The use case here is as we onboard customers we send out a weekly standing meeting for X amount of times over X amount of months.   It would be nice if this was a feature that can be done here, thus affording the customer the ability to autoreschedule etc.   The other part is how do we set it so that a customer can have more than one particpant on their side as an add on field?  I have thought about using DL's already :>

 

Tom

 

Copper Contributor

Is this blog active?  Not sure I see responses :> 

Copper Contributor

No, the feature has been added. 

Copper Contributor

Clearly Bookings is not a mature product so it doesn't really work for us at this time. That being said I look forward to revisiting in 2021. Please continue to look at the Outlook calendaring/scheduling model. (Perhaps Calendly or Google Maps would also be beneficial?)

Copper Contributor

I  trying to create a course that runs for 1 hour on a Wednesday for 6 weeks. 

I've scheduled the start and end dates and then added custom times for the one hour slot in the Service. 

When I go to the calendar it looks like I can book on Week 2 rather than Week 1. 

Also, will a reminder go out before each session?

Copper Contributor

What we need is a number of times to reoccur!

Copper Contributor

Hi,

I am looking to use MS Bookings for customers to book in increments of days, but not set days, I want the customer to be able to select the number of days they wish to book. This is for booking  properties, so I need the customer to see the availability then select the days they require, can you help with this? 

Thanks    

Copper Contributor

Hello,

 

We need the ability to select MULTIPLE timeslots, please add this functionality.

 

Related to the following idea:

 

https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/e2db8b6b-5b42-ec11-a81a-0022484e21f1

 

Thanks

Copper Contributor

Hi@Gabo,

 

When can we finally expect a dynamic multiple day selection feature? We want customers to be able to select a service and to choose (according to their needs) for how many days they want to book it (like a travel booking website). 

 

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‎Jan 17 2018 12:12 PM
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