As one of the most requested features for Microsoft Bookings, we are pleased to share that you can now create a multiple staff appointment! Previously, Bookings only supported the creation of a single staff service where an appointment is scheduled with a single staff member.
With the new multiple staff appointments feature, you can create service with more than one staff member in a single appointment. Your end customers will now be able to create appointments using the multiple staff service and meet all staff members together.
How can you start using multi-staff appointments?
Now when you try to add a new service to your Bookings page, in the Assign staff to the service section, you will see two options:
- Single staff: When selected, the booking will be scheduled with a single staff member.
- Multiple staff: When selected, the booking will be scheduled with all the assigned staff members of the service. You can refer to this service as N:1 booking service.
You can read more about other controls available while defining a service here. It’s also important to note that in the case of Multiple staff service, your end customers will be able to book an appointment only when all the staff members of the service are available to attend.
You can use this feature for multiple use-cases. Here are a few examples:
1. Book panel interviews
An education institute can allow students to book interview sessions with multiple interviewers. Till now, appointments needed to be booked with the lead interviewer who had to manually add other panel members into the call. This not only added overhead to the lead interviewer, but also created problems of availability, since all the interviewers might not be available at the booked time. Now, with this new feature, you can create a multi-staff service and all the interviewers on the panel can be added to it. Students will be able to book an interview session only when all the interviewers are available together.
2. Book Privacy webinars
An enterprise can provide privacy webinars to multiple customers where both the privacy expert and legal expert are needed. With this feature, you can create a service with both the staff members and set the number of attendees as, say, 10. Now, up to 10 users can book the same privacy webinar slot now where both experts will be available to answer their queries. This feature is called a N:N service – a service between multiple staff and multiple attendees.
Helpful resources
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Did you know? The Microsoft 365 Roadmap is where you can get the latest updates on productivity apps and intelligent cloud services. Check out what features are in development or coming soon on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap or view this roadmap item here.