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.
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.
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.
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!