Forum Discussion
Announcement: Bring in business 24/7 with Microsoft Bookings
This is a great addition to the Office 365 app family. Will this be made available for Enterprise plans as well?
That was my first thought too. I think it would be useful option for individuals in Enterprise to make their calendar available for external contacts to book time. Would help reduce the too an fro of asking what time you're available. I share a link to my published calendar in Exch Online. But my external contacts cant book time from it. Just use it as a guideline of when I'm available.
Bookings is more designed for customers to make an appointment with a services provider. The dog groomer is a good example. There are some good third-party Cloud solutions for this in the market but none so far made by Microsoft. This helps Microsoft capture a need of the small businesses that chosen to power their businesses with Office 365.
From an SMB perspective the downside I can see is lack of financial integration. Most other appointment booking solutions via the web include invoicing and then integraton with financial products like Xero. In the age of automation, I'm double-handling if I have to handle customer bookings in one system but invoice them in another. Of course this depends on the circumstances of the business and the service, but it's a good reason why I might choose something else instead of Microsoft Bookings.
For Enterprise people and their external contacts, I guess the closest you get outside of your solution is the FIndTime or Boomerang add-ons to Outlook?
-Sonia
