Announcement: Bring in business 24/7 with Microsoft Bookings

[Lana O'Brien]

To help make appointment scheduling simpler and more efficient for you, your staff and your customers, Microsoft is introducing a new Office 365 service called Microsoft Bookings!

Customers can schedule your business directly online

Reduce missed appointments with confirmations and reminders

Make it easy for your customers to reschedule or cancel bookings

Manage bookings and customer information from anywhere

Automatically add bookings on staff calendars

Bookings is now rolling out in First Release to customers who subscribe to the Office 365 Business Premium plan and will roll out to all Business Premium customers worldwide in the coming months. Read more of Office Blogs. 

[#2]

This is a great addition to the Office 365 app family. Will this be made available for Enterprise plans as well?

[#3]

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. 

[#4]

+1 for making it available for Enterprise. I have loads of clients who would love this. I'm looking forward to giving it a go.

[#5]

+1000

[#6]

Here's the official reply from the Q&A on the blog. 

"Thanks for your interest in Bookings! We started rolling out Bookings to Office 365 Business Premium because it was designed with small businesses in mind. We know that there are small businesses in our Enterprise SKUs in all segments (Commercial, Government, EDU, Not-for-Profit), and we are working to bring Bookings to E3 and E5 in the coming months." 

[#7]

Fabulous! We use calendly but wil be much happier with an integrated product. Woot!

[#8]

Awesome!!!

[#9]

Yes it will be, you can find a comment in the Q & A section stating that Bookings will be brought to other Office 365 plans and not only business ones

[#10]

Definitly tool for EDU organisations, like mine.

Exam planning tool.

Fill in time table based on: avalability teacher staff, location , etc.

[#11]

Great stuff! Can't wait for it to come to E5.

[#12]

Great!!! We are waiting for it to come to E3 and E5.

[#13]

+1000 🙂 

What's the URL For the services ? like https://tasks.office.com for planer

[#14]

Seems pretty lame that it would only be available in the business plans and not the enterprise plans, in fact it really just makes no sense.  Random choice but perhaps there are plans we are not yet aware of.  Either way good for our customers that subscribe to the business plans. 

[#15]

Has any one recieved access to Bookings yet? We're on E5 so we're not going to get it for a while, but we have some questions. For example, can appointments be sent by SMS?

[#16]

I'm on biz premium and I expect an icon will turn up in my apps, just as sway, planner and delve did - so no, nothing yet.

If I'm looking in the wrong place, can someone let me know 🙂

[#17]

Your admin must put you on : First Release. After you match 🙂

[#18]

Thanks Fabien - I am the admin and I've got first release checked. Watch this space then.

[#19]

Bookings will be released first to Business and Business Premium Plans...after that, I expect an announce from Microsoft saying they will start to roll out to Enterprise plans

[#20]

is there a way to preview this without having to subscribe to a new SBP tenant ?