Forum Discussion
Book multiple staff for meeting
Just wondering if it is possible to book multiple staff at once. So far I can select through the assigned staff but want to be able to have a meeting with more than one of them. Is this possible?
Found a solution (workaround) for this using a distribution list as a staff member. It may not give you exactly what you need but have a read.
Hi Everyone,
Have found an awesome solution to having multiple staff members with external email addresses ALL automatically assigned to a booking and notified via email at the time of the booking. You can use this solution for internal addresses as well.
It uses a distribution list as the only staff member assigned to a service, ensuring that staff member is always picked. When that service is selected by the client, ALL the staff members in the distribution list are notified automatically.
- Create a Distribution Group in Microsoft 365 Admin Center
- Groups > Add a group
- Create a Distribution Group Email Address name@yourdomain.com (This can take up to 60 minutes for the new group to be created and editable)
- Add External Email Addresses in Exchange Admin Center
- Recipients > Contacts
- Add > Mail Contact
- Enter the external email address details for your staff members
- Add External Emails to Distribution List in Exchange Admin Center
- Groups > Recipients
- Double-click the newly created distribution list
- Membership > Add Members
- Select the external email addresses from the Contact list & add to distribution list
- Create Staff in Bookings Admin Staff > Add Staff
- Enter staff details using distribution list email address name@yourdomain.com
- Assign Staff to Services in Bookings Admin
- Services > Manage Services
- Select Service to assign staff
- Select only the staff member with the distribution list associated email address and no other staff members
Say you have three staff members with external email addresses added to this distribution list. Now when a booking is made for the service (assigned to the external distribution list Staff member) all three of three of these other staff members are automatically emailed with bookings calendar invite message.
If the booking is rescheduled or cancelled all three of the staff members get notified.
This only works well if you require all three of these staff members to always be present for a service to occur. If any one of them can't be available you will need to mark the distribution list associated staff member as having Time Off to stop the service being selected for certain dates.
This is a fantastic solution that works around the shortcomings where multiple staff are assigned to a service (three in this example) but when a client makes a booking, randomly only ONE of the staff members is selected and notified automatically. You then manually have to select the other two if you require all three staff to be notified.
Hoping in the future Bookings will allow an option to force all assigned staff members to a service to be available and notified when a booking is made, this is the preferred solution but for now this workaround achieves the same result. Hope this helps anyone else with this need.
Alastair
Alastair - the point of using the Booking functions is to see availabilities of all staff members of the group to book. I don't think your solution allows to view availabilities based on each staff member calendar. Please tell me if I am wrong.
Agreed. We need to see the availability of the users in the distribution group.
Alastair Greenstreet This solution does not work for me. My staff are all internal, and the calendar does not consider any of their calendars any way I add them to a service. I tried adding them both, or through a distribution list, or a group, or the group/distribution list and them together. None of the methods work.
- Hi Farshid-p
Sorry the solution did not work for you. I think I need to retire the suggested solution at this point. It worked (imperfectly) for my situation back in 2018 but I have stopped using Microsoft Bookings for years now and cannot offer any more insight.
The true functionality needs to be built into the Bookings product by Microsoft to give people what they need with shared calendar. This workaround does not address that need.
Wishing you a solution from Microsoft, I have no more suggestions at this point, as I no longer use Bookings.
Alastair
- Create a Distribution Group in Microsoft 365 Admin Center
Exact same need. Main issue is checking availability first, or else the system will create more problems than if it weren't doing anything (and the old-fashioned multiple back-forth emails have to be used to check "are you available"/"no, but am here"/"well that doesn't work for me"/etc.).
Group booking is available in other programs (many of which can synch with MS).
Is anyone from MS hearing this and can comment on whether this is at least on the roadmap? If not, we won't hold our breath. If so, perhaps we use other options in the interim, but can place on our own tech horizons the idea of using more of MS apps. Otherwise, competitive options start to seem very attractive.
Anyone from MS, please share your thoughts/possible expectations. Thanks.
Want to invide 200 members to choose from 3 different (irregular) appointments.
I need to:
- Set a group limit to 75 people per appointment
- Set an end date to the calendar appointments since we only offer the appointment next week only
- Obviously let 75 individuals attend an appointment
- Let me send out additional info to the individuals on the three different appointments
Bookings seems to be far off as a solution to me right now. Can't fina any at all I'm afraid, apart from frekkin Doodle.
I wish I were telling the MS ecosystem has the solution with bookings. Not yet. Most robust system I've found (and the one I use, until Bookings comes of age) is Acuity Scheduling. They have extensive configuration possibilities, most of which I've tested/used/use.
can you let me know what other apps integrate with 365 that we can use for this as i think this is not going to be taken care of my MS anytime soon so we will have to look at moving to something else.
- I would like to know this also
- We need this capability. It would greatly help out for a number of items.
This is a must have for us - we are trying to put together interviews where two team members will be interviewing at the same time. So our calendars will need to be synced to create openings for bookings. Please advise. Thanks.
- Me too
- Me too
We are also looking for Group booking and availabilities
Stuart Hodges no joy yet on this function?
Another imperfect workaround:
Staff A and Staff B both set aside weekly windows on their calendar for Bookings service appointments, but assign only Staff A to the service. Set up an email rule in Staff A's Outlook inbox that automatically forwards booked meetings for the service to Staff B.
What am I missing?- Also noticed this 800+ voted relevant idea on the UserVoice site: https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/314907-microsoft-bookings/suggestions/34994005-allow-appointments-with-multiple-staff-members
- Definitely needs to be made possible. This is a must have for our organisation. There are multiple discussions on this forum about this but this is one of the oldest I've seen. Microsoft - GET ON THIS PLEASE!
