Bookings: Drawing free/available data from multiple calendars...

Copper Contributor

I am using Office 365 (online) and MS Bookings. 

 

Inside Office 365 (online), I have my primary organization calendar (me@org.com) and it syncs just fine with Bookings by blocking time and only showing available time in Bookings where there are no calendar items booked in my primary calendar (me@org.com). 

 

The problem I am having comes from my additional calendars.  I use separate practice management software for my business (my PP Calendar) that also syncs in Office 365 (online) as a calendar for me under "your calendars" and/or "other calendars".  As a result, when I click on the calendar icon in Office 365 (online), I see my primary calendar (me@org.com) items in light blue and my PP Calendar items in green. 

 

In practice, my primary calendar (me@org.com) is where my personal items go and my PP Calendar is where my work appointments are stored. 

 

While I have no problem getting Bookings to use my primary calendar (me@org.com) to determine free/busy times, it does NOT block off times where there is a conflict with my PP Calendar items.  This is obviously an issue in that people are booking when I still have conflicts. 

 

I've tried using PP Calendar inside Office 365 as a "your calendar" and as "other calendars" and neither seems to prompt Bookings to block off those times as busy. 

 

Am I doing something wrong? 

 

I've read the articles about getting Bookings to use personal calendars as well, but that doesn't seem to help. 

 

Does anyone have an idea how to set this up so I can make Bookings useful to my organization?

 

I only have one "staff" member and calendar (me@org.com) that uses Office 365. 

 

As a workaround, is there a way to create an alias or group that cumulates all of the calendars at issue so that Bookings can draw from one comprehensive source? 

 

Alternatively, is there a way to draw my PP Calendar items INTO my primary calendar (me@org.com) such that the PP Calendar is not a standalone extra calendar with its own color but instead displays all of the PP Calendar items as if they were imported or entered directly into my primary calendar (me@org.com)? Stated another way, is there a way for me to see all if the PP Calendar items inside my actual primary calendar (me@org.com) so that they will display whether I have any additional "your calendars" or "other calendars" selected?

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

See attachment if it helps.

17 Replies
When someone wants to make a booking, the Exchange server is queried for the availability information of the staff selected and this availability information is only based on the events from the primary calendar of the staff.

You would have to find a way to sync the events from the PP calendar to your primary calendar.

Other booking programs like calendly can do this with any calendars that your office 365 calendar can see, even shared outlook.com calendars or other shared 3rd party calendars. It would be great to add this to bookings as I have no desire to synch all calendars, merely a need to see multiple calendars.

Did you find a solution to this Timothy? I have the same query.

Hi @Timothy Lessing 

 

Did you ever work this out?  I have the same issue.

 

REgards

Brendan

Hi @Timothy Lessing 

 

You can try this by ticking the option 'events on office calendar affect availability'.

To do this you need to make sure that you yourself are added as staff and then tick this option ( available just under the availability column) and then press save. 

 

Hope that helps. 

@sagark92 Unfortunately your suggestion won't work. This option just allows Bookings to pull availability from the user's personal calendar. @Timothy Lessing  is asking if Bookings can pull from another, non-Office 365 calendar which he has added to his Outlook calendars.

 

Unfortunately I don't think this is possible. We currently use Calendly and it does have this ability, which is nice since we track client meetings/appointments/etc in a separate CRM and then add the CRM's calendar to Outlook - so Calendly will show the user as unavailable if they have a meeting scheduled through the CRM.

 

I have added a UserVoice suggestion here if you want to upvote it: https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/314907-microsoft-bookings/suggestions/40489966-pull-a-user-s-av...

@dbriles 

 

The link to vote only takes me to the full list of voting options. What is your idea description so we can upvote it?

@Timothy Lessing 

 

I have the same problem. I was somehow able to get one of my Gmail accounts connected so that it did not show those calendar items as available in Bookings. But since I have 2 Gmail accounts/calendars in addition to my Outlook/MS365 one, it only works with one. 

 

Here's how I got the one Gmail account to sync in Bookings:

 

1. Go to MS365/Outlook Calendar on web

2. Click Add Calendar

3. Choose Add Personal Calendar

4. Connect your external calendar (mine was Google/Gmail)

5. Make sure the option is ON for "Include in My Work Availability"

 

This is how I was able to sync ONE external/non-Outlook calendar to Bookings. Anything from that Google account shows both on my Outlook Calendar and availability is reflected in my Bookings page. 

 

I still have ANOTHER Google account that shows appointments in my Outlook 365 Calendar, but only through the calendar webcal subscription. That account does not impact my Bookings availability. 

I'm also very interested.

I also need this ability with an O365 shared calendar

The solution is on this page: for O365

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/show-personal-events-on-your-work-or-school-calendar-6ffc...

See the section on:

"Include personal events in your work or school availability"
 
Doesn't seem to work with Google Workspace accounts... sad
I'm also very interested.
I would like to use an external calendar (imported in outlook using external URL) to be used by Bookings to define my availabilities.

@jdwatson (or anyone) are you using the My Bookings app, or just looking at your free/busy time directly in Outlook?  I have a personal Google account connected to my Microsoft 365 work calendar and set to be included in my work availability, per Show personal events on your work or school calendar - Microsoft Support.  

 

However, when I have time blocked by an event on my personal Google calendar, that time is NOT blocked on the My Bookings page associated with my Microsoft work account. 

 

Maybe that's what you meant by "Doesn't seem to work with Google workspace accounts"?

 

Has anyone else gotten this to work?  Is MS at least recognizing the problem and working on it??

Is it possible to use MS connector, existing or custom, to sync an Outlook calendar in an external organisation with bookings to avoid double booking?

@jasoninmel the settings are a bit finicky, but I've added a personal calendar to Outlook and bookings respects the busy times of the personal (Gmail) calendar. I recall playing with it for almost an hour before I got it to work the away I wanted it to, and I'm pretty sure I had to do the settings from the Web app. Sorry I don't have more specifics right now, but it is possible for a single calendar. Since Google can send up html for bundled calendars, it's also possible for bundles of Gmail calendars.

Thanks @jdwatson, my requirement is bit different. I want to add Outlook calendar of users from external organisations (in a different tenant) to MS bookings so that they won't be overbooked. My understanding is that adding personal calendar works for non outlook calendars, is that correct?

 

Suggestion made by Microsoft is have bookings and resources (people, places, assets, etc) to be in the same tenant. This is not practical for us as we want to build a booking solution that can be used by other organisations.

@jasoninmel This might work, though it's janky: google calendars can import an unlimited number of calendars and then "bundle" them together into a single html calendar. I use something like this for a church set of calendars (like 12 of them) and then serve them all up as a single html calendar link for folks to subscribe to.