Can I have Bookings ignore tentative blocks in my calender?

[MattShepherd]

When my staff take vacation, I ask them to book it in their calendars as full-day events and invite me, and I accept as "tentative" just to have that visible block telling me who is out of the office at a glance. Is there a way to have Bookings ignore tentative blocks? I know it means a slight risk of people double-booking in Bookings, but that's not an anticipated issue for me.

[#2]

No, 'tentative' is seen as 'Busy'. You could edit your status in those fake 'appointments' to 'working elsewhere' or 'free' after accepting. These values are seen by Bookings as available. But you will have to edit these entries manually.

[#3]

@MattShepherd I have the opposite problem.  My bookings page is completely ignoring entries that are in my primary Outlook calendar or from a different Bookings service.  I can't figure it out for the life of me.  
Bookings constantly shows times available that have other things already scheduled in them... I'm at a loss.

[#4]

@MichaelF79 most likely the setting to let bookings take your personal outlook's availability into account isn't switched on. This is under staff -> your account name. For this to work, your presence busy information (from Outlook) must be shared within your tenant (see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/bookings/bookings-faq?view=o365-worldwide#the-staff-m...) .
Also, if your role is Guest, you can't sync your personal calendar with bookings iirc.

[#5]

That was it. I couldn't find that setting mentioned anywhere and I only found it when I switched to classic view. Anyway, thanks for the heads up. It worked.

[#6]

I find this extremely frustrating. As most users would probably agree the bookings tool should recognize "tentative" as available. The whole point of tentative is you "may" go but you want to keep your options or availability open in case something more urgent comes up. There should be an option in booking to "include" tentative as available. I would think giving users the option to include this status to appear would not be a difficult feature to add to this application.

[#7]

@brandiwoodson I like that tentative is seen as busy, but it depends how you use your calendar. You could try accepting a meeting as tentative and then changing "Show as" and set it to free, that should make that slot bookable. 

[#8]

@johncoast understood and that's what i had to do for an upcoming migration project we have starting. However, doesn't change my opinion that this should be a setting feature per booking created where the admin can control how tentative needs to show in the booking tool. 

[#9]

@brandiwoodson I agree. Different users will treat "tentative" as more or less of a commitment, so the ability to tell Bookings to treat those blocks as busy or available would be helpful.