How to prevent double-bookings on my MS Bookings page.

[alasichanh]

I've created a Service on my booking page, and have submitted a meeting request for Tuesday Feb 27 at 11:00am. I go back to the booking page (acting like a second person) to book a meeting during the same date and the 11:00am timeslot still shows available. I am trying to prevent double-bookings. What can I do to ensure that "booked" date and timeslot is no longer available once a confirmation email and schedule goes out? TIA.

[#2]

Hi Alasichanh

Can you provide a little more information:

1. When you (a customer) make a booking, are they selecting a member of staff for the booking or are you replying on Bookings to allocate staff?

2. When the initial (1100) booking is made, is it appearing in the Booking calendar, AND in the allocated / assigned staff calendar?

3. Have you assigned multiple staff to the Booking / Service?

I have found that Bookings often appears to be not working but actual is - if you have multiple staff assigned to a Service then potentially other people are available for an 11:00 am booking, once the initial booking, with a staff member, has been submitted.

Mike

[#3]

@Mike_Collins999 

1. When you (a customer) make a booking, are they selecting a member of staff for the booking or are you replying on Bookings to allocate staff?  The Service has the selected staff for the appointment. Meaning, on the external booking page, customers will select the service, date and time and does not have the option to select staff. 

2. When the initial (1100) booking is made, is it appearing in the Booking calendar, AND in the allocated / assigned staff calendar? When the booking is submitted (date, time, required fields), both the customer and assigned staff received a calendar invite. I also went into the Staff calendar to "accept" the calendar invite to see if that will confirm the timeslot and go away. 

3. Have you assigned multiple staff to the Booking / Service? At one point I did because we wanted the staff managing the calendar/service to also receive notification, but I have removed all staff and only kept the one the customer should book with and there is still no solution. 

[#4]

Interesting.

I don't have an answer - I assumed the issue was being caused because, legitimately, you were seeing bookings, at the same time but against different staff.

The only other thing I can suggest is to check, for the staff member, that you have [Events on Office calendar affect availability] turned on (which is the default seeing). You would hope that if this is the case, and a Booking is created in their calendar, then this calendar entry would then prevent another booking at the same time.

Other than that, it might be a syncing issue.

Sorry I cant be more help

[#5]

@Mike_Collins999@Mike_Collins999

 

Thanks for your help on this!

I found out the issue and fixed it, but wanted to share here in case anyone else needs the answer.

It was in the Service under Basic Details. There was a settings that stated "Maximum number of attendees" for that service. I misunderstood that as asking how many people will be in that one meeting customers schedule, but in reality, it means how many people can book this same timeslot.

Adding more than 1 attendee will allow up to that # of people to book the same time-slot. It is best used in a 'training' scenario. This is why the timeslot still shows available, after 1 person books. 

The settings must stay on 1 maximum guest which turns the service into a 1-on-1 consultation, so when they book the 9:00am slot, no one else can book.

[#6]

@alasichanh Mine says 1 - 1 one time one and maximum numbers of attendees one, but still showing the same time slot after 5, 6 more test bookings. Any suggestion @Microsoft Team or anyone? please.

[#7]

@VnUser 

We are having the same issue and cannot figure it out. The calendar we are syncing to has the appointments on the calendar as well. Frustrating.

[#8]

We are experiencing the same problem. I think it's related to the number of available staff at the time of the booking. MS Bookings seems to assume that if more than one staff member is assigned at the same time, then there's availability. However, even though we have multiple staff members available at the same time, we don't have enough rooms for the meetings. I also hope that someone fixes this ASAP.

[#9]

@Nicolas_Clark This just happened to me as well. The person rescheduled and was allowed to book an appointment slot somehow that already was taken. I am the only person listed for the service, and every service I have has a 1 person maximum, so this is another Bookings glitch I believe. 

[#10]

@alasichanh here is a complete guide for you. Your issue is explained here.

https://youtu.be/8wHOPTFCnEs?si=s-2dQdzokflmXJ4g

[#11]

@alasichanh I'm having the same issue, we use the booking system for work and have 2 appointments per time slot, we've had either 3 or 4 people schedule when the system should only allow 2 people schedule. We have also received emails from booking confirmation but they are not showing under the booking calendar.  This started a few weeks ago, it was at first only 1 time slot for which it was happening but just recently, it's happening all over the place and it has created a nuisance, it would be nice to have a guide on how to troubleshoot these issues and/if it's happening to everyone or most of the users, then, something has been updated or done recently within Microsoft for this glitch to keep happening.

[#12]

Has anyone figured out how to change it to 1:1 on a service?  It won't let me change it on my settings to anything less than 2, which means people can double book.  

[#13]

@Nicos Paphitis this video does not explain the issue at all. 

[#14]

@alococo 

Dear Friends and Colleges, 
If you can't change maximum amount of possible booking slots form 2 (or higher), its because you already have meetings in this calendar booked by 2 or more people. You will need to create a new booking page. That's all. 

If you want Booking to hide booked slots. you need to set in allocated / assigned staff settings. Don't use fixed hours. Set it for "available hours" for this staff member.