Integration of bookings with Flow and PowerApps

[Paul Dewhurst]

Is it possible to use bookings functionality in a PowerApp. I am looking for a solution that will support the booking of resources in an online examination room, asking the person to do a reservation for each student is too time consuming, is there a way to using the bookings app. to define the resource capacity and availability but use an app to create the (multiple) reservations? There does not seem to be a connector in Flow.

[#2]

I am completely puzzled and angry with Microsoft for not including a Flow Connector for Microsoft bookings 😞

How come it allows any products in Office 365 without including a connector to Flow, PowerApps or Power BI, it should be a minimum engineering requirements.

[#3 · Accepted solution]

@Paul Dewhurst I have created a flow that is using the trigger  "When a new event is created (V3)" (Office 365 Outlook) and used the bookings "user"email for the connection , so now when a booking is made I can automatically do other "flow" actions.

[#4]

@_MichaelVD_  This sounds exactly like what I'm looking for! How do you point the flow trigger to the booking calendar alias? 

[#5]

@David_Swenson I searched for the bookings mail in my O365 users and set a password for this email adress . Then in the Flow I added the action  "When a new event is created (V3)" (Office 365 Outlook) clicked the 3 dots of this block and added a new connection with the email adres & password of the bookings mail adres.

Then every time a new booking is made the flow is started

[#6]

@_MichaelVD_ Thank you!

[#7]

@_MichaelVD_ Brilliant workaround, I couldn't find the booking user/calendar in the admin portal so I created it as a user without a license. Had some trouble trying to add it as another connection in Flow though, logged in fine but it failed to pull in the calendar. Did you have to assign the user a license?

Thanks Jake

[#8]

@jhodgsonI'm having this same confusion. Creating a Bookings page apparently creates a sort of "ghost user" with a calendar for the booking appointments...but there's no instruction on how to control this "user", access the calendar, change the default name or email address, etc.

I'm sure its designed to be as simple and automatic as possible, but its confusing outside of very specific use cases.

[#9]

@jhodgson when I create a new bookingspage an online o365 user is created for this bookingpage , based on the initial name you give it when you create the page.

So if you create a "Booking Test" page the user that is created is bookingtest@yourdomain.com

When I go to https://admin.microsoft.com/AdminPortal#/users I can find this user if I search for this full email adres. While I was testing I then assigned a A1 license to this user because we have free A1 licenses because our company is a non profit company. But I just did a test with a new booking page I created and it also works with this booking user without assigning a license. So I just had to set a password for this user in the Admin portal.

In the flow itself you then click the three points and choose "add new connection" (see screenshot) and use the password and email adress of this booking user to run the "When a new event is created (V3)" action (and when I click the dropdown the "Calendar" is already visible so I just have to select it.)

[#10]

@tom-wise I think you should be able to change the displayname & email in the admin portal.

But then you have to find the user of course , I found out that if you search for just a part of the name the user does not show up. But if you search with the complete email adres it does.

You can also find it with all its properties by using powershell :

Get-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName bookingtest@yourdomain.com | Format-List -Property *

Or change properties with :

Set-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName bookingtest@yourdomain.com -Displayname "Changed displayname" ..

[#11]

I have done this as well and used "Html to text (preview)" to convert the content of the email to text so that I could do some magic with it via a Flow.

[#12]

@_MichaelVD_  You can share the Outlook booking calendar behind the booking site with yourself and use your own account for the connection in your flow. That way you don’t need an admin providing you with the password for the booking account.

[#13]

@_MichaelVD_ May I ask what actions you are doing with flow after setting up this connection?

[#14]

creating documents & lists on sharepoint with the filled in information & sending approval request mails

[#15]

@robertbuzink how do you share the calendar w/ yourself? I couldnt find anything about that...

[#16]

@danielh777

1. In the mail you get when you create a booking calendar, follow the link 'Manage membership' (e.g. https://outlook.office365.com/owa//xyz@xyz.onmicrosoft.com/bookingstaffmembership.aspx ) 
2. Delete the 'bookingstaffmemebership.aspx' part in your browser address bar and hit enter to go to outlook for web as the booking user
3. Click on calendar
4. Clink on Sharing and permissions in the context menu
5. Share with yourself
6. Accept the invitation you get in your mail

[#17]

@robertbuzink worked like a charm - thank you for that 🙂

[#18]

This is quite an old thread but since quite a lot of folks are interested in a connector for Bookings, i am reviving this post. Do checkout our new Bookings power automate connector. We have blogged about it here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-bookings-blog/announcing-microsoft-bookings-power-a...

There is a link to the connector and the documentation in the blog as well.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/microsoftbookings/

[#19]

The new connector is "Premium" this is not helpful. Bookings SHOULD NOT be a premium connector.

[#20]

Ack. This is a part of our backlog and we are working with the Power Automate team on this.