Microsoft Bookings-Staff Member Availability Different Across Services

[DaveH2]

In Bookings, can a staff member have differing availabilities across different services?

For example, on one service a staff member should be available basically all day. But on another service that same staff member should only be available for a couple 1-hour timeslots.

Thank you,

[#2]

@DaveH2 I have a similar scenario where I have a staff member who is available in person for services on Monday and Wednesday but not available in person on Tuesday and Thursday.  On Tuesday and Thursday though they can do virtual appointments.  For your case you would check the box and make a custom schedule that is outside of the normal business hours for that person.

[#3]

@gflanik Thanks for the reply! Not sure I'm following you... Which checkbox? On the Staff or Services options?

Also, not sure if it makes a difference but I wasn't very clear in my original question in that we have multiple services with the same staff members(~15) in each service. I'd like just one of those staff member's available hours to be different across two different services. I'd like the other staff members available hours to remain as is, same hours across each service they are a part of.

For example;

Adam, Bob and Cody can all have their own unique availabilities to fit what works best for them. Each of them currently have the same availability across 3 different services. (we have this established and set already)

Dan, however, needs to be available basically all day for one of those same 3 services and available for just a couple hours on another one of those service. (this is what we don't know how to do)

Thank you,

[#4]

@DaveH2 @gflanik sadly I don't think this is possible.

I also need this. One of the sales team has availability for F2F/Site Meetings on a Wednesday, but online only Thursday/Friday.

Unfortunately, when looking at the individual Services you can't set day and time availability.

It would be a perfect addition to the system though.

[#5]

@dnokhl 

In each Service, you have the option of setting up availability. So if your Service is Listed as Online Meeting, you could make the availability Not Bookable for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday  and then use your available times for Thursday and Friday. 

My example below is for a service we only want offered at 11:00, 1:00, and 3:00 on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. 

I hope this helps!

[#6]

@ginaschultz thanks so much! I had seen this, but, it was greyed out/wouldn't let me select the drop-down option. I needed to turn off the "Use the default scheduling policy" checkbox. This should work as expected. Thanks again!

[#7]

@dnokhl 

Ours is still not performing as desired.

My availability is set as follows.

For one of our our services, the user/client end does indeed have my availability as shown above, so that service is working fine.

However, in our other Emergency Service, I need to be available all day as shown below...

...yet these 8am-5pm availabilities are not reflected on the user end for this service. The user end still shows me available Mon/Wed/Fri as shown below.

Thank you,

[#8]

@DaveH1320 we're using Microsoft Bookings for 1 employee per Booking Page/Calendar, so regardless of the "Services" settings, this will apply to the "Staff", because there is only 1 staff member.

I think your use case is different so unfortunately I cannot help.

[#9]

@DaveH2 

Agreed. This is a huge problem for us. We have a small team - just 4 people - but some of prefer to work in the office full-time while others work from home half the week. We have two different services to allow for this this - In-Office and Remote Service. 

However, as Bookings currently is, a staff member cannot be assigned to a service for only certain days. It seems to be an 'all or nothing' approach.

'Customised Hours' will close off booking opportunities to those working every day if it is set to suit the work from home staff, but 'bookable when staff are free' opens up every single day regardless of whether that staff member will be present or not. 

We're just discovering this as we (intended) to move more fully to online booking after an otherwise positive experience - but this is gonna scuttle the whole thing. Huge disappointment. 

[#10]

@Siobhan_S this is where I am at as well. Almost the exact same scenario.

It's is poor customer experience, but it looks like the the work-around is to set up a service per person, then disable "allow customer to select staff" (so it looks a little less stupid). Unfortunately, this is a clunky. But, with only a few staff, it temporarily accomplished the goal without totally confusing customers or doing crazy work arounds with staff calendars to set unavailability.

[#11]

@gbickert Thanks for the suggestion. It never would have occurred to me. 
You're right in that it's pretty clunky, but... well. Rock and a hard place, huh?  🙂 

[#12]

@Siobhan_S We will see how the public responds. In my case, I only have 3 people that accept appointments for this calendar. So, it isn't terrible. But, I'd sure like a proper solution so I can expand my use of Bookings for all kinds of purposes without hacky work-arounds.

[#13]

My solution is to have each service type as separate calendars. As separate calendars, the business hours can be different for each staff member, across the different calendars/services.

Then the problem is that I have to share two links, one for each calendar/service. I don't want to have two separate links on the top page. So I think what I'll need to do is: on the top page, provide a link to a webpage which then shows the two link options; the two separate calendar/services.

Certainly not as pretty a result as Bookings provides when the two services are created within one calendar but... this is a solution that will have to work for me until a better solution is available. 

[#14]

@DaveH2 - Having multiple availability schedules for staff across different services will need setting up staff scheduling policies at each service. Although this options seems to offer flexibility, other users may find this an overhead to manage and lead to confusion while dealing with calendars having many services. Our recommendation to have different Booking calendar and set up staff availability at the Business level. Hope this helps.

[#15]

I disagree. This is exactly what people are asking for. It may be harder to manage. But, if the default is still to work as it currently does, that will avoid confusion for the few businesses where all staff work from the same office, in person and on the same schedule. Honestly, I can’t imagine the default scenario on which bookings is designed is all that common- especially with work-from-home now so prevalent in so many industries. So greater flexibility for setting availability per person and per service is necessary.

[#16]

I'm not sure why the theoretical confusion of some should mean the functionality of it is denied to all.

[#17]

@Siobhan_S 

We are having this same issue. We have a Service that is available to be booked Monday through Friday, but different staff members are available to attend these appointments on different days. 

What we need is to be able to go into the Service settings and then pick what days and times each assigned staff person is available to attend the meetings.

The current solutions either have us crating extra calendars or extra services. Not very efficient or simple for our clients to navigate.

[#18]

This will only work if there is only one staff member assigned to that service. If the service has 3 staff members available this will restrict all 3 instead of just the one person who needs the restricted hours.

[#19]

Happy to have run across this thread and would like to +1 the request for this feature addition/improvement. The only similar thread that I could find was https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-bookings/handling-in-person-vs-virtual-appointmerns... so I will cross-post my response in hopes that Microsoft will see and address it one way or another.

The same scenario as others have eluded to, I have staff that work certain days in the office and other days from home. Of course, this means they can offer virtual and phone appointments any day of the week, but can only offer in-person appointments on the days that they work in the office. To solve the problem utilizing the existing Bookings features, we are forced to maintain two separate Bookings calendars, each with intricate availability set for each individual staff member. Far from ideal, and a fair amount of work to juggle with a dozen staff involved.

It would be incredible if we could adjust individual staff availability by day, times, and modality within a single service. C'mon, Microsoft... you can do it!

[#20]

I just thought of another workaround that will work for some, but not all. If you are the administrator for your account, you could create service accounts that will appear in bookings as a different/duplicate staff member. If that service account is listed under the original account as an alias, I believe that all calendar events and emails will be routed to the original account.