Multiple staff member bookings in Microsoft bookings

[Cameron Purdy]

Hi, is there a way to set a service that so that the customer can book a meeting that will require more than one staff member to attend. ie they book a meeting and it searches staff member A & B and only shows times when they are both available. The meeting is then entered into both staff plus the customers calendar

[#2]

@Cameron Purdy I have exactly the same issue.  Did you find a solution.

Cheers,

Dean.

[#3]

Resurrecting this years-old thread to ask the same question. Is there any way for a customer to book a time with more than one staff member?

Any workarounds, if not?

Thanks,

Brett

[#4]

Anyone figure out a workaround for this? Any chance this is ever going to be implemented?

[#5]

Hi @Cameron Purdy 

Have found an awesome solution to having multiple staff members with external email addresses ALL automatically assigned to a booking and notified via email at the time of the booking. You can use this solution for internal addresses as well. 

It uses a distribution list as the only staff member assigned to a service, ensuring that staff member is always picked.  When that service is selected by the client, ALL the staff members in the distribution list are notified automatically.

1. Create a Distribution Group in Microsoft 365 Admin Center
   1. Groups > Add a group
   2. Create a Distribution Group Email Address name@yourdomain.com
   3. (This can take up to 60 minutes for the new group to be created and editable)
2. Add External Email Addresses in Exchange Admin Center
   1. Recipients > Contacts
   2. Add > Mail Contact
   3. Enter the external email address details for your staff members
3. Add External Emails to Distribution List in Exchange Admin Center
   1. Groups > Recipients
   2. Double-click the newly created distribution list 
      1. Membership > Add Members
      2. Select the external email addresses from the Contact list & add to distribution list
4. Create Staff in Bookings Admin 
   1. Staff > Add Staff
   2. Enter staff details using distribution list email address name@yourdomain.com
5. Assign Staff to Services in Bookings Admin
   1. Services > Manage Services
   2. Select Service to assign staff
   3. Select only the staff member with the distribution list associated email address and no other staff members

Say you have three staff members with external email addresses added to this distribution list. 

Now when a booking is made for the service (assigned to the external distribution list Staff member) all three of three of these other staff members are automatically emailed with bookings calendar invite message. 

If the booking is rescheduled or cancelled all three of the staff members get notified.

This only works well if you require all three of these staff members to always be present for a service to occur.  If any one of them can't be available you will need to mark the distribution list associated staff member as having Time Off to stop the service being selected for certain dates.

This is a fantastic solution that works around the shortcomings where multiple staff are assigned to a service (three in this example) but when a client makes a booking, randomly only ONE of the staff members is selected and notified automatically.  You then manually have to select the other two if you require all three staff to be notified.

Hoping in the future Bookings will allow an option to force all assigned staff members to a service to be available and notified when a booking is made, this is the preferred solution but for now this workaround achieves the same result.

Hope this helps anyone else with this need.

[#6]

@Abigail05 if someone's calendar is busy in thats in the distribution email list- will it just book a service meeting with the other two people?

[#7]

@Cameron Purdy 

Did anyone find a solution to this? I see this started back in 2018....4 years later without a solution isn't giving me confidence.

I want to be able to have colleagues book a time with me and my manager. At this stage it only adds me automatically to the booking, I then go in and also add my manager. I would like it to be able to automatically select us both when our colleagues make the initial booking.

[#8]

@LaurenWinterI am not sure, but have you tried creating a flow with PowerAutomate?

If meeting is created then add your manager?

I have a similar problem and will try this...

[#9]

@LaurenWinter You can set up a new service, under Assign Staff select Multiple Staff, then select the assigned staff from the selected staff list. You can hide the staff name.  When a meeting is booked it is booked with all assigned staff. 

[#10]

@SJohnson2023 the assignment of multiple staff is possible. However, the challenge has been with the calendar showing availability of EITHER staff not BOTH staff. That is the problem the chat is trying to solve for.

[#11]

Looks like this is available now!
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/bookings/define-service-offerings?view=o365-worldwid...

"Multiple staff This feature allows you to create a service with multiple staff members. The booking will be scheduled with all of the assigned staff members of the service. You can refer to this service as N:1 booking service.

For Multiple staff, you can only create a booking when all assigned staff members are available to attend."