What’s new and what’s coming for Microsoft Bookings
Published Mar 02 2021 02:44 AM 9,823 Views
Subject Matter Experts:
Microsoft
Learn about what are the new features and capabilities we are have been working on during our Bookings preview. New features and capabilities for both, users and admins.
31 Comments
Bronze Contributor
Thank you :folded_hands: for your continued investments in Bookings! Such a versatile solution. Eagerly awaiting enhanced reporting (especially around no shows).
Brass Contributor

@Teja Vinukollu 

 

Are there any API's or management functionality available to automate or create a provisioning solution for bookings?

This would be important to have a consistent naming convention for the AAD account.

Microsoft

Hi, @uzhxhqyd39 

 

Are you looking at something like "Naming Policy" for M365 Groups? If so, we have this in backlog and we will be working on this ask later this year.

 

We do have APIs today but are currently in Beta. Our plan is to promote them to GA later this year. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/resources/booking-api-overview?view=graph-rest-beta

 

Thanks,

Teja

 

Brass Contributor

@Teja Vinukollu thanks for the preview video.
I have question about managing multiple booking calendars.

Lets say in a big company someone manages 10 or more booking calendars.
Currently you have a dropdown menu with "New" and "Open" to open an existing booking calendars. But its not showing you a list of them. You need to know the names of all the calendars which you are manageing. It would be great if there could be some improvement there, like list or selection of all the calendars where you are the admin. Or also when you are a team member etc.

Also all these new things in the preview video, is there any timeline for that?

 

Microsoft

@alex_ha19 Absolutely. This is work in progress. Will be available by the end of next quarter.

@Teja Vinukollu Why you use this way to embed the videos - I prefer absolutely youtube. It is much more faster than this. And I can download the video. I often watch not the complete video, I like to press the right arrow button often to get an overview. But this is not possible with this videos. :(

Copper Contributor

Has video stream progressed through this 5G upgrade and what is expected of Big Data in near future? I don't expect an answer right away. I do believe there are many other upgrades.

Copper Contributor

@Teja Vinukollu Hi there, thanks for the very informative video blog. Looking forward to all the new enhancements coming to the Bookings app this year.

 

I have one question in relation to existing APIs. Is there one available to integrate with ServiceNow environment so that when a customer calls Service Desk for help and a booking appt is required, a booking page can be launched from a ticket level in ServiceNow and copy some of customers details into Bookings appointment ie customer details, contact details and a ticket number?

 

Or is this feature coming later in the year as part of the API enhancements?

 

Thank you

Daniel

Brass Contributor

@dmmicro 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/booking-concept-overview

Then also scroll down and check the API Reference

 

Brass Contributor

@Teja Vinukollu, any plans for integration with Power Automate? 

The thing I miss the most is a "when a new appoitment is created" trigger. the only workaround I found is to monitor the business email address, and check if it is from the Booking email address. If so, I need to "manually" extract the booked service, and manage all automations based on strings (and not by service Id for example).

Would love to hear your thoughts about this. 

Copper Contributor

@Teja Vinukollu What month do you expect the API to come out of Beta?

Copper Contributor
Your video looks like a refreshed front end - when can customers access the updated front end?

Also will the new front end be pushed out automatically - are customers required to take any steps to replace their current version of the Bookings app?
Copper Contributor

@Teja Vinukollu are you actively reviewing and implementing the Bookings UserVoice feedback? There doesn't seem to be a lot of responses to the feedback posted??

 

https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/314907-microsoft-bookings/filters/top

Copper Contributor

@Teja Vinukollu Do you have a list of the new Bookings functionality implemented - your video seems to cover a lot of old functionality, rather than specific new functionality?

Copper Contributor

@alex_ha19 

Looks like passing parameters via a url query string is not possible with MS Bookings. Is this correct, could someone confirm for me please?
Brass Contributor

@Teja Vinukollu 
Thank you for the updates.
I am looking for a replacement location for the old UserVoice page.
I'd like to see the ability to change the meeting name when using the online meeting feature of bookings when tied to Microsoft Teams. 
for example, I have an appointment type of Initial Consult. 
When a user makes a booking, it creates a meeting in the Microsoft Teams called Initial Consult, and then we have an associated chat once that meeting happens. the problem is, now I have 5 meeting chats called Initial Consult, and I have no way of knowing which is which without going into each one.
group chat names for bookings.jpg

Copper Contributor

@Teja Vinukollu 

 

Hi everyone! Thanks for sharing new features. Please help to include feature to Limit Number of Bookings of a user. This is to avoid over booking. Thank you.

Copper Contributor

Dear @Teja Vinukollu, dear @oisheesen 

thank you very much for the overview of new functions on MS Bookings. I have a few questions related to this:

  • When will the new features be available?
  • Reporting: Will it be possible to export data past 30 days and more than 30 days in advance?
  • Reporting: Will it be possible to export all custom fields in seperate columns (one column for each custom field?)
  • Reporting: Will it be possible to export special characters like ä,ü,ö, etc. correctly?
  • Calendar: Will it be possible to select which calenders of staff members will be shown in the daily overview?
  • How many staff members can be booked via one service at a time? Is there a limit?

Thank you very much in advance and kind regards

Moni

Brass Contributor

@Teja Vinukollu Are these new features still going to hit GA by the end of the month? Thank you!

Copper Contributor

Hello @Teja Vinukollu 

I'm starting at MS Bookings, but I'm looking for the ability to schedule appointments with various staff members, for example I want customers meetings for a certain service to be booked with the sales person and the expert on the subject (not just one staff member).

I found that if I assing various staff members to a service, it books the meeting for only one staff member at a time, not both.

 

 

Brass Contributor

@veronicagonzalez 
Are you certain the Staff assigned to the Service have the Check mark next to their name? We publish several services this way. It could be a bug that you would need to open a ticket with Microsoft on if all the Staff members are not being assigned and notified. Bookings.JPG

Copper Contributor

@jeffwhite Hello! thank you for answering!! Yes I have both staff members selected in the service, but when schedduling the appointment it only schedules for one of the staff members at a time (the one available I guess)... But I want both staff members to be in the meeting with the customer. How can this be achieved? 

Brass Contributor

@veronicagonzalez If you have them both selected and they are not assigned and receiving the notifications, then it seems like a bug or issue. I would recommend opening a ticket with Microsoft.

Brass Contributor

@jeffwhite @veronicagonzalez hm no, this is working as intended. A ticket doesnt make sense.

You can assign multiple staff to a service, but a bookings will only book with one single staff member.
I mean lets consider the hair saloon use case. You book a hair cut and the "haircut" service has 3 staff assigned. Someone books that, then only one person is going to do the hair cutting. Bookings will check who of the 3 staff is available and assign the booking to one of them.
You will not have 3 staff working on one haircut simultaneously.
Multiple staff are used to "parallelize" bookings. So that the 10am slot for haircuts can be booked by 3 customers. And then you have 3 bookings in parallel, one for each staff.

I dont think there is an option currently to make it so that a booking would be made towards multiple staff members simultaneously. It would also be tricky because Bookings would need to consider the availability of multiple people at the same time.
Assume you want to book a consultation meeting but with 3 consultants. Then ALL of them would need to be available at the given time slot.

 

And then lets spin this one more round.. assume your company provides such consultancy service and has 5 teams of consultants a 3 persons each. Like you want to service multiple customers at once, similiar to the hair saloon.
So that means the Bookings Staff feature would need to support teams of people. You would have team a, team b etc
 
I agree it would be nice to have such a feature, but I dont think its available as of now.

Kind regards

Alex

Brass Contributor

@alex_ha19 

Your hair salon scenario is valid. However, in health care one of our multi-provider examples is a virtual post-op assessment. We do book multiple specialists for a single appointment and it does evaluate their schedules.  If it is booked by the administrative staff - they can also be double booked. The patient joins the Teams meeting and when the first specialist has finished, then the next specialist can be called(request to join the Teams Meeting). This is simpler for the patient, rather than joining two separate meetings.

Brass Contributor

@jeffwhite I fully agree that multi staff bookings would be nice. But as of now they are not possible.

Copper Contributor

Hi@Teja Vinukollu 

 

Look great but please fix the current bugs before moving on with new feature.

 

link below:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-bookings/wrong-date-displayed-in-mobile-view/m-p/25...

 

 

Copper Contributor

@Teja Vinukollu I see in the new view you can add multiple staff to a single booking. Is it on the roadmap to have a service offering that requires all staff be available for that service to book? We are looking at Bookings as a way to schedule interview panels in a quick fashion for candidates, but we can't create an offer that all staff is added to when booked

Copper Contributor
We have the same need
Copper Contributor
This is a very common scenario, and outlook and Teams offer this similar functionality by suggesting open times. The backbone for this should already exist in the 365 space
Copper Contributor

Great job what you are doing @Teja Vinukollu. One question, I don't see the individual URL for each service as I have on the legacy view when I go to edit them. Are there any plans to give the ability to provide us with those URLs so we can share just the type of booking I want to offer that person?

 

Thank you.

Tomas