Overview
Microsoft Bookings is a built-in solution that works with Outlook and Teams to help folks schedule meetings with you based on your calendar. Cedar Crest is beginning to move from YouCanBookMe to Microsoft Bookings to allow for quick, easy, and flexible meeting scheduling.
Microsoft Bookings is included in our Office 365 licensing, after you active your account, you need to configure your booking page. Here are instructions on how to configure your booking page.
Tech Talk video on Using Microsoft Bookings
Configuring your Booking page
- If you have not yet activated your Bookings account, you will need to do that before continuing. Click here for instructions.
- To begin, log in to https://office.com with your FalconNet email address and password. Then open Microsoft Bookings.
- You should now be on your Bookings Home Page. Click on the Booking Page link.
- On the booking configuration page, there are a number of items you can configure. First, notice the top that says Booking page status: Not published. You will not be able to fully configure booking options (on Services) until you configure, and publish your page.
- Customize your page allows you to set a color scheme, and if your uploaded logo will appear on the page (you can upload your logo from the home screen). It also lets you set the time zone - check the box to force Eastern as the time zone if that is what you desire, otherwise, the calendar will adapt the times to the individual booking the appointment.
- Under Booking page access control, you can select whether or not you want to restrict your booking page to only those with Cedar Crest College accounts, and remove your page from being able to be pulled up by search engines. We recommend you remove your page from search engines by checking that box.
- Customer data usage consent is a box you can fill out that lets the individuals booking your calendar how you may or may not use the information if you wish to fill it out.
- Scheduling policy sets the policy for your booking page. You can set the time increments based on how long you want each meeting to be blocked off (Note: you will be able to create Services that set the time per meeting later). You can also set lead time that will not allow people to book meetings that are less that the specified number of hours. For example: If you do not want someone booking a meeting with you at 2:00 PM if it is now 1:15 PM, set this to more than 1 hour
- Email notifications sets who gets notified when a meeting is scheduled. We recommend both boxes are checked, so everyone gets all the appropriate information. However, the person booking the appointment will get a confirmation email with the meeting link even if you do not check the box, but they will not get a calendar invitation.
- Once you have the settings the way you like them, click Save and Publish.
- Once published, you will see the publication status change to below. You can copy and paste this link wherever you need it to allow people to access your booking page. You can also click Open published page to see what it looks like.
- Next, you should go into your Outlook Calendar and check the Sharing and permissions settings to make sure that People in My Organization permission level is Can view when I'm busy. If are set to Not shared, Bookings will not be able to read your calendar to see if you are busy.
