Bookings refers to different appointment types as "Services". Instructors will commonly use bookings to enable students to schedule meetings during office hours, or to schedule a meeting for advising. Services can have different hours of availability, and can be set up to be available only during certain times of the year. Your booking page will come with an example service already made. If you chose the Education business type, the service will be named "Office hours".
When there are multiple services, clicking a the name of a service in the list will open a "preview" of that service's settings on the right side of the page.
Create a new service
Above the list of services in the middle of the screen is a link to Add a new service. Click it to begin creating your new service.
Delete a service
Your booking page must always have at least one service. You cannot delete all services. To delete a service click the trash can icon next to the service name in the list of services. Your mouse must be hovering above the service in order to see the trash can icon.
Hide a service
You can choose whether an individual service is shown on the booking page or not. To remove a service from the booking page, look for the Publishing options toggle on the left side of the screen and turn it off. The oval will be white when the toggle is off.
Edit a service
To edit an existing service, you can select it in the list and then click Edit service under the service name on the right, or you can click the pencil icon next to the service name in the list of services.
Basic Details
Name
This name is what guests to your booking page will use to determine what type of appointment to book. Common services for faculty members include: Online Office Hours, In-person Office Hours, Online Advising, In-person Advising, and Project Presentations.
Description
The description of the service is visible to the person booking the appointment and can help them understand what different services are for. For example, an Online Advising desription might read: "Meet with Professor Dragon in Teams to discuss your progress toward your degree."
Location
Put the location where your meeting will occur. For in-person meetings, you may want to put your office number such as LI 139.
For online meetings using Zoom, you can put a zoom link here. There is no way to automatically generate a different zoom link for each meeting. It is a good idea to have the waiting room enabled if using zoom in this way. You may also want to change the "Who should go in the waiting room" setting on your zoom account.
For online meetings using Teams, you can simply write "online" here.
Add online meeting
The add online meeting toggle controls whether a Teams meeting link is automatically generated and sent to users when they book with you. If you want to use Zoom for your online meetings, turn this setting off. If you are creating an In-person service, you will also want to turn it off. Hover your mouse pointer over the information Icon to learn more.
Duration
Set the length of time that will be booked for the meeting. Online meetings are not automatically ended when the appointment time ends.
Buffer time
If you want to be sure to have 10 minutes between any existing items on your calendar and this new appointment, you can use the buffer time setting. Any buffered time should be added to the appointment duration when scheduling. For instance, In a 2 hour time slot you can have four 30-minute meetings if there is no time buffer. In that same two hour time slot, you can only have three 30-minute meetings if they each have a 10 minute buffer before the meeting.
Notes
Anything in this notes section is not visible to the person booking the appointment. Only staff on the booking page can see these notes.
Availability options
Time increments
This controls what times a customer is shown when they view available times on the booking page. A setting of 30 minutes here will typically result in available meeting times like this, 10:00 10:30 11:00 11:30 12:00 and so on. By default this is set to 30 minutes.
Minimum lead time
This setting controls the minimum amount of time in advance a student is allowed to schedule with you. For example: if this is set for 24 hours, then if a student is looking at the booking page at 6 pm Monday, the earliest possible time they will be able to book is 6pm Tuesday. A 12 hour setting will typically prevent your students from scheduling with you same-day. By default this is set to 24 hours.
Maximum lead time
This setting controls the maximum amount of time in advance a student is allowed to schedule with you. For example: if this is set to 30 days, then if a student is looking at the booking page on September 20, the latest possible time they will be able to book is October 20. By default this is set to 365 days
Availability
Set the times you would like a student to be able to make this type of appointment with you. For instance, if your Office hours are:
Tuesday 9:00am - 10:00am and 2:00pm - 3:00pm
Wednesday 2:00pm - 3:00pm
Thursday from 9:00am - 12:00pm
then your availability will look like this. To remove a time interval click the trash can icon. Click the plus sign to add new time intervals to specific days.
Please note: you can have multiple availabilities set for an individual day.
Special considerations for Service availability
If you are setting up this service for a limited amount of time, for mid-term advising for example, it is recommended you set your general availability as "Not Bookable" and set custom hours for a specific time period by clicking "set different availability for a date range".
Assign staff
Although you are setting this page up for an individual, it is still important to assign staff members to your services. If a staff member (you) is not assigned, bookings will not know whose outlook calendar to check for availability when booking an appointment.
Staff Settings
The following are suggested settings for services set up for an individual on a shared booking page. Ensure that "Assign any of your selected staff for an appointment" is selected and turn off the "Allow customers to choose a particular staff for booking" toggle.
Select staff
To select yourself as the staff member assigned to this service, click your name in the list. You will see a green checkmark icon appear to the left of your name, and your name will be added to the list of assigned staff on the right.
Custom Fields
The custom fields section of bookings allows you to specify what information you'd like to collect from folks who are booking with you. There are default fields that can be selected, and you can create custom fields to collect information more specific to your situation.
Customer information
By default, a newly created service will ask customers for their email, phone number, address, and notes, but will require none of these.
To remove a field from your booking page, click the green checkmark icon to the left of the field name.
To require a field turn on the "required" toggle to the right of the field name.
In this example, the email field is required and the customer notes section is not required. other fields are turned off.
Custom fields
To create a custom field, click the Add a custom field link in the Custom fields section. After creating a custom field, you will be able to turn them on or off or mark them as required in the same way as the customer information fields. After a custom field is created in one Service, it will be available for use in all other services. When creating a custom field you have two options for the type of question, either Text or Dropdown.
Text Question
A Text Question will allow your customer to enter text into a box. This is a good selection if you are going to ask students to enter their StarID, for instance. To create this type of question, all you need to do is enter the question you'd like your customer to answer and click Save Changes
Dropdown Question
A Dropdown Question will allow your customer to select from specified options. This is a good selection if you are asking question like "Do you know how to access your DARS report?" To create this type of question, enter your question in the box, then click the Add Option link until you've added all of the answers you'd like available to the customer then click Save Changes
Notifications
Text Message Notifications
This option is unavailable without a Teams Premium license and should remain unchecked. If you'd like to inquire about license options, please submit a ticket.
Email Confirmation
There are three main options in this section. You can "notify the business", "send an invite to the customer" or add additional information to be included with the booking confirmation email sent to the customer.
Notify the business via email when a booking is created or changed
If you'd like to receive an email when a booking is created, check the box labeled "Notify the business via email when a booking is created or changed".
Please note: if this box is checked, and the box to notify the staff member is checked on the staff page, you will receive two notification emails for every booking.
Send a meeting invite to the customer, in addition to the confirmation email
Checking this box will create a calendar invitation that will enable students to easily add this appointment to their online calendars such as their outlook calendar. For people who use an online calendar, this is a courteous and helpful thing to check. Selecting this will result in students receiving two emails; one email is a confirmation of the booking, the second email is the meeting invitation.
Add additional information
This section allows you to add information to the confirmation email that you'd like your student to have before they meet with you. You can remind them to print and bring their DARS, for instance, and link them to the appropriate place to access that information. If this will be an online meeting using Zoom, this is a helpful place to add the Zoom link and information.
Email Reminders
By default a newly created service will be set to send an email reminder to the customer 1 day before the scheduled meeting with the message " Just a quick reminder that your service is coming up soon."
Delete an email reminder
If you'd like to delete an existing email reminder, click the trash can icon in the upper right corner.
Edit an existing email reminder
If you'd like to make changes to an existing email reminder, click the pencil icon in the upper right corner.
Create a new email reminder
If you'd like to create a new email reminder, click the link to Add and email reminder.
Reminder options
When editing a reminder, you have options to change the timing, who the email is sent to, and the message that will be sent.
Timing
Timing options range from 15 minutes before to 2 weeks before the scheduled appointment time. There is no option to add custom timing.
Send to
The reminder can be sent to the customer, the staff (you), or "All attendees (customer, staff [you] and business [also you])"
Message
You can customize the information that is sent to the student in this reminder email. If there are things the student needs to do before your meeting, reminding them here is a good idea. Additionally, if this is an online meeting using Zoom, this is another helpful place to add the Zoom link and information.
Email follow-up
By default a newly created service will be set to send an email follow-up to the customer (student) 15 minutes after the appointment ends with the message " We appreciate your time. Book your next appointment." The sentence "book your next appointment" is a link to the booking page where the customer (student) can book again if needed.
The process to delete, edit and create new Email follow-ups is nearly identical to the process for Email reminders. See the above section for detailed help navigating this experience.