Microsoft Bookings: Set-up a booking page for a group

Navigate to the business information section by clicking Business information on the left navigation bar. After initial set-up of business information, you will likely not need to access this section of your booking page again.

Basic Details

Expand the basic details section. In this area, you can you should enter business information such as name, phone number, address, and email. All of the information you put here can be found by those who visit your booking page to set an appointment. If you do not want the phone number available to students, for instance, do not enter it here.

Name

The name you enter here will be what is displayed on the booking page that students or others will see when booking an appointment. Changing this name will not change the URL of the booking page.

Send customer replies to

If your group has a shared email address like onlinelearning@mnstate.edu this is likely a good place to enter it. If there is specific person in your group who should be notified of your appointments, such as an office manager, entering their email address here will allow them to be notified of all bookings created on this page.

Privacy policy and Terms and conditions

This section can safely be skipped for nearly all users. If you are unsure, check with the legal department.

Business logo

If your group has a logo, you can upload it here. If not, using one of the logos available from the marketing web page is a good alternative.

Business hours

When setting business hours on your individual booking page, it is best to set them as broadly as possible so that you do not need to return to this section to modify them. You can set more restrictive times when you create services. What is the earliest time you would ever want someone to book an appointment with you? What is the latest time? Can you envision a situation when you may want to have folks book appointments on Saturday or Sunday?

ACS App Integration

This section can be skipped.

The booking page section is where you can find the URL to distribute to your customers or students. You can set restrictions on who is allowed to access your booking page. It also allows for some customization of the appearance of the booking page.

Configure booking page

Choose who will be able to use your booking page to make appointments with your group. Choose from the following options:

No self-service

Selecting this option will "turn off" your booking page so that nobody can access it. This is one way to stop bookings over the summer or while the campus is closed.

Available to people in your organization

Selecting this option will restrict access to Microsoft 365 users within the state-wide MinnState system. Folks will need to login to Microsoft 365 before being able to access your booking page. For students who don't know how to use Microsoft 365, this can add a barrier.

Available to anyone

Anybody with the link will be able to access your booking page and set appointments with you. This is the typical setting for most booking pages. In the following section, we will remove the ability for Google and other search engines to find your booking page.

Business page access control

Disable direct search engine indexing of booking page

Check this box to prevent Google and other search engines from listing your booking page in search results. Checking this box is typically recommended.

Require a one-time password to create bookings

Checking this box will require people to check their email for a code mailed to them and enter that code on the booking page in order to set an appointment. For students without easy access to their email, or students who are not familiar with this type of verification, this can add a barrier.

Customer data usage consent

Unless you will be using personal data you collect for marketing or other business purposes you can safely skip this section. If you are unsure, check with the legal department.

Default scheduling policy

If you will be creating multiple different services (appointment types) that all have the same availability, entering that availability here may be helpful. When setting up services later, you can choose to apply this default schedule. Making changes to this section will apply those changes to all services using this default policy.

Customize your page

In this section you can change the color theme, set a custom color (MSUM red is #A6192E), turn the logo display on or off, and choose how your booking page will appear; either in the "classic" or "new" style (template).

Classic bookings style

New bookings style

Region and time zone settings

Setting the time zone correctly is important. Please ensure (UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada) is selected.

Times on Bookings will appear in the customer's own time zone by default. If you'd like them to always display in Central time zone, check the "Always show time slots in business time zone" box.

Groups should add all members who will be taking appointments and any additional members who might manage bookings or make edits to the booking page. On the Staff page, if you created this booking page, you will see yourself listed with the Administrator role. When there are multiple staff members, clicking a staff member's name in the list will open a "preview" of that staff member's settings on the right side of the page.

Adding and Editing Staff

To add a staff member, click the Add new staff link at the top of the list of staff members. This will open the add staff page. Start typing a person's name or email address in the box labeled "search for people or groups", then click the person in the list when their name appears. Be sure to double check their email address to ensure you've added the correct person.

To edit an existing staff member, you can select them in the list and then click Edit staff under their name on the right, or you can click the pencil icon next to their name in the list of staff members.

Assign a role

Each staff member has a role assigned. You can choose from the following roles:

• Team member can manage bookings on their own calendar and their availability in the booking mailbox. When adding or editing a booking in their calendar, they'll be assigned as staff.
• Scheduler can manage bookings on the calendar and customer details. They have read-only access to settings, staff, and services.
• Viewer can see all the bookings on the calendar, but they can’t modify or delete them. They have read-only access to settings.
• Guest can be assigned to bookings, but they can’t open the booking mailbox.

Notifications

If you'd like the person taking the appointment to receive an email when a booking is created, check the box labeled "Notify the staff member via email when a booking assigned to them is created or changed".

Outlook Calendar integration

For best results, please ensure the "Events on Office calendar affect availability" box is checked. If this box is not checked, a booking may be created that conflicts with something already on the staff member's schedule.

Additionally, please ensure all staff members have their outlook sharing settings set so that the organization can see their availability. Failure to do this may result in bookings created that conflict with something already on the staff member's schedule.

Availability

Each staff member can have specific hours of availability. These hours apply to all services created in this booking page.

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 description 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

To remove a time interval click the trash can icon. Click the plus sign to add new time intervals to specific days.

Set the times you would like a student to be able to make this type of appointment with your team. For instance, if your available 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.

Please note: There can be 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

It is important to assign staff members to your services. If a staff member is not assigned, bookings will not know whose outlook calendar to check for availability when booking an appointment.

Staff Settings

"Assign any of your selected staff for an appointment" will setup a one-to-one relationship between bookings and staff members. When a service is created using this setting, each appointment will be assigned to a single staff member.

"Assign all of your selected staff for an appointment" will require that all staff are available and will create an appointment that includes all of them.

"Allow customers to choose a particular staff for booking" can be turned on or off. This setting allows a person making an appointment to choose among available staff members. If no choice is made, or if this setting is turned off, appointments will be assigned to available staff alphabetically by StarID.

Select staff

To assign staff members to this service, click their name in the list. You will see a green checkmark icon appear to the left of their name, and their name will be added to the list of assigned staff on the right. In the example image below, Heather and Cliff have been assigned to this service while Brandyn has not.

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

Check the box labeled "Notify the business via email when a booking is created or changed" will send and email to the address listed in the "Send customer replies to" box on the Business information page.

Send a meeting invite to the customer, in addition to the confirmation email

Checking this box will create a calendar invitation that will enable customers (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 customers 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 an 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 member, or "All attendees (customer, staff, and business)"

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 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 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.