Use Microsoft Bookings to help organize and manage appointments on your Outlook calendar.
One of the most dreaded questions, “When are you available to meet?” This question alone can disrupt your day, causing you to dive into your calendar – start to list out days and times you are available – keeping your fingers crossed hoping those suggestions work for the person asking. Let’s prevent these situations from ever happening again, start using Microsoft Bookings!
Microsoft Bookings is a service in Office 365 where you create a calendar and set your available times. Your Outlook Calendar is linked to your Bookings calendar, only offering your available times. Create specific meeting choices and receive an email notification at the moment a meeting was scheduled. Easily share a custom link to your calendar for anyone to start booking meetings with you today. Check out this overview from Microsoft:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/scheduling-and-booking-app.
Use Bookings with anyone. You can adjust a setting allowing for people out of your organization to access your Bookings calendar or restrict your Bookings calendar for only people in your organization. Bookings is extremely user friendly to schedule a meeting and create your custom Bookings link. Post your Bookings link on a website or include it in your email signature. Inserting the link in an email signature is a great way for people to have quick and easy access to your link. If you are scheduling meetings with others, create a Bookings calendar and share your link. You will start saving time and filling up your calendar with organized meeting times that you didn’t have to create!
Check out a preview of what your end users will see.
Ideas for implementation:
- Share availability with coworkers for general meetings.
- Hyperlink the Bookings link in your email signature and everyone can easily access your availability and schedule a meeting with you.
- Teachers can create a Bookings for parent-teacher conference day. The Bookings link is shared with parents, seeing all available times for them to schedule and meet with the teacher.
- Create a Bookings calendar for scheduling an event. Volunteers can view available times to work for an event, choose an available time and book their working time. The event organizer will have a populated calendar with scheduled shifts for each volunteer.
Learn More:
- Automate scheduling with Microsoft Bookings – Microsoft Educator Center course
Contributor: Aaron Sweet
Aaron Sweet is a former Math teacher with 7 years of experience and 3 years as a Technology Integration Coach in Newark, NY. He works with students, teachers, and administrators in the district to support with all technology needs.
Follow Aaron on Twitter: @AaronSweetNYR
