Define your services in shared bookings

When to Use?

When you define your service offerings in Microsoft Bookings, you set a service name, description, location (choose whether you want to meet in person or have an online meeting), duration, default reminders to customers and staff, internal notes about the service, and pricing. You can also tag the employees who are qualified to provide the service. Then, when users come to your website to book an appointment, they can see exactly what types of appointments are available, choose the person they want to provide the service, and see how much their service will cost (if applicable).

You can also add customized information and URLs to the email confirmation and reminders that you send when someone books a service through your booking page.

Procedure

Watch: Create a New Service 

Here are the steps to add a new service:

A. Under Shared booking pages from the Bookings homepage, either select the page for which you want to create a new service, or create a new booking page and then select it from the available pages.

B. On the shared booking page, select Services, and then select Add new service.

The number of services should be limited to 50.

1. On the Basic details page, add your selections.

Service name: Enter the name of your service. This is the name that will appear in the drop-down menu on the booking page. This name will also appear when anyone manually adds an appointment on the booking page, and it will appear as a tile on the Self-service page.

Description: The description you enter is what will appear when a user selects the information icon on the Self-service page.

Location: This location is what will be displayed on confirmation and reminder emails for both staff and users, and it will be displayed on the calendar event created for the booking.

Add online meeting: This setting enables or disables online meetings for each appointment via Teams.

• Enabled:
  • A link to a Teams meeting, unique to the booking, will be added to the calendar event on both the staff's and the customers' calendars, along with dial-in information.
  • The link to join the meeting will be added to all confirmation and reminder emails, as shown in the following example:

Note: Teams meetings can be joined via the Teams mobile app, the Teams desktop app, in a Web browser, or via the phone dial-in. We strongly recommend enabling Teams as the default online meeting service for your tenant, for the best experience booking virtual appointments. If you prefer to use Zoom as your video-conferencing software, place the Zoom meeting link in the location field.

• Disabled:
  • Appointments will not contain a meeting option, and all of the meeting-related fields that appear when Add online meeting is enabled will not be shown.

Duration: This is how long all meetings will be booked for. The time is blocked beginning from the start time, which is selected during booking. The full appointment time will be blocked on the staff's calendars.

Buffer time: Enabling this setting allows for the addition of extra time to the staff’s calendar every time an appointment is booked.

The time will be blocked on the staff’s calendar and impact free/busy information. This means if an appointment ends at 3:00 pm and 10 minutes of buffer time has been added to the end of the meeting, the staff’s calendar will show as busy and non-bookable until 3:10pm. This can be useful if you or your staff needs time before a meeting to prepare. It can also be useful after a meeting, such as when someone needs time to travel to another location.

Price not set: Select the price options that will display on the Self-service page. If Price not set is selected, then no price or reference to cost or pricing will appear.

Notes: This field appears in the booking event for booked staff, and on the event that appears on the Calendar tab in the Bookings web app.

Maximum attendees per event: This setting allows you to create services that require the ability for multiple people to book the same appointment time and the same staff (such as a class). The appointment time slot for the selected service, staff, and time will be available to book until the maximum number of attendees, specified by you, has been reached. Current appointment capacity and attendees can be viewed in the Calendar tab in the Bookings Web app.

Language: Select the default language for the booking from the drop-down list.

2. On the Availability options page, you can see the options you have selected from your Booking page for your scheduling policy and availability for your staff. For more information, see Set your scheduling policies.
3. On the revamped Assign staff page, you can smoothly assign and remove assigned staff members from a service. There are two more controls added on this page:

• Assign any of your selected staff for an appointment: When this option is selected, the booking will be scheduled with a single staff member.
• Multiple staff: This feature allows you to create a service with multiple staff members. The booking will be scheduled with all of the assigned staff members of the service.

Note: For Multiple staff, you can only create a booking when all assigned staff members are available to attend.

• Allow customers to choose a particular staff for booking: This setting enables customers to view and choose from among specific staff members for the booking.
• Select staff: You can choose specific staff members for bookings created using this service.

4. Custom fields can be useful when collecting information that is needed every time the specific appointment is booked. Examples include insurance provider prior to a clinic visit, loan type for loan consultations, major of study for academic advising, or applicant ID for candidate interviews. These fields will appear on the Booking page when your customers book appointments with you and your staff.

Customer email, phone number, address, and notes are non-removable fields, but you can make them optional by deselecting Required beside each field.

5. On the Notifications page, you can send SMS messages, set up reminders, and send notifications.

Note: Text message notifications in Bookings requires a Teams Premium license.

Enable text message notifications for your customer If selected, SMS messages are sent to the customer, but only if they opt in.

Email confirmation, Email reminders, and Email follow-up: These notifications are sent out to customers, staff members, or both, when the booking is created or changed, at a specified time before the appointment, and at a specified time after the appointment. Multiple reminder and follow-up messages can be created for each appointment, according to your preference.

Note: If you prefer to use Zoom as your video-conferencing software, notifications are another place to provide your Zoom meeting link.

You can include any additional text you would like here, such as information about rescheduling or what customers should bring for the appointment. The following is an example of customized text added to the original confirmation email, seen in the Additional Information for Email Confirmation field:

Opt-in box on the manual booking and Self-service Page:

Text message notifications will look like the following (note that SMS notifications are currently only available in North America):

6. There are two more controls available to ease your Service creation journey:

• Default scheduling policy is on by default. Turn the toggle off if you want to customize how customers book a particular staff member.
• Publishing options Choose whether to have this service appear as bookable on the Self-service page, or to make the service bookable only on the Calendar tab within the Bookings Web app.

7. Select Save changes to create the new service.