Create a Bookings Calendar

Before You Begin
Instead of assigning bookings to individuals, you may prefer to associate a shared Outlook calendar with the Bookings calendar to collect reservations. Contact the Service Desk to request one.
  • Go to myapps.microsoft.com, login if necessary, and open the Bookings tile (if you need access, faculty and staff should contact its@wpi.edu)
  • Click Create new calendar
  • Select Create from scratch or Clone from an existing calendar
  • Fill in Business name
  • Optional: Add a logo.
  • Fill in Business type (e.g., Education)
  • Change Business Hours (if applicable)
  • Click Next
  • Select the staff, their role, and click Next. The roles are:
    • Administrator
    • Team member
    • Scheduler
    • Viewer
    • Guest
  • On the Set up a service page click Change to customize the service(s) you're offering. Enter the following information:
    • Service name
    • Service duration
    • When is this service available?
    • Time
    • Select if you want it to be a Microsoft Teams meeting. 
  • Click Update service then click Next.
  • Choose who can book appointments. The options are:
    • No self-service
    • People in my organization
    • Anyone
  • Click Create calendar and wait a couple minutes for it to be generated. Then click Get started.

   

Proceed through the sections below to customize the Booking Calendar to your needs. Each Booking Calendar requires at least one Service. Settings on the Services tab override other settings.

  • Business Information

    Click Business Information near the bottom of the left menu.

    Basic details includes:

    • Name
    • Business address
    • Business phone
    • Send customer replies to (email address)
    • Website URL (website you would like to reference)
    • Currency
    • Business Type

    Privacy Policy and Terms and conditions:

    • Privacy policy URL and Terms and conditions URL for customer to review

    Business logo:

    • Click Add Logo and choose the recommended WPI Logo (see Actions for logos in Marketing Tools).

    Click Save at the top.

  • Services

    The Booking Page tab sets the policies for all services, but these may be overridden on the Services pages.

    Click Services.

    Click Add a service and add

    •  Service name
    • Description (optional)
    • Location (optional)
    • Add online meeting, adds Team meeting (optional)
    • Customize Duration
    • Buffer time before or after reservation (optional)
    • Price = Free
    • Add internal notes (optional)
    • Edit Maximum number of attendees (max is 99)
      • If you need more than 99 attendees to register, please contact the Service Desk at its@wpi.edu.
    • Choose whether to Let customers manage their appointment when it was booked by you or your staff on their behalf
    • Click Save changes
    • Once you've added a service, discard the default 1:1 service -- this service does not allow editing of maximum attendees. 

     

  • Staff

    Staff can share calendar administration, viewing, or be a bookable resource as part of the calendar.

    Click Add staff.

    Under Add people, search for a person to add. You can also add an Outlook calendar: enter part of the name, then click Search directory.

    Optional: add Email, Phone number, and assign a role.

    • Team member can manage bookings on their own
    • Administrator has full privileges to edit, delete, etc.
    • Scheduler can manage bookings on the calendar and customer details. They have read-only access to other areas of the page.
    • Viewer can open some information but not view calendar events and cannot edit/delete
    • Guest cannot open bookings but can be scheduled

    Email notifications inform staff of when a booking is assigned or changed.

    If you are allowing a person to be booked, under Availability: check Events on Office calendar affect availability or fill in available hours for the person. If the hours for a person are outside of hours set for the Calendar or Service, they will not appear as bookable.

    Click Save changes

  • Bookings Page

    The Booking Page sets the policies for all services, which can be overridden on individual Services pages.

    • Under Booking page access control, check Require a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 accounts from my org to book
    • Set Scheduling policy, which will apply to all services unless overridden on the Services pages
    • Email notifications (optional) to notify the business when a booking has been added or changed, and/or email the customer (in addition to the confirmation) with an ICS file to add to the customer's calendar. Also be aware of Reminders and Confirmations to choose how far in advance to remind customer of a reservation.
    • Under Availability, for General Availability: Choose Bookable when staff are free. Staff will not appear on the calendar if they are not assigned to it. Choose Not bookable to not display the calendar. Choose Custom Hours to set varying hours, including for a particular set of dates.
    Add a mailbox or calendar
    If staff will not be bookable, add either a mailbox or calendar under Staff and assign it on the Service. Not assigning a resource will result in reservations being assigned to staff who are not otherwise bookable.

    Click Save and publish at the top. Notice you can also Unpublish.

    Once published, Share your page (optional), or embed HTML or iFrame code.

  • Book A Reservation for a Customer

    As an administrator, click Calendar to see availability. Click New booking.

    Fill in customer information, click Add, and choose whether to send an email confirmation to the customer.

  • Viewing Customer Bookings

    On the Calendar tab, view bookings by Day, Work week, Week, Month, or Today. or click Print at the top. If viewing/printing the schedule is not sufficient, on the Home tab you can export 120 days of data to a TSV file. To open the file, in Excel, Open > Browse to the file and choose All Files to see the TSV file. Click through the opening process, then Finish.