#OneNewThing: Easy Appointment Scheduling using Microsoft Bookings

HOW YOU SET UP BOOKINGS

With Bookings you set up all of your acceptable parameters.  You can set up:

• Services – where you set up what the appointment is for and the time it should take.  An example could be GroupPresentation Meeting – 30 min.
• Hours – where you can set up the hours per day where you will accept appointments.  You can set several time blocks for each day.  An example could be:
  
• Scheduling Policy – where you can set the minimum amount of lead time you have to have before someone can book with you.  For example, at 1:15 someone can’t book a 2:00 appointment with you if your minimum lead time is 60 min.

Bookings then generates a “Bookings Page” that is where users can go to book an appointment with you.  You can link this page in your email signature or in OAKS for easy student access.

HOW OTHERS SCHEDULE WITH YOU

1. Users go to your Bookings page (example: http://bit.ly/BookWithMendi)
2. They select the type of meeting or appointment they want
3. Lower on the page the calendar changes to show ONLY slots that are open for that amount of time within the Hours constraints you set earlier.
4. User selects the time they want.
5. They add their details: Name and email.
6. They provide any additional information you require them to provide (example: reason for the meeting).
7. Then click Book.
8. The User/Student gets an email from which they can change their appointment or cancel it and add it to their own calendar.  They will also get an email reminder before the appointment so there is no excuse for them forgetting.
9. You will get an email and it will automatically be added to your Outlook calendar.

Bookings feeds off your Outlook calendar for availability, so even if you manually add an appointment to your calendar it will not be available on the Bookings page.