microsoft bookings presentation

Microsoft Bookings

A simpler way to organize schedules and manage appointments.

• For Business
• For Enterprise

Simplify scheduling to save time

Save time when scheduling with Microsoft Bookings. Customize appointment details, booking requirements, and specify service providers to streamline the booking experience for you and your customers. Bookings is integrated with your Microsoft 365 calendar to help your customers quickly find available times and avoid double-booking. With Bookings, you’ll spend less time scheduling and more time meeting with customers.

Visit these sample pages to learn how people can book appointments in Bookings:

Meet virtually with Microsoft Teams

Make your Microsoft Bookings meetings virtual with Microsoft Teams. Every appointment booked as an online meeting creates a meeting link that everyone can join virtually from anywhere. Bookings is also available as an app within Teams to help you create calendars, assign staff, schedule new appointments, and meet without ever leaving Teams.

Customize appointments to your business needs

Microsoft Bookings has flexibility and customization options to fit a variety of scheduling needs across departments, individuals, and types of appointments. Create and manage multiple Bookings calendars, each with their own unique setup. Different calendars can have different page structures, information, staff, and types of appointments and communication.

Provide your clients flexibility, convenience, and control

Microsoft Bookings offers more options for your customers when they visit your booking page, book an appointment, or get a confirmation email and calendar invitation. Customers who book an appointment online can easily reschedule or cancel it themselves to keep everyone in sync. If you prefer to book appointments for your customers, enter the appointment details in Bookings so they receive confirmations and reminders. With Bookings, it’s also easy to track all changes made to appointments.

How organizations use Microsoft Bookings

Organizations across multiple industries have implemented Bookings in a variety of ways to address their scheduling needs.

Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ)

SAAQ is a government agency that used Bookings to allow citizens to schedule appointments at 115 different service centers.

“The success story of this implementation is being able to build out and implement a new solution in only a few days without it costing a lot of money.”

—Mario Blouin, Technology Enterprise Architect, Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ)

Zurich Insurance

Zurich Insurance, a global insurance company, implemented Bookings as an efficient way for customers to schedule online appointments.

“If you want to have more transparency and availability of appointments for your organization, use Bookings... Bookings doesn’t require a lot of people or other resources to set up, and the benefits are big.”

—Raid El Badarin-Deriy, Digital Workplace Technical Lead, Zurich Insurance, Germany

Florida Virtual School

Bookings helped Florida Virtual School schedule and manage interactions between teachers, students, parents, and staff.

“The simplicity and ease-of-use were very attractive to our team. People select their preferred days and times, so students can only book when the teacher is available to meet with them. It’s a very smart, real-time system that works.”

—Regina Collins, Global School Principal, Florida Virtual School

Umpqua Bank

Umpqua Bank achieved business continuity while transitioning to appointment-only services using Bookings.

“Bookings solves a universal business problem… in a simple and easy-to-use way. If Bookings is in your portfolio suite and you need a scheduling tool, it’s a no-brainer.”

—Robert Walters, Senior Vice President – Director of Technology Operations, Umpqua Bank

Confluent Health

With the rise of virtual consultations, Confluent Health’s scheduling team uses Bookings to more easily manage and schedule appointments for those virtual visits.

“The centralized scheduling of appointments has generated great feedback. Everyone has commented on how easy it is to use for the virtual visits.”

—Brooke Mugavin, Vice President of Operations, Confluent Health

Get it all with Microsoft 365

Microsoft Bookings is part of select Microsoft 365 plans. Stay productive with always up-to-date apps, email, file storage, sharing, and other features.

Frequently asked questions

What is a booking/scheduling app.

A booking and scheduling app is an online application to allow for easy scheduling of customizable appointments that integrates with your calendar. A booking or scheduling app can help you and your clients avoid double booking.

Does Microsoft Bookings integrate with other applications?

Microsoft Bookings easily integrates with other Microsoft applications including Microsoft Outlook Calendar, Microsoft Teams and more. Microsoft Bookings integrations allows you to easily integrate your appointments with your personal and professional calendars.

What are the benefits of an online scheduling system?

Online booking systems can save you and your business a lot of time and headaches that can come with trying to align schedules for appointments. An online scheduling tool makes it easy for people to see your calendar availability even if they are not in your organization. An online booking system can also prevent double booking with real time availability.

What is the importance of scheduling meetings and planning ahead?

Planning ahead to schedule meetings and appointments is important to ensure you don’t have overlapping appointments, and aren’t double booking. Scheduling meetings ahead of time also makes sure you are prepared and not caught off guard.

What does it mean to be double booked?

Double booking is when someone has more than one meeting or appointment at the same time. To avoid double booking, a scheduling or booking tool should be used so that your availability is always up to date.

What is a cancellation policy?

A cancellation policy can protect you and your business from customers who cancel at the last minute, leaving you with an open appointment and potentially costing you money. A cancellation policy should be clear at the time of booking and not be a surprise to consumers. A cancellation policy can help prevent people cancelling a the last minute or not showing up at all.

Connect with Microsoft 365 :

• Chat with sales
• Contact sales

Available M-F 6 AM to 6 PM PT.

How to Use Microsoft Bookings: The Complete Tutorial

Last Updated on June 29, 2023

Feeling overwhelmed with Microsoft Bookings?

In this tutorial, I will discuss everything on how to use Microsoft Bookings including how to configure the settings.

Let’s get started.

Table of Contents:

What is Microsoft Bookings?

What are the features of microsoft bookings, 1. real-time appointment availability, 2. smooth website integration, 3. automatic notifications and confirmations, step #1: navigate to the bookings app, step #2: create a new booking calendar, step #3: invite staff members to the calendar, step #4: finish the new bookings calendar, booking page, business information, how to share your bookings page.

Are you familiar with apps or tools where people can book a meeting with you? That’s what this app is all about.

Microsoft Bookings is a tool that clients and customers can use to  schedule meetings  with you quite easily.

Microsoft Bookings has two primary components:

• The  front-end booking page  where people can schedule appointments. it can be shared using a link, through social media, or even embedded on a site.
• The  back-end web-based app  where you (owners and admin) can configure meeting details including the time of availability, staff schedules, etc.

Note : If you’re looking for calendar options in Microsoft 365, check out this article:  Calendar Options in SharePoint and Microsoft 365 .

Sign up for exclusive updates, tips, and strategies

Booking apps are more or less similar — Microsoft Bookings is no exception.

Here are some of the features you can expect from the app:

• The ability to  assign  staff members with the appropriate permissions to do their responsibilities.
• The booking page can also be  customized  according to your branding — complete with logo and brand colors.
• Mobile responsiveness  so the booking page will still look good even when viewed on a mobile device.
• Built-in client/customer  database  that will save the information of those who booked an appointment with you.

If you’re concerned about information security, information is stored in Microsoft Exchange as a booking calendar is a  mailbox  in Exchange Online.

Microsoft also confirmed that Bookings is in  compliance with standards  like ISO, FISMA, SOC, and SEC.

Related : How to Add a Shared Mailbox in Outlook 365 (Easy Guide)

What are the advantages of Microsoft Bookings?

If your organization is using apps from Microsoft, then it makes sense to take advantage of this booking app.

Besides that point, here are some advantages:

Since the app is cloud-based, all appointment bookings are  updated  in real-time.

This is vital since people who want to book a meeting with you can see an updated calendar and schedule of your availability.

Because the calendar updates in real-time, double-booking can’t happen (which happens on other apps when someone snags a schedule from another user).

If you don’t want to do extra work, you can make use of the app’s stand-alone bookings page and share it publicly.

But in case you want to integrate the tool into your website, you can simply  embed  the app so it looks like a natural part of your website.

Even if you embed the app into a website, you can still add custom fields and the embedded app will reflect the changes.

The app wouldn’t be as useful as it is if it doesn’t send automated notifications to you.

MS Bookings can save you a lot of time by  automatically  sending email reminders and confirmations so you don’t have to manually check your calendar all the time.

These notifications can help reduce repetitive scheduling tasks on your end.

Note : For a comparison of Bookings and Bookings with me, read this article: Explained: Microsoft Bookings vs Bookings With Me (Better?)

How to create a Microsoft Bookings calendar

The first step here is to navigate to the Microsoft Bookings app.

If you’re on Microsoft 365 or SharePoint Online, follow these steps:

• Click the  app launcher
• Hit the  bookings  icon

If you can’t find the icon right away, you need to click the  all apps  button first and then find the Bookings icon from there.

In the Bookings app, you will see a similar screen in the image below if this was your first time going into the app.

To get started, click the  create new calendar  button:

On the next screen, you will have to enter a  name  for the calendar.

This is important since the calendar name will also be the email address for the booking invites and will be a part of the booking page link.

The safest route here is to simply use your  business name :

Other settings you can include/change:

• Your own company logo
• Business type
• Business hours (days and hours)

The business type you enter here will be one of the services shown in your calendar. You can customize this later on.

Once you’re done setting all of them, kindly click the  next  button to proceed.

The next page is where you can add  staff members  to the calendar.

Simply use the field provided to  search  for a name and then  select  that user to add to your calendar.

Once you do, that user will appear as a  guest  on the list:

The people you add here will automatically become team members by default. Later on, I’ll show you how to easily change the access.

Once you’re done here, kindly click the  next  button once again.

The next part is where you can add a service.

However, as I explained earlier, the business type you entered in step #2 will also be one of the services shown.

If you want to change this, click the change button below the service:

On the next page, you can  update  the following:

• Service name
• Appointment duration
• Appointment schedule
• Make the meeting in Teams

Once you’re done, simply click the  update service  button:

The button will take you to the earlier page — but now with the update service. Click the  next  button to proceed to the last page.

The next part is where you can customize who can book appointments with you (the default is for organization members only).

Select which you prefer and click the  create calendar  button:

The system will inform you that it’s currently setting up your calendar and will be ready in less than a minute.

Once you’re done, the browser will redirect you to the Bookings app with your calendar in it (using the new Bookings interface).

How to configure the settings on Microsoft Bookings

The home screen in the app will now change, showing instead the Bookings calendars that you have.

If you want to configure its settings, you need to open the calendar first by clicking on it:

The first screen will show you the Booking calendar:

If you want to create a new booking manually (where you input the meeting details and customer information yourself), click the  new booking  button above the calendar.

You will see this window show up:

Here are the following  details  you need to provide on this page:

• The appointment time (service details)
• Customer information
• Staff who will attend the meeting

If you expand the options for the service details, you will be able to specify the service location, price, email reminder, follow-up email, and some notes.

Expanding the options for customer information will allow you to provide the customer’s address, send a meeting invite to the customer, and a few self-explanatory options.

In line with the new booking button, there is also a button to  add time off . This will open a similar-looking window:

The next option in the panel is the Booking page where you can configure various settings:

• Business page access control
• Customer data usage consent
• Default scheduling policy
• Customize your page
• Region and time zone settings

The  business page access control  basically allows you to:

• Disable direct search engine indexing of your booking page
• Require a one-time password for customers/clients to create bookings

Under the  customer data usage content , you can basically show personal data collection and usage terms to the person creating a booking with you.

If you want to configure the email notifications, go to the  default scheduling policy  settings. You will be able to change the following settings here:

• Time increments (30 minutes by default)
• Minimum (24 hours by default) and maximum (1 year by default) lead time
• Email notifications
• Staff control (customers can choose the staff to book with)
• Availability (determine the book-ability of the business)

In the email notifications, you can set up the system to  automatically send an email  to you when someone booked your service and whether or not to send an invite to the customer.

For general availability, you can also  create various availability  for a date range — perfect for holidays and vacations.

For branding your Bookings page, you can go to the  customize your page  settings:

• Page template
• Color theme
• Set custom color to the booking page
• Display the business logo on the booking page

The  region and time zone settings  will allow you to change the language of the booking page as well as the current time zone.

The people who booked a meeting with you will have their information saved on this page. If it’s your first time using it, you will see a page similar to the image below.

To manually enter a new customer, click the  add a new customer  button:

The next part is to manually enter the customer  information .

Click the  save changes  button once you’re done:

You should then see the new customer on the list. You will be able to edit his/her information as well as book an appointment.

This is a great feature in Microsoft Bookings since this means you can manually set and manage appointments with a client on your end.

On the staff settings page, you will be able to see all the  staff members  and their information (contact, availability, etc.).

This is what you will see on the screen:

You can also add a new staff member from this screen.

Simply click on the  add new staff  button above the page and supply the needed information:

Click the  save changes  button once you’re done.

On this page, you will be able to add new services as well as configure existing ones.

Since you have only started, the only button here is to  add a new service :

This will open a new window where you can provide the following:

• The basic details of the service
• Availability options
• Assign staff to the service
• Custom fields
• Notifications

Most of the information here is things we covered earlier — but only specific to the service that you will be adding.

The custom fields part will allow you to require specific customer information as well as add new custom fields.

The process is quite similar to creating  forms   where you can specify the question (text or dropdown):

For notifications, you can also enable  text message notifications  to the customer and customize the reminders and follow-up.

The business information is where you can configure the basic details of your business shown in Bookings.

Specifically, this is where you can configure the following:

• Basic details
• Privacy policy and Terms and conditions
• Business logo
• Business hours
• ACS App integration

If you have a separate terms and conditions page and one for the privacy policy, you can enter the  links  here.

You can also integrate your  Azure Communication Service App  with Bookings so customers will receive a URL to the app for online appointments.

The integration part is new. Currently, it only allows you to connect with Power Automate using an SMTP address.

Note : For more information on Power Automate, check out my introduction article:  Introduction to Microsoft Power Automate .

If you have followed closely the section above, you may have already come across the Bookings page link.

To put it simply, follow these steps:

• Go to the  Booking page  tab
• Click the  action  button to share the page link

For reference:

• Copy  the link if you want to share the page on social media
• Use the  email  button to send an email directly to a client through Outlook
• Embedding  will allow you to embed the page to your website

You can also change the  privacy of the link  from this page — from disabling the self-service feature to making the page available to anyone.

How do you feel about Microsoft Bookings? Do you see yourself using it anytime soon? Why or why not?

Need business help? Let’s talk it over. Kindly send me a message  through this form here  and I’ll get back to you asap.

Awesome post. Thank you, Ryan!

This was an extremely useful tutorial to work through MS Bookings Calendar methodically, Thankyou Ryan!

Hello, I’m trying to figure out how I could use Bookings to schedule a meeting when everyone has availability. Is there a way this can be done?

Independently Curated Microsoft 365 Assets

Microsoft bookings.

What is Microsoft Bookings?

Microsoft Bookings brings online appointment scheduling to your customers, and brings booking software to any size business. Manage appointments right from the Bookings app. Source: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/scheduling-and-booking-app

Microsoft Bookings training & resources

• Microsoft Bookings home
• Microsoft Bookings documentation
• Microsoft Bookings Frequently Asked Questions
• Overview of Microsoft Bookings
• Overview of the Bookings app in Teams
• YouTube (Microsoft 365 channel search)

Noteworthy in Microsoft Bookings

• A new, more powerful, and customizable Microsoft Bookings is here
• Deploying and Administering Microsoft Bookings (YouTube video)
• Microsoft Bookings API overview (preview)
• Microsoft Bookings overview (YouTube video)
• Microsoft Bookings – Our Vision (YouTube video)
• Microsoft Bookings roadmap

Share Your Feedback Dear Site Visitor, Maintaining this site is a one-person endeavor aimed at providing quick access to valuable Microsoft 365 resources. To ensure its usefulness and relevance, your contribution matters. If you encounter broken links or discover new/updated Microsoft resources, please use the feedback form to notify me. Kindly note, this site is curated, maintained, and paid for independently and is not affiliated with Microsoft. You can learn more about the 365 Training Portal on the About page . Your input greatly aids in keeping this site valuable and current for everyone. Thank you for being a part of this initiative! Graham Owner/curator

There's Something About Dynamics 365

Blog about Microsoft Dynamics 365 CE|CRM & Power Platform

Use Microsoft Bookings as room and desk planner (back to the office)

As a member of the Power Platform community, I love the initiatives to make applications available to organizations to face the challenges of this pandemic era. The platform has proven itself and offers the possibility to create professional solutions within a few days. But as a solution architect I like to keep an open mind towards all the services within the Microsoft cloud ecosystem and there are some (former) Business Apps that offer out-of-the-box functionality that can be of help. One of them is Microsoft Bookings , that is available for Office 365 Education A3/A5, Office 365 Business Premium subscriptions, and as free add-on for Office 365 Enterprise E3/E5 subscriptions but will become part of these subscriptions beginning May 12, 2020. Microsoft Bookings will also be integrated in Microsoft Teams as app, see the recent announcement: Microsoft Bookings expands availability in enterprises .

Microsoft published an article about using Microsoft Bookings to enable healthcare organizations a simple way to schedule and conduct B2C appointments via Microsoft Teams.

But we can also use Microsoft Bookings as room and desk planner for organizations that are going to welcome back their employees in the offices but need to plan the occupation of the available desks.

Make sure that Bookings is enabled for your organization in the settings of the Microsoft 365 admin center.

First we create a room mailbox for every desk that should be available as “staff” (resource) in the Exchange admin center. Set Booking delegates: Automatically accept or decline booking requests.

Open Bookings via the app launcher and add a booking calendar, for your department or office building.

You could combine this with the floor plans in Microsoft Search to guide employees to their desk. See the best practices for Microsoft Search floor plans to make it work.

Add the bookable desks as Staff. Search for the right room mailbox and set the room/desk number as initials.

Add a new service for the use of a desk, for instance for the whole day.

You can assign “staff” (resources) to this service (in case of meeting special requirements), or do not assign if every resource should be available for this service. After saving there’s a URL available to share a page for this service.

You can add the employees as customers to the system, manually or through import.

Now we’re all set to create and publish the booking page to make it available for the employees of the department or office. To keep the booking page for internal use only, enable the access control settings.

Adjust the settings for the Scheduling policy, Email notifications, Staff and Availability to your needs.

Publish the booking page to make it available via the URL that is shown.

Now we can test/use the published booking page by opening it. Select a service (desk for whole or half day), day plus start time, and the staff (resource).

Add your details and click the Book button.

This will add the booking to the booking calendar and the calendar of the room mailbox.

The employee will receive a confirmation of the booking with an .ics file to add to his/her calendar, and the option to manage the booking in case of rescheduling or cancelling it.

So Microsoft Bookings can be a great help in planning the occupation of the desks in your offices!

Sharing is caring.

Addendum: You could create a room mailbox for every room (instead of desk) that should be available as “staff” (resource) in the Exchange admin center. Set Capacity, Booking delegates: Automatically accept or decline booking requests.

When creating a service you can set the maximum number of attendees equal to the capacity of the room. If the rooms (staff) differ in capacity then assign the rooms that meet the maximum number of attendees with their capacity.

Now based on this so-called Group bookings the service can be booked multiple times for the same time slot. Note: This feature is still rolling out and might not be available in your organization yet, see official documentation .

30 comments

Thanks for sharing this! it looks great and super east to follow. One question, do you know if there is any functionality to allow users/staff to have visibility on the calendars? This is so that Staff can book the same days in for collaboration etc…

Thanks again, Moe Ali

Hi Moe, You can add the calendar of the room mailbox to Outlook. Search for it in the Address book, select and add it.

Hi, It was possible to add the room mailboxes to my Outlook calendar, however the booking only shows the company name and not the name of the booker. Within the MS booking page I can see the name of the booker, but it won’t show within the Outlook calendar. Do you know a solution for this? Many thanks!

This solution will not allow employees to book desks from MS Teams and booking mobile app so no integration between the apps.

Only staff and owner can book desks from ms teams and booking mobile app.

If we add users as staff, they will seeing themselves as resource in calendar so is there anyway to hide staffs in booking calendar either in teams bookings app or in bookings mobile app.

Note: deselecting staff option is not good solution as users.

And if users want to book via booking app in teams or in mobile they should be provided admin access.

Hi Pradeep,

You could add a website tab to a channel in Teams and set the URL of the published booking page.

Thank you very much for this great tutorial. Quick question, is there a way to limit the number of desks booked per day? Let’s say I have 30 available desks, but once 20 are booked for the day, I cannot book the remaining 10. Basically I cannot have more than 20 people at once in the building but I would like to give them the option to pick the desk they want. Is there a way to limit it in Bookings? Thank you.

Hi Benoît, I don’t believe there is a way to limit this in Bookings. You could monitor the bookings on a day and once the 20 desks are booked, you could block the calendars of the 10 remaining desks. Possible there’s a way to automate this with the Microsof Graph Bookings API that’s in preview. See: Use the Microsoft Bookings API in Microsoft Graph

Hi , it seem that even access control is set to internal user only, when doing the booking, any email address entered is accepted? is this normal?

Hi Ralph, The access control is for the booking page, and there’s no validation on the email addresses.

I have rooms with different capacity how do I set this up without having to create a new service for every room?

Hi Neil, You could create a room mailbox for every room (instead of desk) that should be available as “staff” (resource) in the Exchange admin center. Based on this so-called Group bookings the service can be booked multiple times for the same time slot, without the need of extra services. See the last part of my blog post under Addendum .

How do you locate the link to the building floorplan once you have that all setup in Microsoft Search? This is the only part I can’t seem to figure out.

Hi Aaron, Did you consult the Troubleshooting and FAQ related to floor plans?

Would this work for Room resources? Say a non-profit has multiple rooms with different capacity and dollar amount for rental and want to be able to use bookings for people who want to rent the rooms? I was told by Microsoft you couldn’t do this just this week, but they sent me this article and weren’t sure this would work for me so thought I would ask.

Hi Lisa, I think this is doable. If you create a service for each room/capacity and set the default price, and assign “the staff” (room resource) that meets that capacity. See step 10, 18 and 20 in the following page: Create the service details . You have to set the default duration (step 6) for the rental, so you might end up with more than 1 service per room. See my example .

Thank you for your response. I’m finally getting to testing this out. I am creating a service but under the section for maximum attendees, I can’t increase it to 12. I got a list of rooms from my client and for this particular room that I’m testing, there is a cost for the first hour and addtl hours are at a lower rate. Do I just put that in the notes?

Lisa – Put the size of the rooms in the room name or comments. If you set the number of attendees that would allow the room to be double booked that many times 🙂

How do you find the URL for the floorplan to put in the Website URL section of Business Information?

• Pingback: Tech trends of 2021 number 31 – InnerVentures

Great system. Worked ok during our testing with 5 desks but I have an office of 100 desks and now just says loading for each staff (desk). Guess it can’t handle that many calendars. Anyone else had this issue?

Is there a way I can change the ” Anyone” to “Any” in the dropdown list of Rooms? If I am going to use it as a desk/room booking I need to change the Booking page like ” Select Staff” to “Select Room/Desk”

I need to create several hoteling/work stations and every time I create a station it asks for an email address. I want to use the same email address for every station but it doesn’t allow me to use same email address for every work station. Please help!

Are you able to help with the query raised here: “ Hi, It was possible to add the room mailboxes to my Outlook calendar, however the booking only shows the company name and not the name of the booker. Within the MS booking page I can see the name of the booker, but it won’t show within the Outlook calendar. Do you know a solution for this?” Thanks

I work from a Large Real Estate office with only 2 conference rooms, but we have multiple (non-RE) tenants which we are often booking conference rooms for and then result in difficult conversations with our Agents who want to drop in spontaneously with their clients. This seems like a win-win, because its online, and can go to our Calendars in Outlook automatically.

My question is, how do you create the different mailboxes for each conference room? I looked up Microsoft Exchange, but have no idea what that is, and nothing came up with options to add different mailboxes. PLEASE HELP!

We’ve found this really handy so thank you for the guide 🙂

One question is when staff book a particular desk they get an e-mail invite which adds it to their calendar, the only thing that would be ideal is if that default wasn’t set to Busy as it means on Teams or Outlook they’re not free for anything else. Obviously that’s the intended behavior but it would nice if it could be changed.

You’re spot on Steven, I’m also looking for a solution for this. I’d like the default to be “Free”. Kindly let me know if you have found a solution to this. Thanks. Br, Tony

Based on my knowledge, the bookings calendar will sync to the staff’s Microsoft 365 business mailbox calendar. For google calendar to see it, it might have to book a service as a customer. If multiple users are not seen in your Bookings mobile app, chances are it is related to the display of the mobile app.

Micorosft doesn’t allows now add resource as as a Viewer Stuff. It automatically changes it to the Guest and than booking is possible all the time no matter room is booked or no. Any solutions?

Is there a way to add people to the teams meeting which is created by the booking?

WOW! A LOT of information here. So, I’m going to add to it with my “scenario”. Hopefully someone can clarify for me. ? I have 10 room resources in o365. We want to use “bookings” to manage those rooms. We have 500 end users who will be booking time in these rooms randomly as needed. Questions: 1. how do you configure this so rooms aren’t double booked? 2. How do I create the bookings page,? 3. is it best to create a dedicated 0365 user account for this like “[email protected]” so its not tied to any specific user in 0365? (People come and go) 4. I’m also assuming there would be a separate bookings URL for each of the 0365 Room resources? We just want people to be able to book room times via a bookings URL. All helpful responses greatly appreciated. thanks

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This browser is no longer supported.

Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.

Customize and publish your booking page

• 4 contributors

The Booking Page is where you set up what your external facing booking page will look like. Once you customize and publish your booking page, people will use it to book appointments with you.

To customize your booking page, sign in to microsoft365.com , and then go to Bookings > Booking page . You can customize the booking page with the following options. Once you've setup up your Booking Page, you can publish it so people can start booking appointments with you.

Watch: Customize and publish your booking page

In Microsoft 365, select the app launcher, and then select Bookings .

Under Shared booking pages , choose the booking page you want to customize.

Then select Booking page .

The section below gives you information about setting up your bookings page and how to publish your page.

Configure booking page Publish your calendar live to make your service bookable. You have the options to share the link to your calendar via email and Twitter, and to add a Book Now button to a Facebook page. The link can also be embedded in your organization’s Web site.

The internal Booking Page looks like this:

Booking page access control: Require a Microsoft 365 account from my organization to book Selecting this option will only allow those within your organization to view your page or book any services. Access to the page is authorized via credential checks to ensure the visitor belongs to an account within the tenant.

Booking page access control: Disable direct search engine indexing of booking page This setting prevents your page from appearing in the search results for Google, Bing, or other search engines. Selecting this box will ensure access to the page is limited to the generated page link.

Customer data usage consent When selected, text requesting the user's or customer's consent for your organization to use their data will appear on the Self-Service page. The box will have to be checked by the user in order to complete the booking.

Scheduling policy , Email notifications , and Staff All of these settings are similar to the ones available for each service on the Services tab.

Availability This is an option to set specific time and date ranges of availability for a service. Otherwise, Bookings will default to your business hours. You can use the Availability option here for scenarios such as holidays or extended hours.

Customize your page Choose colors and logos that appear on the Self-Service page, such as for brand consistency.

Region and time zone settings Here you can set your time zone and language preferences for the Self-Service page. We recommend setting your local time zone. For visitors to your Self-Service page, Bookings automatically detects their local time zones and will show availability to them in their own time zones. For example, if an appointment is available at 1:00pm PST, someone in CST will see the available time displayed as 3:00pm CST.

Once you publish your booking page, customers will see your booking page where they can book appointments with you. The customer facing booking page looks like this:

Add a marketing campaign ID to a Bookings page URL

Keep track of your Bookings marketing campaigns by adding a campaign ID to the end of your Booking page URL.

Use a campaign ID to see how your marketing campaigns are doing. Add a campaign ID you choose to the end of your Bookings page URL and use the campaign ID in your different marketing platforms to see which of your campaigns are connecting with customers.

Add campaign ID

In Microsoft 365, select the App launcher, and then select Bookings .

Choose your calendar and in the left navigation pane, select Booking page and copy your booking page URL and paste it into a text editing program, like Notepad.

Add a campaign ID to the end of the Booking page URL. For example, if your booking page URL looks like this, https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/[email protected]/bookings/ , you would choose an ID to add to the end. For example, if you wanted to track your booking details from your Twitter page, you could add Twitter to the end of the URL. The new URL that you would add to your Twitter page would look like this: https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/[email protected]/bookings/?RefID=Twitter . Use different campaign IDs to track the marketing campaigns you're running.

Characters in the campaign ID must be one of the following: alphanumeric characters, underscore or hyphen. Make sure you test your Campaign ID url by copying and pasting into a web browser.

Track campaign IDs

You can track how your campaigns are doing by downloading a report (TSV file) that shows you the last four months of activities of your Bookings calendar. The TSV file will show you four months of data, but you can select different four month periods over the course of a year. For more information on how to download the report, see Reporting info for Bookings .

Unpublish the booking page

To unpublish the booking page, go to the Booking page and select Unpublish .

Was this page helpful?

Coming soon: Throughout 2024 we will be phasing out GitHub Issues as the feedback mechanism for content and replacing it with a new feedback system. For more information see: https://aka.ms/ContentUserFeedback .

Submit and view feedback for

Additional resources

• Draft and add content
• Rewrite text
• Chat with Copilot
• Create a summary
• Copilot in Word on mobile devices
• Frequently asked questions
• Create a new presentation
• Add a slide or image
• Summarize your presentation
• Organize your presentation
• Use your organization's branding
• Copilot in PowerPoint for mobile devices
• Draft an Outlook email message
• Summarize an email thread
• Suggested drafts in Outlook
• Email coaching
• Get started with Copilot in Excel
• Identify insights
• Highlight, sort, and filter your data
• Generate formula columns
• Summarize your OneNote notes
• Create a to-do list and tasks
• Create project plans in OneNote

Create a new presentation with Copilot in PowerPoint

Note:  This feature is available to customers with a Copilot for Microsoft 365 license or Copilot Pro license.

Create a new presentation in PowerPoint.

Select Send . Copilot will draft a presentation for you!

Edit the presentation to suit your needs, ask Copilot to add a slide , or start over with a new presentation and refine your prompt to include more specifics. For example, "Create a presentation about hybrid meeting best practices that includes examples for team building.”

Create a presentation with a template

Note:  This feature is only available to customers with a Copilot for Microsoft 365 (work) license. It is not currently available to customers with a Copilot Pro (home) license.

Copilot can use your existing themes and templates to create a presentation. Learn more about making your presentations look great with Copilot in PowerPoint .

Enter your prompt or select Create presentation from file to create a first draft of your presentation using your theme or template.

Edit the presentation to suit your needs, ask Copilot to add a slide , organize your presentation, or add images.

Create a presentation from a file with Copilot

Note:  This feature is only available to customers with a Copilot for Microsoft 365 (work) license. It is not currently available to customers with a Copilot Pro (home) license.

With Copilot in PowerPoint, you can create a presentation from an existing Word document. Point Copilot in PowerPoint to your Word document, and it will generate slides, apply layouts, create speaker notes, and choose a theme for you.

Select the Word document you want from the picker that appears. If you don't see the document you want, start typing any part of the filename to search for it.

Note:  If the file picker doesn't appear type a front slash (/) to cause it to pop up.

Best practices when creating a presentation from a Word document

Leverage word styles to help copilot understand the structure of your document.

By using Styles in Word to organize your document, Copilot will better understand your document structure and how to break it up into slides of a presentation. Structure your content under Titles and Headers when appropriate and Copilot will do its best to generate a presentation for you.

Include images that are relevant to your presentation

When creating a presentation, Copilot will try to incorporate the images in your Word document. If you have images that you would like to be brought over to your presentation, be sure to include them in your Word document.

Start with your organization’s template

If your organization uses a standard template, start with this file before creating a presentation with Copilot. Starting with a template will let Copilot know that you would like to retain the presentation’s theme and design. Copilot will use existing layouts to build a presentation for you. Learn more about Making your presentations look great with Copilot in PowerPoint .

Tip:  Copilot works best with Word documents that are less than 24 MB.

Welcome to Copilot in PowerPoint

Frequently Asked Questions about Copilot in PowerPoint

Where can I get Microsoft Copilot?

Copilot Lab - Start your Copilot journey

Need more help?

Want more options.

Explore subscription benefits, browse training courses, learn how to secure your device, and more.

Microsoft 365 subscription benefits

Microsoft 365 training

Microsoft security

Accessibility center

Communities help you ask and answer questions, give feedback, and hear from experts with rich knowledge.

Ask the Microsoft Community

Microsoft Tech Community

Windows Insiders

Microsoft 365 Insiders

Find solutions to common problems or get help from a support agent.

Online support

Was this information helpful?

Thank you for your feedback.

How-To Geek

6 ways to create more interactive powerpoint presentations.

Engage your audience with cool, actionable features.

Quick Links

• Add a QR code
• Embed Microsoft Forms (Education or Business Only)
• Embed a Live Web Page
• Add Links and Menus
• Add Clickable Images to Give More Info
• Add a Countdown Timer

We've all been to a presentation where the speaker bores you to death with a mundane PowerPoint presentation. Actually, the speaker could have kept you much more engaged by adding some interactive features to their slideshow. Let's look into some of these options.

1. Add a QR code

Adding a QR code can be particularly useful if you want to direct your audience to an online form, website, or video.

Some websites have in-built ways to create a QR code. For example, on Microsoft Forms , when you click "Collect Responses," you'll see the QR code option via the icon highlighted in the screenshot below. You can either right-click the QR code to copy and paste it into your presentation, or click "Download" to add it to your device gallery to insert the QR code as a picture.

In fact, you can easily add a QR code to take your viewer to any website. On Microsoft Edge, right-click anywhere on a web page where there isn't already a link, and left-click "Create QR Code For This Page."

You can also create QR codes in other browsers, such as Chrome.

You can then copy or download the QR code to use wherever you like in your presentation.

2. Embed Microsoft Forms (Education or Business Only)

If you plan to send your PPT presentation to others—for example, if you're a trainer sending step-by-step instruction presentation, a teacher sending an independent learning task to your students, or a campaigner for your local councilor sending a persuasive PPT to constituents—you might want to embed a quiz, questionnaire, pole, or feedback survey in your presentation.

In PowerPoint, open the "Insert" tab on the ribbon, and in the Forms group, click "Forms". If you cannot see this option, you can add new buttons to the ribbon .

As at April 2024, this feature is only available for those using their work or school account. We're using a Microsoft 365 Personal account in the screenshot below, which is why the Forms icon is grayed out.

Then, a sidebar will appear on the right-hand side of your screen, where you can either choose a form you have already created or opt to craft a new form.

Now, you can share your PPT presentation with others , who can click the fields and submit their responses when they view the presentation.

3. Embed a Live Web Page

You could always screenshot a web page and paste that into your PPT, but that's not a very interactive addition to your presentation. Instead, you can embed a live web page into your PPT so that people with access to your presentation can interact actively with its contents.

To do this, we will need to add an add-in to our PPT account .

Add-ins are not always reliable or secure. Before installing an add-in to your Microsoft account, check that the author is a reputable company, and type the add-in's name into a search engine to read reviews and other users' experiences.

To embed a web page, add the Web Viewer add-in ( this is an add-in created by Microsoft ).

Go to the relevant slide and open the Web Viewer add-in. Then, copy and paste the secure URL into the field box, and remove https:// from the start of the address. In our example, we will add a selector wheel to our slide. Click "Preview" to see a sample of the web page's appearance in your presentation.

This is how ours will look.

When you or someone with access to your presentation views the slideshow, this web page will be live and interactive.

4. Add Links and Menus

As well as moving from one slide to the next through a keyboard action or mouse click, you can create links within your presentation to direct the audience to specific locations.

To create a link, right-click the outline of the clickable object, and click "Link."

In the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, click "Place In This Document," choose the landing destination, and click "OK."

What's more, to make it clear that an object is clickable, you can use action buttons. Open the "Insert" tab on the ribbon, click "Shape," and then choose an appropriate action button. Usefully, PPT will automatically prompt you to add a link to these shapes.

You might also want a menu that displays on every slide. Once you have created the menu, add the links using the method outlined above. Then, select all the items, press Ctrl+C (copy), and then use Ctrl+V to paste them in your other slides.

5. Add Clickable Images to Give More Info

Through PowerPoint's animations, you can give your viewer the power to choose what they see and when they see it. This works nicely whether you're planning to send your presentation to others to run through independently or whether you're presenting in front of a group and want your audience to decide which action they want to take.

Start by creating the objects that will be clickable (trigger) and the items that will appear (pop-up).

Then, select all the pop-ups together. When you click "Animations" on the ribbon and choose an appropriate animation for the effect you want to achieve, this will be applied to all objects you have selected.

The next step is to rename the triggers in your presentation. To do this, open the "Home" tab, and in the Editing group, click "Select", and then "Selection Pane."

With the Selection Pane open, select each trigger on your slide individually, and rename them in the Selection Pane, so that they can be easily linked to in the next step.

Finally, go back to the first pop-up. Open the "Animations" tab, and in the Advanced Animation group, click the "Trigger" drop-down arrow. Then, you can set the item to appear when a trigger is clicked in your presentation.

If you want your item to disappear when the trigger is clicked again, select the pop-up, click "Add Animation" in the Advanced Animation group, choose an Exit animation, and follow the same step to link that animation to the trigger button.

6. Add a Countdown Timer

A great way to get your audience to engage with your PPT presentation is to keep them on edge by adding a countdown timer. Whether you're leading a presentation and want to let your audience stop to discuss a topic, or running an online quiz with time-limit questions, having a countdown timer means your audience will keep their eye on your slide throughout.

To do this, you need to animate text boxes or shapes containing your countdown numbers. Choose and format a shape and type the highest number that your countdown clock will need. In our case, we're creating a 10-second timer.

Now, with your shape selected, open the "Animations" tab on the ribbon and click the animation drop-down arrow. Then, in the Exit menu, click "Disappear."

Open the Animation Pane, and click the drop-down arrow next to the animation you've just added. From there, choose "Timing."

Make sure "On Click" is selected in the Start menu, and change the Delay option to "1 second," before clicking "OK."

Then, with this shape still selected, press Ctrl+C (copy), and then Ctrl+V (paste). In the second box, type 9 . With the Animation Pane still open and this second shape selected, click the drop-down arrow and choose "Timing" again. Change the Start option to "After Previous," and make sure the Delay option is 1 second. Then, click "OK."

We can now use this second shape as our template, as when we copy and paste it again, the animations will also duplicate. With this second shape selected, press Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, type 8 into the box, and continue to do the same until you get to 0 .

Next, remove the animations from the "0" box, as you don't want this to disappear. To do this, click the shape, and in the Animation Pane drop-down, click "Remove."

You now need to layer them in order. Right-click the box containing number 1, and click "Bring To Front." You will now see that box on the top. Do the same with the other numbers in ascending order.

Finally, you need to align the objects together. Click anywhere on your slide and press Ctrl+A. Then, in the Home tab on the ribbon, click "Arrange." First click "Align Center," and then bring the menu up again, so that you can click "Align Middle."

Press Ctrl+A again to select your timer, and you can then move your timer or copy and paste it elsewhere.

Press F5 to see the presentation in action, and when you get to the slide containing the timer, click anywhere on the slide to see your countdown timer in action!

Now that your PPT presentation is more interactive, make sure you've avoided these eight common presentational mistakes before you present your slides.

Use Semantic Kernel to create a Restaurant Bookings Sample with Java

Sophia Lagerkrans-Pandey

May 17th, 2024 0 1

We’re looking forward to highlight a Java sample today focused on a Restaurant Bookings sample here .

Booking Restaurant – Demo Application

This sample provides a practical demonstration of how to leverage features from the  Semantic Kernel  to build a console application. Specifically, the application utilizes the  Business Schedule and Booking API  through Microsoft Graph to enable a Large Language Model (LLM) to book restaurant appointments efficiently. This guide will walk you through the necessary steps to integrate these technologies seamlessly. This sample will introduce a kernel syntax example that shows how to integrate with the Microsoft Graph API to create a Restaurant Booking. Note, this doesn’t place a real reservation, but shows how to interact with MS Graph.

Semantic Kernel Features Used

• Plugin  – Creating a Python Bookings Plugin shown here:  Java Booking Agent
• Chat Completion Service  – Using the Chat Completion Service to generate responses from the LLM.
• Auto Function Calling  Enables the LLM to have knowledge of current imported Using the Function Calling feature automatically call the Booking Plugin from the LLM.

Prerequisites

• Java prerequisites needed:
• Microsoft 365 Business License  to use  Business Schedule and Booking API .

Configuring the Sample

The sample can be configured by using the command line with  Secret Manager  to avoid the risk of leaking secrets into the repository, branches and pull requests.

Create an App Registration in Azure Active Directory

• Go to the  Azure Portal .
• Select the Azure Active Directory service.
• Select App registrations and click on new registration.
• Fill in the required fields and click on Register.
• Copy the Application  (client) Id  for later use.
• Save Directory  (tenant) Id  for later use.
• Click on Certificates & secrets and create a new client secret. (Any name and expiration date will work)
• Copy the  client secret  value for later use.
• BookingsAppointment.ReadWrite.All
• offline_access

Create Or Use a Booking Service and Business

• Go to the  Bookings Homepage  website.
• Create a new Booking Page and add a Service to the Booking (Skip if you don’t ).
• Access  Graph Explorer
• Run the following query to get the Booking Business Id:
• Copy the  Booking Business Id  for later use.
• Run the following query and replace it with your  Booking Business Id  to get the Booking Service Id
• Copy the  Booking Service Id  for later use.

Fill in the following code below:

Running the Sample

After configuring the sample, you’re ready to run it. The sample should return the following conversation as seen below.

Example of a Conversation

Dive Deeper

Please reach out if you have any questions or feedback through our  Semantic Kernel GitHub Discussion Channel . We look forward to hearing from you!

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Log in to start the discussion.

Insert/edit link

Enter the destination URL

Or link to existing content