Microsoft Bookings now has multi-day bookings and customizable time increments
We love reading your feedback in User Voice. It gives us insight into what we need to do to make Bookings better and helps us prioritize our work. Today we’re introducing two highly-requested features to Bookings related to flexibility and customization. Support for all-day and multi-day services There are many businesses that provide all-day and even multi-day services—things like complex projects, lodging, tours, and extended excursions. With this new feature you can now using Bookings to let your customers book you for these types of events. To set up all-day and multi-day services, click the “Services” link in the left side of the Bookings web page. Create or edit a service and look for the “Default duration” label on the relevant Service details page. You will see a “Days” option - just select the number of days your service requires and click Save. Default duration on the Services tab Customizable time increments Every business is unique. That’s why we provide customizable options for your Bookings page to make sure the booking process meets the specific needs of your business. We recently added more granular and customizable booking time increments. This gives you full control over exactly when your appointments are available, for situations when the standard set of booking time increment options we previously offered doesn’t meet your needs. To customize bookable time increments, first, click the “Booking page” link in the left navigation bar of the Bookings Web app. Then, click on the drop-down arrow next to “Time increments” in the Scheduling policy section of the page. You’ll see that we added several new choices to our list. Scroll all the way down to see the “Custom (in minutes)” option and click on it. You will see an additional text box where you can enter the number minutes you want your appointments’ time increment to be. Customize time increments for your services Using these new features, your booking page could look something like the one below. Notice that there is one service (Kitchen basics) which lasts 2 days but for regular 1-hour services, the time slots are in increments of 10 minutes. Booking page with new features showing Keep in mind that when using the all-day and multi-day feature, the Office 365 calendar availability for your staff members does not work like it does for shorter services. We assume that you want your customers to be able to book you for valuable, longer-term services even if key staff have short, personal conflicts on a day that a customer needs you. This means that staff members can be booked for that service even if they are busy with short, personal appointments. We'll start rolling out these new features in the next week and we hope they help you deliver a better online booking experience to your customers and make Bookings a more powerful scheduling solution for your business. We want to keep hearing from you so please, let us know what you think in UserVoice. Thanks!Custom Questions and Admin Controls Come to Microsoft Bookings
We're adding two new features to Bookings that make it easier for users to schedule and manage appointments. These highly requested updates allow you to request key information you need to better deliver your services and have better control over who uses Bookings in your organization.Outlook is committed to FindTime and to making group scheduling easier
We recently created some confusion with a decision to remove the FindTime add-in from the Office Store. We heard loud and clear from you that you missed FindTime and wanted it back. As a result, we brought it back as quickly as we could. We pride ourselves on being customer-focused so, again, we apologize for the frustration that our decision to remove the FindTime add-in caused. We want customers to know that going forward, we are committed to FindTime and plan to continue investing in making group scheduling easier. We will keep the FindTime add-in up and running, and we will continue to improve it based in large part on customer feedback. In parallel, we will invest to build an even more robust group scheduling solution that is integrated across Outlook. What is FindTime? If you’re not sure what FindTime is then please read on. FindTime is an Outlook add-in (Learn more about Outlook add-ins here) and website that uses a polling model to simplify group scheduling. If you have ever tried to find a good time to connect with multiple people who can’t see each other’s availability, you’ll have a sense of the problem that FindTime was built to address. FindTime helps groups converge on the best time to meet. If you are organizing a group meeting that includes people whose availability preferences aren’t clear, FindTime is a great solution. First, it lets you access availability information from the attendees' calendars that you can see to find an initial set of meeting times that work for those attendees. Based on these meeting time proposals, FindTime then sets up a poll on the FindTime website that all attendees can access. Through the website each attendee can suggest new times, can vote on the times that work best for them, can indicate times that do not work, and can see each other’s preferences while voting. FindTime saves everyone time by helping a group efficiently converge on the best time to meet and facilitates getting the resulting meeting on everyone’s calendars. Invitees can vote on their preferred times and see each other’s preferences FindTime was built with busy people in mind – especially those who frequently meet across company boundaries, but FindTime is also a great solution for anyone looking to meet with people whose calendars they don't have access to or for anyone wanting to give multiple meeting time options to someone whose calendar they do have access to. Who can use it? FindTime currently can only be installed by users with an Office 365 account with a multi-tenant mailbox hosted in Exchange Online and can be accessed with Outlook 2013, Outlook 2016 for Windows, Outlook 2016 for Mac, and Outlook on the Web. If your mailbox or account doesn't satisfy these requirements, consider asking your tenant administrator or IT administrator about moving your mailbox to Office 365 with these requirements. How can I get the FindTime add-in? FindTime is available from the Microsoft Office Store right within Outlook. Please check-out this article to learn more about how to access and use the Office Store. You can also get the FindTime add-in directly from https://findtime.microsoft.com/. Thank you for using FindTime and for your valuable feedback Thank you for your interest in FindTime. We hope you continue to use it and get value from it. If you have any feedback or suggestions you want to share about FindTime or group scheduling, please do – we read all the feedback we get and rely on it to make FindTime and related apps better. The best way to give us feedback about FindTime is through our UserVoice feedback channel which you can find at: https://findtime.uservoice.com. Thanks again, The Outlook Team
