At the end of April, Microsoft announced in its Message Center update that Microsoft Bookings, a self-service scheduling tool, will be available for Office 365 from mid-May.
Read in this article what you should know about it.
What is Microsoft Booking?
Microsoft Bookings is an online and mobile app for small businesses who provide services to customers on an appointment basis. Examples of businesses include hair salons, dental offices, spas, law firms, financial services providers, consultants, and auto shops.
How Microsoft Bookings works?
As with all of the Microsoft 365 apps, Bookings is a tile in the app launcher. Click the tile to launch the app or select the app launcher, and then select Bookings.
The first time you open the app, you’ll see the home page, which includes a left nav and three prominent tiles that guide you through setup and introduce new features.
Jessica Wilczek from Microsoft has written an exciting article about using Microsoft Bookings, I can recommend this follow-up article to you. HERE is the link to her article.
In which license plans is Microsoft Booking available?
Microsoft Booking is automatically activated in mid-May for the following plans:
- Microsoft 365 Business Standard
- Microsoft 365 A3
- Microsoft 365 A5
Additionally, Microsoft Bookings will be available for the following Enterprise plans, but will not be enabled by default:
- Office 365 Enterprise E3
- Office 365 Enterprise E5
More information about how to get access to the Office 365 business apps for enterprise subscriptions you can find HERE at the Microsoft Technet.
How do I activate Microsoft Booking?
Currently Microsoft Booking is enabled as “Business Apps (free)”, depending on the tenant. If this is not the case, you will have to wait until mid-May.
After the major update, Microsoft Booking will be automatically enabled for all tenants that meet the license requirements.
Tenant administrators can deactivate this feature at the organization level.
Turn Bookings off for your entire organization
For Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Bookings is already turned on. All you have to do is create and publish your first booking calendar. To turn it off, go to Microsoft 365 admin center > Settings > Settings . Select Bookings on the Services page.
If you don’t have access to the Bookings setting in Microsoft 365 admin center, you can turn off Bookings by running the following command in PowerShell. To be able to do that, you need first to connect to your Exchange Online remote Shell. There you run the command:
Set-OrganizationConfig -BookingsEnabled $false
If you want to deactivate Microsoft Bookings for individual users only, you can do so as follows:
Microsoft 365 admin center > Users > Active users > select a user > Licenses and Apps > expand Apps, and then clear the check box for Microsoft Bookings.
I would like to conclude this article with the following Microsoft video: “Ready to get started?”