Microsoft Bookings with Me – A Useful Outlook 365 Feature
In the past, my posts have been heavily geared towards Apple related themes. And, while this will remain, my job requires me to manage and maintain a whole host of services that aren’t Apple.
Cut the fluff: To access it, go to: https://outlook.office.com/bookwithme/
If your place of work is using Microsoft Office 365 (which, let’s face it, is a considerable portion of us), then depending on your plan, you may have a service called Microsoft Bookings available to you.
As you can probably figure out from the name, Microsoft Bookings is a booking and scheduling app which allows others to easily book time with you or a team. This is rather helpful if you schedule many one-on-one calls for support.
Figuring out which service is included with what Microsoft 365 plan can be challenging at times. A fantastic site for this is M365 Maps. Using the matrix, you can search or browse for any service you fancy, and see if it’s available to you. Extracting doesn’t give a pleasant result, so here’s a screenshot for the Bookings functionality.
However, this is not exactly what we’re going to look at today. Something that doesn’t seem as well advertised (or easily accessible for that matter, possibly because it’s still marked preview), is the Bookings with Me feature. Bookings, itself, is geared more towards managing an entire team: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/what-is-bookings-42d4e852-8e99-4d8f-9b70-d7fc93973cb5
Whereas, Bookings with Me is more about … well, you!
As I mentioned, if you schedule one-on-one calls and dread the back-and-forth “here are some times I’m available, what works for you?”. This can rapidly put an end to that.
I won’t go in to how to set it up because there’s already a decent guide from Microsoft here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/bookings-with-me-setup-and-sharing-ad2e28c4-4abd-45c7-9439-27a789d254a2
To access it, go to: https://outlook.office.com/bookwithme/
Here’s an example of some of my bookable options.
When setting up these meeting types, there are numerous options. You can do custom times for certain days, limit the lead time on the bookings, and much more:
Category Same as Outlook categories. Visible only to you.
Description Purpose of meeting, etc.
Location Physical or online (e.g., Teams).
Duration Default is 30 minutes.
Public (anyone with page link can see) or Private (access only via meeting link).
Detailed Timing Specifications
Meeting hours. Use regular hours per your Outlook or specify custom availability.
Buffer before mtg. Ensures a stated duration remains unbooked prior to meeting start.
Buffer time after. Specified amount of post-meeting time remains unbooked for you.
Limit start time to. Sets interval of suggested start times (independent of meeting duration).
Minimum lead time. Booking must be done at least this far in advance of meeting time.
Maximum lead time. Booking must be done within this number of days before meeting time.
I can now send a link to someone and tell them to pick the most appropriate time for themselves. This will automatically take both our availability in to consideration when showing available options.
In this example, a user would like to book a short 30-minute support session with me. They’ve selected the 31st January. As you can see, the only 30-minute option available on that day is 15:05. If that’s when they want my help, that’s their choice.
Once they select that, it will email us both with the meeting invitation. Job done. No more fuss around who is available when. No more double bookings. And, a lot less admin around availability.
I’ve been using it for a few months now, and it’s made a huge difference for me.
Simple post for today, but I hope it helps someone out there.