Trying to create a 'booking with 3 staff members present' in Microsoft Bookings
I am trying out various things while exploring Microsoft Bookings.
This time, I will try to create a booking where
'three staff members must be present for a single booking'
is required.
For example,
a sales representative
a technical representative
a support representative
are three people who want to participate in a meeting with a client.
With a standard booking, the image is that 'any one available staff member' handles it, but in Bookings, you can also createa booking where multiple staff members are present.
I have actually configured it this time.
What I want to do this time
The image is something like this.
Customer
↓
Book a meeting via Microsoft Bookings
↓
Staff A, Staff B, and Staff C all participate
And what is important is,
I want to make it so that bookings can only be made when all three people are available
is the point.
If even one person has another appointment, that time cannot be booked.
If this can be done, it seems it could also be used for scheduling business negotiations or meetings that require multiple people to handle.
First, let's create it
Open the "Shared booking page" in Bookings and create a service.
For this example, let's create a service called
"KDC Regular Meeting"
.
The duration is 60 minutes.
Set the number of attendees on the customer side to 1.
Up to this point, it is almost the same as a regular booking service.
Setting 3 staff members
Next, set the staff members who will be in charge of this service.
The key point here is the difference between
"any one of the three"
or "all three of them"
.
What we want to do this time is a booking where all three people are present.
Therefore, set it to assign multiple staff members and select the three staff members you want to participate.
The image is
1 customer : 3 staff members
for the booking.
What does it look like from the booking page?
This is the part I really wanted to test this time.
With 3 staff members set up, I will open the booking page on the customer side.
Then, the time displayed as available for booking will be
a time when all 3 are available
.
For example,
Staff A -> 10:00 Available
Staff B -> 10:00 Available
Staff C -> 10:00 Busy
in that case.
10:00 cannot be used as a booking candidate.
Even if Staff A and B are available, it is because Staff C is not available.
In other words, Bookings checks each staff member's schedule and
'Here are the times when all 3 can make it'
shows the customer the times that work.
This is subtle, but quite convenient.
What happens if I add an Outlook appointment?
This is also a point I want to actually test.
The booking slot that was displayed when all 3 staff members were available.
After adding an appointment to one person's Outlook calendar, I will check the Bookings page again.
In theory, the booking slot for that time should no longer be displayed.
Conversely, if you delete the appointment, it will be displayed again as an available time for booking.
This aspect is,
easier to understand if you think of it as determining availability by combining it with Outlook calendars rather than 'managing booking slots within Bookings alone'
I think that is a clear way to look at it.
Couldn't this be quite useful for scheduling?
What I realized after trying it out this time is that Bookings isn't just a tool for 'store visit reservations'.
For example, even at work,
sales meetings attended by both Sales and SE
product explanations conducted by Sales, Product Manager, and Technical Staff
meetings with clients involving multiple departments
there are situations like these.
In such cases,
'How about this day?'
'Let me check the SE's schedule.'
'The SE is not available that day.'
'Then how about this day?'
A lot of email exchanges like this tend to occur.
If Bookings can automatically show times when all three people are free and let the customer choose from them, it seems like we could significantly reduce these exchanges.
After trying it out this time
At first, I had the impression that Bookings was
for booking just one of the staff members
as a service.
But in reality, you can also create bookings where multiple staff members participate.
This is quite interesting.
Especially for companies that use Microsoft 365 internally and already use Outlook calendars, there may be cases where you don't need to go out of your way to prepare a separate scheduling tool.
However, as the number of staff increases,
the time when everyone is available
naturally decreases.
I want to see how much the booking slots decrease as you increase the number to 3, 4, 5, and so on.
I would like to try this out while actually using the tool.
Microsoft Bookings has become a long topic, so I will summarize it next time.