Table of Contents
Bookings is a flexible and powerful scheduling tool that is included in Emily Carr's Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
- It does not cost extra to use it's basic functionality.
- It integrates with Outlook Calendar to provide accurate and updated data on people's availability
- Basic setups can be configured without assistance from IT Services
- Complex setups may require support from IT Services
Personal booking pages are a simple and elegant solution for managing one's own schedule. Shared booking pages are more complex and can be adapted to a variety of different use cases.
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Use
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Explanation
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| Invite peers to schedule time with you |
Personal |
Set one or more meeting duration types that offer peers options based on your personal availability. |
| Provide a service / appointment type supported by one or more staff |
Shared |
Shared booking pages allow clients to choose their preferred staff person or |
| Manage events or appointments that allow for a maximum number of attendees |
Shared |
Shared booking pages allow for more than one client to reserve against a time slot (e.g. a workshop that can run for up to (5) participants). |
| Allow clients to book rooms or equipment |
Shared |
Shared booking pages allow you to schedule any combination of people, abstract 'shared' accounts, rooms and/or equipment items. |
See Microsoft's own documentation for full details.
What you'll need to begin
- A statement of purpose to guide the setup (e.g., "allow students to book 1/2 hrs time slots with any of our support team")
- A clear and simple name that describes your overall purpose (this will be used to create the underlying email account for your booking page)
- The default / typical hours of operation for the service
- A consideration of durations (e.g., 30 minutes, 60 minutes), minimum/maximum lead times that you will offer
- A list of any rooms, equipment items or shared accounts that can be booked
How to request underlying booking accounts
If you need to book time against rooms, equipment items or other abstract shared calendars you can submit a ticket to IT Services and include the following details for each item:
- Display Name (i.e., the name of email/calendar as shown in Outlook)
- Email Address (*subject to availability / ECU naming conventions e.g., 'C1220@ecuad.ca')
- Delegates (e.g., employees who may need to access the underlying email/calendar or provide approval for bookings)
Design considerations for shared bookings
A single shared bookings calendar can contain multiple services (e.g., a massage therapy clinic that offers different types and lengths of treatment). These services can be configured independently, but are managed within a common administrative console.
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Use
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Examples
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| Equivalent offerings with more than staff, room or piece of equipment. |
A single service |
- If multiple therapists offer equivalent treatments of the same duration, the customer can select their preferred staff person (if you wish to allow this), or the system can assign whomever is available.
- The same logic would apply to (3) identical study desks or rooms.
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| Similar offerings of different durations. |
One service per duration option. |
- If multiple therapists may offer 30, 45 and 60 minute massages, each option will need to be represented as a unique service, as the 'duration' value of every service is fixed.
- Custom fields added to the booking form allow staff to gather unique information from the client (e.g., is it a first time visit? where does it hurt? are you on any medications?).
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| Different offerings of the same duration, but with different topics, staff, room or equipment options. |
One service per unique offering. |
- If only half of the therapists are certified to provide 60 minute deep-tissue massage, or if this treatment requires the use of a special room, the service must be separated from the regular 60 minute massage.
- This helps avoid misunderstandings and staff or room mismatches, since these details are not easily defined through the staff selection or custom fields.
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| Unrelated offerings that may or may not involve the same staff or rooms. |
One shared booking calendar per major topic, each with a set of services. |
- The same clinic might also offer counseling services - possibly involving the same staff members or at least the same meeting rooms.
- For marketing and administrative clarity, the clinic may choose to create a separate shared bookings calendar / pages to collect and manage their counseling and massage services.
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*click on the image to zoom in*
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Step 1:
Carefully choose a short, descriptive and accessible name for your shared booking calendar / page.
- The name will be displayed at the top of your main booking page
- It should represent all current and future services that will be hosted from this calendar
- It also be used to generate the associated email address and website URL for your booking page
CAUTION - You may change display name later, but the email address or web URL will remain based on the original name.
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Step 2:
Sign in at email.ecuad.ca, search for and open Bookings using the app launcher
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Step 3:
Scroll down to Shared booking pages and click + Create booking page.
- Ignore the Personal booking pages section
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Step 4:
Create from scratch, or based on an existing shared booking page that you manage.
- Cloning an existing page saves time if the logo, business hours and staff are the same.
- If you are unsure, simply create it from scratch.
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Step 5:
Follow the Wizard prompts to configure basic details, beginning with Name.
- Choose the name carefully, as it is difficult to change later (see Step 1).
- Complete the other fields as best you can - these details are easily updated later.
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See Microsoft's own documentation for full details.
See Microsoft's own documentation for full details.
Click Calendar from the upper left side of the administrative portal, within your shared booking page. From here you can
- Use Service and Staff filters to view bookings for a range of time
- Set month, week and day views
- Click on individual bookings to view, edit or cancel
- 'Add time off' for individual staff, room or equipment options
- Export a .tsv summary of bookings (i.e., a spreadsheet that can open in Excel).
*click on the image to zoom in*
Staff-level availability changes
By default, Bookings is configured to respect staff member's underlying personal calendars, including work hours and appointments. For example, if you have an unrelated meeting at 1 pm, the bookings page will not allow anyone one to double-book you at this time.
If your underlying calendar is free, but you still need to avoid being booked on a certain day, it's possible to 'Add time off' from the shared booking calendar. For example, your supervisor has asked you to focus on another set of duties at that time.
Service-level availability changes
Sometimes an entire service needs to become unavailable. For example we are temporarily pausing access to allow for room or equipment maintenance. In these situations it is best to edit Service / Availability options / Availability / Set different availability for a date range. During this range you can adjust start / end times, exclude certain days of the week or simply make the entire service Not bookable.
Outages across the entire bookings calendar
Other times, all of your services should become unavailable at the same times (e.g., a stat holiday or unexpected campus closure). In this case, you can Set different availability for a date range for the Default Scheduling Policy to simultaneously adjust all services that utilize the Default Scheduling Policy. For services that have a unique scheduling policy, simply adjust availability at the service level instead.
How to offer multiple durations for a service that requires maximum capacity limit
The following analysis and solution was recommended by CoPilot:
Requirements
- Room capacity: Max 3 people.
- Two services: One 60-minute, one 30-minute.
- Prevent overbooking: Total bookings (across both services) must not exceed 3 people at any time.
🔧 Why Your Current Setup Allows Overbooking
Even though you've set the room resource account and each service to a max capacity of 3, Microsoft Bookings does not natively enforce shared capacity across multiple services. Each service tracks its own capacity independently, so simultaneous bookings across services can exceed the room's actual capacity
đź› Recommended Solutions
Option 1: Use a Single Group Service for the Room
Instead of creating two separate services, create one service with variable durations and shared capacity:
- Set up a group service (1:N or N:N) with a max of 3 attendees.
- Allow customers to choose between 30 or 60-minute durations via custom fields or separate time slots.
- This ensures that no more than 3 people can book the room at any time, regardless of service type
Option 2: Use Generic Staff Accounts to Represent Room Slots
If you must keep two distinct services:
- Create three generic staff accounts (e.g., RoomSlot1, RoomSlot2, RoomSlot3).
- Assign both services to all three staff accounts.
- Bookings will only be allowed if a staff member (i.e., a room slot) is available.
- This simulates shared capacity enforcement by limiting concurrent bookings to 3
đź“‹ How to Set Up a Group Service (Option 1)
- Go to Bookings > Services.
- Click Add a service.
- Set Maximum number of attendees to 3.
- Under Assign staff, choose “Assign any of your selected staff for an appointment.”
- Set duration options or create separate time slots for 30 and 60 minutes.
- Save and publish.
🧠Things to Keep in Mind
- Microsoft Bookings does not support conditional logic (e.g., “if 2 people book 60-min, only 1 can book 30-min”), so shared capacity must be managed via group services or staff assignment workarounds.
- You may need to manually monitor or use Power Automate for more advanced logic if your setup becomes complex.
How to allow round-the-clock bookings (e.g., rooms that are available 24/7).
The following analysis and solution was recommended by CoPilot:
Here’s your full checklist for aligning time zones and ensuring 24/7 booking works properly:
âś… 1. Booking Page Settings
- Go to Booking page → Region and time zone.
- Confirm it matches your organization’s primary time zone (e.g., Pacific Time for Vancouver).
- Save changes.
âś… 2. Business Info
- Check Business Information for address and region consistency (even though time zone is now under Booking page).
- Ensure location matches the intended region.
âś… 3. Staff (Room Resources)
- For each room resource:
- Uncheck “Use business hours.”
- Set Custom hours to cover 24/7 using two blocks per day:
- 12:00 AM – 11:59 AM
- 12:00 PM – 11:59 PM
- Enable “Events on office calendar affect availability” so Bookings respects Outlook calendar.
- Verify the room’s Outlook calendar time zone:
- Outlook → Settings → View all Outlook settings → General → Language and time zone.
âś… 4. Services
- For each service (representing a room):
- Assign the correct room resource as staff.
- Under Availability Options, select “When staff are free.”
- Set Duration according to the room’s booking policy.
- Add buffer time if needed.
- Confirm no custom hours override is applied unless required.
âś… 5. Scheduling Policy
- Go to Booking page → Default Scheduling Policy:
- Minimum lead time: Set as needed (e.g., 0 hours for instant booking).
- Maximum lead time: Decide how far ahead bookings can be made.
- Time increments: Match the smallest duration offered (e.g., 15 min).
- Allow customers to manage bookings: Enable if you want rescheduling/cancellation.
âś… 6. Verify Time Zone Alignment
- All three layers must match:
- Booking page time zone
- Room resource calendar time zone
- Tenant/organization time zone (Microsoft 365 admin settings).
âś… 7. Test & Refresh
- After changes, wait a few minutes.
- Test in incognito/private mode to avoid cached settings.
- Check late-night slots appear correctly.