MS Bookings - Creating or Modifying a Service

Issue/Question

• How do I set up my appointment types in MS Bookings?
• How do I create a service in MS Bookings?
• How do I edit service in MS Bookings?
• How do I change the settings of my appointment types in MS Bookings?

Environment

• Rowan College of South Jersey
• RCSJ Employees
• MS Bookings

Explanation

When you define your service offerings in MS Bookings, you set, among other things, a service name, description, location (choose whether you want to meet in person or have an online meeting), duration, default reminders to "customers" and staff, internal notes about the service, and pricing (optional). You can also tag the employees who are qualified to provide the service. You can also add customized information and URLs to the email confirmation and reminders that you send when someone books a service through your booking page.

You must always have at least one service published in your calendar so that people can book time with you. You will see an "initial consult" service has been auto-created for you upon your first log in to MS bookings. You can choose to edit or delete that service offering.

You can define different time durations for each service, and assign specific staff to them, so think about the kinds of things students usually need to do in their appointments, how long these things take, and who the best people are for those appointments if you have multiple people to take on the work.

Resolution

Create the service details

1. From the MS Bookings webpage, select the "Services" tab on the left-side menu
2. Click "+ Add a service" or click on the Service name you want to edit
3. Complete the service details as follows:
   1. Enter a Service Name, such as "Academic Advising" or "30-Minute Meeting": this is what people will see on your booking page and what appointment types will show up as on your Outlook calendar
   2. Add a brief Description: this is where you can add details about who should book this type of appointment and why
   3. Set a Default Location: This is where you could list your office building and room number, or you can type in "Online via Teams" and select "Add online meeting" and Bookings will auto-generate a unique Teams meeting link for each of your appointments and send it in the confirmation/reminders. Teams is the easiest way to use Bookings for virtual meetings, so we recommended you use this option for online meetings. If you choose this option, know that people who book with you will NOT need to log in to Teams or even have the Teams application downloaded. If you prefer Zoom, leave the "Add online meeting" option disabled, and add your Zoom room link to the Location field. We recommend that you create a Zoom location for each service and limit access during active appointments for privacy by using the waiting room feature. *Important Note: Using a Zoom room link is only a good option if only one person is assigned to that service. If the service can be scheduled with more than one person, you will want to use Teams instead.
   4. Choose a Default Duration: Select how long you want this appointment to be booked for in hours and minutes
   5. If you enable the Buffer time your customers can’t book setting, you will be able to choose a duration either before or after your meeting (or both) during which the staff member’s time can’t be booked for prep or follow-up work.
      • Example: 20-minute appointment duration, plus a 10-minute buffer would save 30 minutes on your calendar for each appointment, but would display the meeting as 20-minutes to the person booking with you.
   6. Enable/disable Let the customer manage their appointment when it was booked by you or your staff on their behalf. This allows the student or colleague booking the appointment to manage it themselves. Select this if you or your administrative staff might book an appointment for someone else and you want them to be able to reschedule or cancel their appointment.
      • Note: if you disable this option, be sure to include a note in the confirmation email letting people know that if they want to make changes, they will need to contact you or a staff member to do so.
   7. Set the Maximum number of attendees per event. For services like academic advising that require privacy, you can limit this to one attendee. For group events, you can raise this limit to whatever maximum number you think can be reasonably managed at one time so multiple people can sign up for the same appointment time.
   8. Leave Default price set to Price not set. This will not display a price or cost at all on the booking page.
   9. In Notes, include any information internal users might find useful about the scheduling policy, the purpose of the service, privacy considerations, etc.
      • Example: "STAR Appointment"
   10. Custom Fields: This is where you can create your custom intake forms to gather information from the person booking the appointment.
       1. Click the Modify button to edit the default fields (email, phone number, address, notes) by clicking the on or off to display the question or not and selecting "required" next to each field if you need that information gathered
       2. Click "+ Add a question" at the top to add Custom Fields. You can choose either "Add text question" (written in text response requested) or "Add dropdown question" (multiple choice response only). Then again can decide to display the question or not, and select if it is required or not.
       3. To re-order the way the intake form prompts are ordered, de-select all questions then re-select them in the order you want them to appear.
   11. Reminders and Confirmations: This is where you can edit the frequency and information sent in auto-sent confirmation and reminder emails. We recommend including at least one reminder one day before the appointment. Be sure to include a reference to the specific service the student booked. Using Teams for virtual appointments is most convenient, and a link to the Teams location will be included in the email confirmation, but if you are using a shared Zoom meeting space for your appointments for this service, you can add the information for accessing that space here. You can allow people who book with you to choose to receive text messages if they want them by checking the "Enable text message notifications for your customer."
       • Note: Do not include information for individual Zoom accounts if more than one staff member is available to be booked with for a service
   12. Under Publishing options, enable Show this service on the booking page. You only want to disable this if you are defining a service that is only offered only periodically, such as "week 1 drop-in advising". This setting makes it convenient to use the same service multiple times; all you need to do is adjust the available times and re-enable this display setting for each term, for example.
   13. Under Online Scheduling options, you can choose to use the default scheduling policy or choose a policy that applies only to this service. Defining a scheduling policy allows you to refine the parameters that restrict how services are booked. 
   14. Assign Staff who can be booked with for this specific service by clicking their name. Selected staff will be highlighted in grey and have a check mark next to their name. To remove a staff member from this service, click on the assigned staff member and they should no longer be highlighted in grey or have a check mark next to their name.
   15. Click Save: Your services will all appear on the Services screen. Your bookings page will only display the published services for people to select when booking appointments with you.
       • Sharing your booking page URLs: Copying an individual service's URL will bring people to a page that only displays booking options for that specific service type.