Bookings can be accessed via web browser or mobile device, by all Princeton faculty, staff, and graduate students with an Exchange account.

Navigate to portal.office.com and log in with your Princeton University NetID and Password.   

Bookings may be accessed from the list of available applications from within the portal.

Tip: If the Bookings icon does not appear on the left-navigation menu or the main app screen, you may need to click the All Apps tab.

Please follow our suggested naming convention to prevent possible conflicts with duplicate calendar names.

Do not name your Bookings Calendars with your NETID or Name as it appears in the University's Global Address Book. 

Please name your Booking Calendar appropriately to reflect the unique service(s) you intend to provide with the prefix "Bookings-".

Example:  If you're creating a calendar for Office Hours for Professor Lo, Bookings-OH-ProfLo

Start with the end in mind.  When your calendar (and corresponding Service/Appointment type) is set up correctly from the beginning, it is easily managed and navigable.  Consider these questions:

• What should my Bookings calendar look like? What Service(s) am I offering?  Is there more than one?
• Is this Calendar being used so people can book time with just me or will students be meeting with other Staff members on the Calendar?
• Will I need to set up single-attendee or multi-attendee Services? This is extremely important criteria to be entered in the Services section.
• What availability should be offered for each service? Do I have general availability where I am offering weekly, recurring meetings or will i only be opening up unique blocks of time?
• If you have multiple Staff added to your Calendar, what does their unique availability look like?

All of this information determines the complexity of the configuration for the Calendar.  

Please take a look at the Quick Reference Guide to assist with the configuration of your Bookings Calendar.  

Use the checklist below to assist with your calendar's configuration.

Checklist 

All users are required have an Exchange account regardless of license.

The Bookings web application can be accessed through the Princeton's Microsoft Portal via web browser. 

If you prefer to use Bookings on a mobile device, visit the appropriate App Store for your device and search for “Microsoft Bookings”.  

Microsoft Bookings was initially designed for small business use.

Microsoft auto-creates a new e-mail address for the owners of Bookings calendars and has them cataloged in the Global Address book in Exchange Outlook.  This is linked to the ability to search and open additional Bookings Calendars from the Bookings dashboard. 

Due to this, we have to leave those additional calendar e-mail addresses visible in the Directory.  Owners of calendar’s may occasionally receive an e-mail to this address in their Inbox.  

You have complete control of your Booking Page, starting with it's creation.

You do not need to go through an IT Administrator unless you wish to delete the calendar. However, if you need assistance with the creation of your Calendar, please submit a ticket for the Collaboration Tools team in ServiceNow.  We are here to help you!

1. Edit the 'Business Name' (Business Information > Basic Details > Business Name) so that the words "Pending Delete" preface the Calendar name.
2. Submit a ticket to Collaboration Tools Support requesting that the calendar be deleted.  Include the calendar name (and that it has been edited per the instructions above) and indicate the names of any Administrators listed on the calendar.

Calendar deletions require intervention from our IT partners and is run during a monthly maintenance window.  You will be notified once your calendar is deleted.

To share your Bookings Calendar, you need to first determine what you want the user/student to see. 

• If you have multiple Appointment Types/Services that users/students should choose from or only one single Service, you can share the main link found on the Booking Page.  This link will encompass all Services created under this Calendar.
• If you have multiple Services under one Calendar, but wish to have them appear individually/separately, you can share the unique link to the Service Booking Page.  This link can be found under the Service Details section for the Service.

When setting up a new Service, ask yourself whether this Service is intended for a single-attendee or if multiple attendees should be able to book the same Staff member at the same time.  This VERY IMPORTANT criteria is entered in the Services section in the Maximum Number of Attendees field. 

If a Service is created with two or more attendees in this field, the 'group' feature is enabled and the field will be available for editing in the future - though it cannot be transitioned to a 'single-attendee' Service. 

Likewise, if a Service is created for a single attendee, the group feature will remain disabled and cannot be edited in the future to enable the group feature (the number in this field can never be changed to more than "1").  

Often, Faculty prefer to quickly open blocks of time strictly for specific (non-recurring) dates/times outside of their general availability.  Bookings was not initially designed for this functionality, but it can be done!  

Your Service/Appointment type will need to be set up so that your General Availability is set to "Not Bookable" and then you can set different availability for a specific date range.  

Be careful to limit the blocks of unique availability to one week at a time only, making sure that the dates line up to the days of the week.  You may need to delete days if your blocks of time start later in the week.  Repeat this for each week you wish to open up.  

Note: there is a section for this in the Quick Reference Guide above. 

No.  Anyone with a Princeton NetID can access the unique Bookings URL provided by the calendar owner.  

*Students (both Graduate and Undergraduate) have Google/Gmail and are therefore unable to configure a Bookings calendar of their own - but they can absolutely book time with faculty as long as the link is shared with them.

Yes.  Please confirm the following settings:

If within the Booking Page you have your Availability setting set to “Bookable When Staff are Free” and within the Staff section you have “Events on Office Calendar Affect Availability”, your availability will be based on the Outlook Calendar. 

Please note: Bookings has a harder time interpreting recurring time off.  Please be sure to check your Booking Calendar to ensure that it replicates recurring time away appropriately.  If not, use the Time Off feature with the Calendar section to manually block time away.

Please also note:  If you have blocks of time on your Outlook Calendar reserved for Advising Appointments and you choose to sync Bookings with Outlook, your availability will not show as 'free'.  You can choose to NOT sync with Outlook to force your availability or, you can mark your blocks of time in Outlook as 'free' so Bookings does not see a conflict.

Yes.  There is an option to embed your Bookings calendar into your site via iFrame.  You can find this in the Booking Page section. 

You can also share your link via email or add it to your email signature.

Not necessarily.  This option is configured on the Bookings Page (from the left navigation).  If you choose the option "Available to Anyone", anyone with the link to your Booking Page/Intake Form will be able to book appointments on your Booking Calendar.  If you choose the option "Available to People in Your Organization" it will require users to sign into the Princeton network with an @princeton.edu account.

While the latter is not required, it is certainly recommended.  

Yes.  Microsoft Bookings integrates with Microsoft Teams.  If you enable the “Add Online Meeting” feature for a specific Service, this will auto-create a unique Teams meeting space for your appointment. 

The appointment confirmation email will have the link to join the Teams meeting space, as will your Outlook Calendar appointment for that time. 

If you wish for your meetings to only take place in a virtual setting, you can list “Teams Meeting” in the Default Location area of the Service for clarity.  Add a note about it in the e-mail confirmation and/or reminder messages. 

If you would like to give users the option to choose between an in-person or virtual meeting, you can create a custom field to be included on your intake form or set up a service for each option.

Yes.  You can use your personal meeting ID (PMI) by listing it in the Location field of the Service.  You can copy/paste this link into the confirmation email.   

Note: Bookings is not integrated with Zoom and therefore cannot auto-create a new Zoom meeting for each individual appointment.  This functionality is only offered with Microsoft Teams. 

As a best practice, make sure you have your waiting room feature enabled for privacy. 

You have the ability to add drop-down, multiple-choice or open-ended text questions to your intake form when you set up your Service. 

You can choose the order the questions show up and whether they should be considered a Required field. 

To do this, navigate to Services > Custom Fields.

Yes.  Guests can be added to Bookings pages even if they don’t have an Exchange e-mail account.  As a guest they can be booked with, but they cannot edit the Bookings page. 

Yes. If multiple Staff members are assigned to a Service type, you can check the box for “Allow customers to choose a specific person for the booking”. 

If this box is unchecked, the system will randomly select a Staff member.

Yes.  There are multiple ways to help with this:

1. You can add a second Administrator to your calendar (highly recommended) that can book on your behalf via your Bookings page.
2. You can share your Booking link with your administrative staff, who could use the web form (like a customer would) to book for someone who calls in/stops by your office. 
3. You can turn on self-service by selecting the option "Enable customers to manage their appointment" so the person who the appointment is made for can edit their own appointment.

Yes.  An Administrator can reassign appointments to a different Staff member by opening an appointment from the Calendar section and unchecking the Staff member currently selected and select another Staff member. 

Yes, this is possible.  You can enable this by choosing "Send a meeting invite to the customer in addition to the confirmation email" from the Reminders and Notifications section for a Service. 

Confirmation emails include an .ics file, a format used by several email and calendar programs including Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, and Apple Calendar.

Yes.  From the Services section, you can uncheck the box for “Allow customers to choose a specific person for the Bookings”.  If you are the only Staff member listed, this will default to you.  If there are other Staff members allocated for this Service, the system will choose who the customer will book with randomly.