Microsoft Bookings is an appointment scheduling tool available to eligible University of Toronto faculty and staff through Microsoft 365. Instructors can use Bookings to offer office hours, consultations, feedback meetings, and other opportunities for students to connect with teaching staff.
Bookings integrates with Microsoft Outlook to help manage availability and can generate Microsoft Teams meeting links for online appointments. Students can select available times through a booking page without needing to exchange multiple emails to arrange a meeting.
Getting Started with Microsoft Bookings
Microsoft Bookings provides two approaches to appointment scheduling:
- Personal Bookings: Allows individual instructors to share their availability and offer different meeting types, such as office hours or assignment consultations.
- Shared Bookings: Allows eligible faculty and staff to coordinate appointments through a shared booking page. It also supports group appointments and more advanced scheduling options.
For most instructors arranging individual appointments with students, Personal Bookings is a useful starting point. Shared Bookings may be more appropriate when multiple eligible teaching team members need to manage appointments together.
Availability at U of T: Full-time U of T faculty and staff can access Bookings through Microsoft 365 by signing in with their University account and selecting Bookings from the available applications. Teaching assistants and other individuals without an eligible account may not have access to Bookings. Students do not need their own Bookings licence to reserve appointments through a booking page.
For information about eligibility, access, training, and support, consult U of T’s EASI Microsoft Bookings page.
Creating a Personal Booking Page
Personal Bookings allows instructors to create meeting types that students can reserve based on their availability.
Creating a Meeting Type
To create a meeting type:
- Open Microsoft Bookings and locate Personal booking page.
- Select Create meeting type.
- Enter a name and description, such as Office Hours or Assignment Consultation.
- Choose whether the appointment will take place online or in person. For online meetings, you can use Microsoft Teams.
- Set the meeting duration.
- Choose whether the meeting type is Public or Private:
- Public: Appears on your personal booking page.
- Private: Does not appear on the main booking page and can be shared through a direct link.
- Configure your availability and any additional scheduling options.
- Select Save.
You can create multiple meeting types with different durations, locations, and availability.
For detailed instructions, consult Microsoft’s Create a new meeting type in Bookings.
Managing Availability and Appointment Settings
Personal Bookings uses your Outlook calendar to help determine when appointments can be scheduled.
When configuring a meeting type, you can adjust:
- Availability: Use your regular Outlook availability or establish custom hours for a particular meeting type.
- Duration: Set an appropriate length for the appointment.
- Buffer time: Allow time between appointments for preparation, follow-up, or breaks.
- Minimum lead time: Prevent appointments from being booked without sufficient notice.
- Maximum lead time: Limit how far in advance students can schedule appointments.
- Location: Specify a physical meeting location or configure an online meeting.
- Reminders: Use available confirmation and reminder settings to help students prepare for appointments.
Review your Outlook calendar and meeting availability before sharing a booking link. Calendar events marked as available may not block appointments.
Sharing Your Booking Page
Once your meeting types are configured, you can share your booking page with students.
To share your booking page:
- Open Personal booking page in Microsoft Bookings.
- Copy the link to your booking page or an individual meeting type.
- Share the link through Quercus, such as on a course Page, in an Announcement, or in your syllabus.
Students can open the link, select an available appointment, enter their details, and confirm the booking.
Public meeting types appear on your booking page. Private meeting types require a direct link.
Bookings sends appointment confirmations and adds scheduled meetings to your Outlook calendar.
For detailed instructions, consult Microsoft’s Preview and share your personal booking page.
Coordinating Appointments with Shared Bookings
Shared Bookings allows eligible faculty and staff to coordinate appointments through a shared booking page. This can be useful for courses with multiple instructors or teaching team members who have access to Microsoft Bookings.
Access depends on the Microsoft 365 accounts and permissions assigned to the individuals involved.
Creating a Shared Booking Page
To create a shared booking page:
- Open Microsoft Bookings and locate Shared booking pages.
- Select Create booking page, then Create from scratch.
- Enter a name for the booking page, such as the course or teaching team’s name.
- Add teaching staff who will provide appointments, if applicable.
- Create or customize the services that students can book.
- Choose who can access the booking page.
- Select Create.
Review the booking page settings before sharing it with students.
Shared Bookings provides additional options for configuring staff availability, appointment types, scheduling policies, and booking-page access.
For detailed instructions, consult Microsoft’s Set up your shared booking page in Microsoft Bookings.
Configuring Services and Group Appointments
In Shared Bookings, instructors can create services for different appointment purposes, such as individual consultations, office hours, or group meetings.
Depending on the service configuration, Bookings supports:
- Individual appointments: One staff member meets with one student.
- Group appointments: One staff member meets with multiple students during the same appointment.
- Multiple-staff appointments: More than one staff member participates in an appointment.
When configuring a service, review its duration, location, staff assignments, availability, and maximum number of attendees.
For detailed instructions, consult Microsoft’s How to create personalized and group services in Microsoft Bookings.
Using Microsoft Bookings for Teaching and Learning
Bookings can make it easier for students to arrange meetings with instructors and teaching staff. When designing appointment opportunities, consider:
- Purpose: Explain what each meeting type is for, such as discussing an assignment, reviewing feedback, or asking course-related questions.
- Scheduling flexibility: Offer appointments at different times where possible to accommodate students’ schedules and responsibilities.
- Meeting format: Provide in-person or online options when appropriate, and clearly identify the location or meeting link.
- Preparation: Include brief instructions about what students should bring or prepare for the appointment.
- Privacy: Avoid requesting unnecessary personal or sensitive information through booking forms. Review who can access booking pages and appointment details.
- Accessibility: Use clear meeting descriptions and provide an alternative way to arrange appointments for students who cannot use the booking page or available times.
- Communication: Explain how students can book, cancel, or reschedule appointments, and where to find confirmation information.
Microsoft Bookings and Quercus Scheduler
Both Microsoft Bookings and Quercus Scheduler allow students to reserve appointment times, but they serve somewhat different purposes.
- Microsoft Bookings: Integrates with Outlook and Microsoft Teams and can support appointments with students, colleagues, and others outside a particular Quercus course.
- Quercus Scheduler: Is integrated into the Quercus Calendar and allows students enrolled in a course to reserve available appointment times.
At U of T, Microsoft Bookings is available to full-time faculty and staff. Instructors working with teaching assistants who do not have Bookings access may find Quercus Scheduler more appropriate for coordinating course-specific appointments.
For a comparison of the two scheduling tools, consult the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering’s Compare and Select Your Scheduling Tool guide. For instructions on using Scheduler, consult Quercus (Canvas) Calendar and Scheduler.