Outlook calendars have quickly become critical for organizations to operate as hybrid work has boomed in the last few years. The requirement to share calendar details has also increased as individuals and teams responsible for booking appointments require more information to make important decisions about meeting importance, double-booking, and meeting overlap. While this is somewhat acceptable for organizations internally, sharing these details externally can result in major privacy concerns.
Microsoft has created their Bookings app to help address scheduling services with customers, but this was intended for SMBs that could easily segment their services and the teams providing those services. Other Third-Party vendors have also created scheduling software that provides a similar experience with more in-depth options, making them more suitable for enterprises requiring the functionality. These options tend to work well with proper implementation but require additional costs and integration.
Microsoft has no doubt understood that this is a lingering pain point for many organizations as they have released Microsoft Garage projects such as FindTime, but that program also had limitations and required manual input from all users. The result was that many users opted for Polls in Microsoft Teams, using a Group Chat, or the old fashioned “are you available” email.
While it hasn’t been heavily marketed, Microsoft is taking a step in the right direction to give organizations greater capabilities when it comes to scheduling time.
Personal Booking calendars are coming! I recently discovered this through a support thread, and later confirmed through Microsoft’s roadmap site. It will build off of the FindTime project and integrate directly into users Outlook calendars. (Pending administrators allow the functionality first.)
This will give organizations the ability to give users personal booking sites to address some of the issues reviewed above. It might not solve larger ad-hoc group meeting request requirements, but it will address smaller meeting requirements between multiple organizations, and with creative usage will give some users the ability to respond to requests quicker without the typical “back and forth” emails or phone calls.
Even more importantly it will address the various privacy issues that correspond with sharing calendar details inside and outside of an organization.
Bookings personal pages are currently planned to start rolling out to Microsoft 365 tenants in June of this year.
For more information on Microsoft Bookings and the timeline for rollout.
- Microsoft Bookings: Online Bookings and Appointment Scheduling | Microsoft 365
- Microsoft RoadMap (Bookings GA): Microsoft 365 Roadmap | Microsoft 365
