Set up Bookings with Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft Office 365 for Business comes with Bookings. This feature allows a user to publish a Bookings page on their website or position a link in their email signature. With this published Bookings page, clients and colleagues can request meetings that are recorded on your Outlook calendar. Whereas only internal employees on the Outlook network can send appointment invites through Outlook, people external to the organization are unable to set Outlook appointments. However, Bookings changes that. These instructions assume you have Microsoft Office 365 for Business and access it through the employee single-signon of Southern Connecticut State University. For further instructions about creating email signatures, use this link for the relevant instructions.

Purpose: Set up Bookings in an email.

Log in to the mySCSU webpage. From among the mySCSU apps, click the Bookings button. A new page with promotional information will open.
Disregard all promotional materials, unless you have the desire to read more about Bookings. Click on the Get it now button.
Immediately, a small dialogue box will open. Select the Add a booking calendar option.
There are two fields. In the first field, write who the Bookings is for. In the second field, write what the Bookings is for. Press the Continue button.
A Just a moment box will appear, with a circle animation. The amount of time you need to wait will be determined by your computer, connection speed, and browser version. Do not push any buttons while you wait for your Bookings account to generate.
The Bookings home page will open with a user friendly dashboard. The large icon buttons are designed to walk you through the set up of your Bookings account.
Look at the vertical selection of navigation options on the left side of the page. Click on Business Information so that you can set up your Bookings profile. When people seek to set up an appointment, this information will be useful for external users to schedule their appointment.
Fill in the Business Information fields with your own personal information. Fill in the Business hours with your daily availability. Whereas an internal colleague can view your outlook to schedule an appointment, an external user cannot see your calendar. It is best to identify the full range of your general availability.
On the top left corner of the dashboard is a place for a picture or business logo. Click anywhere on the logo location to open an Bookings settings bar on the right side of the screen. Click Upload new logo. A file selection window will open. Navigate through your files to select the image of your choice. Click the Open button to open the image in the logo corner of the Bookings dashboard.
From the left Navigation bar, select the Booking page link. The Booking page will open. There are many settings on this page that rely on other Bookings settings that are meant for businesses or departments with several employees sharing the same Bookings page. There are not any changes that you need to make to set up a personal Booking page. Press Save and publish at the top left of the Booking page.
One of the panels on the Booking page changes to provide additional links for published Booking pages. For an email link, you need only copy the URL link in the Share your page text field. You can select the field, select all, and copy the URL. Alternatively, you can select the Copy button.
Open your email software or log in to your email browser for this next step.
Highlight the text you want to make a link in your email. Once the email is sent, the email recipient can use the link to send an appointment invitation to you. In Microsoft Outlook, click on the button at the far right of the Messages ribbon. In other email programs or browsers, you need to find the option to create a hyperlink.
The Edit Hyperlink dialog box will open. Paste the URL into the Address text field. Click on the OK button. You can complete your email, as needed, and send the email to your recipient. The user can use the link to set up an appointment with you.

All instructions and documentation written by:

Dr. Jason Lawrence, M.S., Ph.D.

Theory and Practice of Professional Communication

Artificial Intelligence writers, Internal Documentation, and Emergent Texts
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