How to Set up a Microsoft Bookings Link with Multiple Attendees

Scheduling meetings with multiple people, especially external parties, can be frustrating.

I’m constantly booking meetings with clients, vendors, and other external contacts, and sometimes I need to bring teammates into those calls. That usually means opening up shared calendars in Outlook, drafting an email with a few time options, and trying to align everyone’s availability.

Then after all that, I’ll find out the client is out of office during those times. Now I’m reopening calendars, coordinating again, and starting the process over. It’s a cycle of calendar comparing that eats up way too much time.

But Microsoft already solved this with a simple tool: Shared Bookings Pages in Microsoft 365.

In this post, I’ll walk you through exactly how to set one up and a few things to keep in mind to avoid cleanup later.

Why Use a Microsoft Bookings Page?

Instead of manually finding availability between your team and an external party, you can just send them a link. They’ll see only the time slots when all required attendees are available and can book directly. It eliminates the back-and-forth and gives everyone a smoother experience.

Important: Plan Before You Build

One thing to note: individual users can’t delete a Bookings page once it’s created. Only a Microsoft 365 administrator can do that.

That’s why it’s worth thinking through your use cases ahead of time. Sometimes, you don’t need a brand new Bookings page. You might just need to add a new Service under an existing page. So take a few minutes to map out your scenarios before jumping in.

Step-by-Step: How to Set Up a Shared Bookings Page

1. Go to the Microsoft Bookings Homepage + Create Bookings Page

Visit https://outlook.office.com/bookings/homepage and click Create Booking Page.

2. Choose to Start Fresh or Clone

You’ll have two options:

• Create from Scratch, or
• Clone an Existing Page

In most cases, I choose to start from scratch unless I’m replicating a similar use case.

3. Name Your Page and Set Default Hours

On this page, you can name the Bookings page, assign a Business Type, select the times and days you want to allow, and go to “Next” (don’t worry, you can modify these later as well). Business Type has pre-filled options to select from, or you can add a custom one.

You also have the ability to set the Business Hours for this specific Bookings page, so be sure to modify this to align with the availability you’d like to set as the default. Again, you can set more specific availability for specific services, but this would be what we set for the default for the Bookings page as a whole.

4. Add Staff Members

On the next page, you’ll want to add in all team members that you’d like to include. Simply type in the users’ names, and it will populate their information. You are only able to add users that exist within your Microsoft 365 tenant.

Keep in mind, you can have separate Services later on where you can have specific links for specific groups of people. For example, I have several different engineers that I often need to schedule calls with, so I will be adding them all in at this phase, and then building out separate Services later that are specific to the individual. You can also designate roles, such as Administrator, Team Member, Scheduler, Viewer, and Guest.

More details about each role can be found in Microsoft’s Bookings documentation.

5. Set Up a Service:

You’ll then add the service you want (again, can be edited later), which outlines the length of the initial meeting that you’ll be making available within the Bookings page, so hit next or update the duration/timing. We can/will be adding more services to the Bookings page, but this is the default one we need to build to start.

6. Choose Who Can Book Appointments

Now we need to choose who will be able to book appointments.

The options for who can book an appointment are:

1. No Self Service: Schedule appointments only from the Bookings App
2. People in My Organization: People can book with an internal self-service page
3. Anyone: People can book with a public self-service page

For this one, I want to build a link that can be shared externally, so I’m going to click the “Anyone” option.

7. Create the Bookings Page:

Once the settings are completed, click “Create”, and we’ve made the initial Bookings Page.

Our page has been created, but we’ve got more customization we want to do in order to have links for specific people, so let’s dive in there.

How to Customize a Service on Your Shared Bookings Page

To add and customize services on the Shared Bookings Page you’ve just created, you’ll navigate to the original link (https://outlook.office.com/bookings/homepage), and click on the specific Shared Bookings Page that you just built out.

This is where the fun begins, as I have a few different needs for this Bookings Page. My goal is to create separate bookings links for client scoping calls that include me and one of my engineers, with the desired structure as such:

• Martin Feehan (me) + Brandon Stuart – 30 Minute Microsoft Teams Meeting
• Martin Feehan (me) + Jacob Eker – 30 Minute Microsoft Teams Meeting
• Martin Feehan (me) + Tim Wolsky – 30 Minute Microsoft Teams Meeting

How do we do this? I’m going to create separate Services for each of these options.

1. Customize Service

Once you’ve clicked into the Bookings page you want to add the Services to, click “Services” and then “Edit Services” to begin setting up your first link.

2. Basic Details

Here we’ll want to name the meeting, as this will be what the meeting is called when sent through Outlook. We also want to put a description in—and be sure to check “Add online meeting” if you would like it to be a Microsoft Teams meeting.

You can modify the duration here if you would like it to be different than what was previously set (by you when you set up the Shared Bookings Page), but I’m leaving it with the 30-minutes.  

3. Availability Options

Here you can set the time increments that you’d like people to see when scheduling.

• Minimum Lead Time is the time you require between the moment someone books the meeting and when that meeting can happen. This ensures you don’t let someone book a meeting right before that time. For me, I set mine as 9 hours, as I don’t want to allow “same day” meeting scheduling.
• Maximum Lead Time is how far out in the future you want to allow someone to book. You may want to only allow people to book meetings within the next 30-day period, so this is where you set that.
• Availability is what we covered on the original Bookings site, but we can set it for each specific service on what days and times you want to allow people to book.

4. Assign Staff:

This is the key to having multiple specific team members associated with a specific Bookings link. Since the first one I’m building is for Martin and Brandon, I’m making sure I check the “Assign all of your selected staff for an appointment” and selecting both Martin and Brandon.

This means that any time this link is used, Bookings will only present time that work for both people, and the invitation will be sent to both individuals.

5. Custom Fields

Here I can modify the information that is required when booking that meeting. If I were to use this link in a very public way, it might be good to use this as a way to qualify people and ensure they provide adequate information to secure that meeting time.

For this example, I’m going to add a new custom required field for “Company Name.”

6.Notifications

These can be helpful in a number of ways depending on how you’re using your specific services. These notifications can provide valuable information to attendees and reduce the chances of no-shows or last-minute reschedules if done right.

• Email Confirmations sends an email along with the calendar invite, providing additional information.
• Email Reminders send email reminders a specific amount of time before the meeting to provide additional information or remind the individual of the upcoming meeting.
• Email Follow-ups send automated emails after the meeting to collect feedback or remind them to book their next appointment

Once I click “Save Changes,” I’ve now got my first Service built out.

Creating Additional Services within the Shared Bookings Page

My goal with this Bookings Page is to have several different meeting types that I can use, so we accomplish this by setting up different Services for each type of meeting.

Since the other services I’m adding are very similar to the one I just built, instead of adding a new service from scratch, I’m going to copy the first one I made and modify it.

1. Copy Service:

Click the “Services” blade on the left, and you’ll see the Service we just built. Hover your cursor over it, which will present the option to “Copy Service.” Click this.

2. Customize the Service

Once you hit “Copy,” you simply change the meeting name to reflect the changes, go to “Assign Staff” to modify staff that you’d like to include in that meeting, and hit “Save.”

For me to meet my original goal, I modify the name for the second service to reflect the next engineer, update the description for the type of meeting that would be held with this group, and change the assigned staff.

I follow the same steps for each Service that I want to build out until I have all the Services built.

In under 10 minutes, I now have three custom bookings links for each of the meetings I regularly have with those individuals that I can now share internally or externally.

Each of these Services has a unique URL that I can use for that specific service and can share with whoever needs to book that group.

Additionally, on the full Shared Bookings Page (in this case for the whole “Scoping Calls” Bookings Page), I can share that link, which will have all three of these meeting options available to be booked.

I can easily save these links to add them to specific signatures or Outlook Templates. Or, I can use the link to the Bookings page itself if I prefer.

Conclusion

Microsoft Bookings has saved me an incredible amount of time, and it’s something I wish I knew about earlier. With a little time spent up front, you can build out your own Bookings page to reduce the time you spend just finding time to meet.  

Hopefully, this was helpful, and if you need help with better leveraging Bookings or any Microsoft 365 applications, we have extensive expertise on deploying Microsoft 365 solutions, as well as in-depth end-user training, with our full catalog found here.

If you need help with implementing Microsoft solutions, our team would love to help.