Microsoft Bookings
Microsoft 365 offers businesses a wide range of tools to streamline office procedures, saving busy company owners and their staff members an incredible amount of time, money, and hassle. One tool that is particularly ideal for appointment-based businesses is Microsoft Bookings. The program, which was initially released in 2016, was updated in 2018 to include additional services and features that are proving useful for companies of all sizes and industries.
Getting Started with Microsoft Bookings
Microsoft Bookings is included with the following Office 365 packages:
- Microsoft Office 365 Business Standard
- Microsoft Office 365 A3
- Microsoft Office 365 AB
- Office 365 Enterprise E3
- Office 365 Enterprise E5
If you use one of the latter two versions of Office, you’ll need to enable Bookings before you get started.
Once you have Microsoft Bookings enabled, it’s time to decide how you want to use it. It’s ideal for use on a business website as it allows website visitors to automatically schedule an appointment with your business without having to interact with one of your company employees. Bookings will show up-to-date information on which appointment slots are available so customers or patients can pick the one that best suits their needs. You can set these slots to be color-coded if you wish to view what type of appointments customers are making easily. What’s more, Bookings allows you to customize the email confirmations your customers receive after booking, making it easy for you to add a personal touch that will boost trust in your business.
Alternatively, you may want potential customers or patients to work with a staff member rather than schedule bookings on their own. If this is the case, Microsoft Bookings can still save you a lot of time and hassle by providing all your employees with real-time information on which appointment slots are available on any given day and who has an appointment for a particular day or time. As Office is cloud-based, business owners and executives don’t even have to be in the office to view appointment information. Bookings can be accessed not just via laptop but also via an Android phone or iPhone that has the Bookings app installed.
Using Microsoft Bookings to its Full Potential
Microsoft Bookings provides cutting-edge technology that makes booking, changing, and/or cancelling appointments a breeze. But that’s not all that it does. Users can also download up to 120 days of Bookings data and view it on an Excel spreadsheet. This feature makes it easy for business owners to identify booking trends that can enable a company to offer improved services to current and future customers while keeping costs as low as possible. What’s more, Bookings offers online meeting support that makes it easy to turn bookings into online meetings. This feature is nothing short of a godsend at a time when millions of companies and individuals are under lockdown to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Professional Office 365 IT Assistance and Support
Do you need help to get started using Microsoft Bookings and/or other Microsoft Office 365 apps and programs? If so, Sydney Technology Solutions can offer the fast, efficient IT support you’re looking for. We are the number one IT support company in the Sydney area, and our team specializes in providing Office 365 consulting services and support to help you use this cloud-based technology to its fullest potential. We also offer other important IT managed services such as cloud hosting, back-up and virtualization, IT security services, data cabling, and business telephone services. Get in touch with us at your convenience to discover how we can help you use technology to improve your current and future business operations.
