Overview:

• Why Use a Personal Bookings Calendar?
• Access your Personal Bookings page
• Meeting Types
• Publish your bookings page
• Share Your Personal Booking Page
• Making a booking in a personal calendar
• How to cancel a booking
• Turn off Bookings Page
• Troubleshooting

Why Use a Personal Bookings Calendar?

Tutors provide their availability for office hours through a Personal Bookings Calendar, enabling students to book 1:1 appointments. Additionally, University staff can use a Personal Bookings Calendar to provide their availability to both internal and external colleagues and allow them to schedule meetings or events. 

Access your Personal Bookings page

To access your personal bookings page, follow these steps:

1. From a web browser, log into office365.leeds.ac.uk.
2. Open a 'New tab' in the browser.
3. Enter the web address outlook.office.com/bookwithme/me.

Meeting Types 

The default meeting type is a 30 minute public online meeting using Microsoft Teams. You can edit the default meeting type, add new types, and customise your availability for each type. For example, you could create a public meeting type called "Office Hours" for 15-minute meetings during specific hours on Thursday. 

You can create multiple meeting types for your Personal Bookings Page. Using different meeting types allows you to customise the types of appointments you allow users to book on your calendar. Public meeting types will appear automatically on your bookings page, whereas Private meeting types will only be visible to those with a link. Important: only people within the organisation will be able to book private meetings, whereas external users will be able to book public meetings.

Meeting types are configured from https://outlook.office.com/bookwithme/me.

Create a new meeting type

To create a new meeting type, do the following:

• Decide whether the meeting should be Public or Private, and under the relevant section, click .
• In the 'Add a title' field, type the desired name (for example, "30-Minute Office Hours" or "15-minute Catch-Up").
• If you use 'Categories' in your outlook calendar, you can assign a category colour (optional).
• In the 'Add a description' field, enter an appropriate description for the meeting (optional).
• Enter a location, or toggle the 'Teams meeting' switch if it is a Teams meeting.
• Set the desired duration. Important: Selecting Customised allows you to set the duration in 5-minute increments. 
• Choose whether the meeting is 'Public or 'Private'.
  
  
  
  
• (Optional) Under 'Schedule customisation', select 'Use custom availability hours'. Use the options provided to customise your availability for this meeting type. Important: By default, bookings are based on the current availability in your calendar.
  
  
  
  
• Click 'Advanced options' to set Buffer time & lead time (if required). 
• Click 'Save' at the top of the page to create the meeting type.

To edit or delete a meeting type

Click on the meeting and make the relevant changes.

• Click 'Save' at the top of the screen (or click '<' at the left of the meeting name to return to the list of meetings without making changes).
  
  
• 'Delete'  - this deletes the meeting type. Important: One meeting type is required.
  
  
  

Publish your Bookings Page

You will need to publish your calendar in order for people to see the meeting types and availability.

• Click the 'Publish' button (If the Publish button is not visible it means that your bookings calendar has already been published).

Share Your Personal Booking Page

To share your personal booking page, you can use the following options:

• Click the 'Share' button 
• Click 'Copy link' - Paste the link into a document, email, etc.
• And/or click 'Share via Email', - Enter the recipient names in the "To" area, Add a message and click 'Send'.
• And/or click 'Add to email signature'. Users with the link will be able to view all your public meeting types.

Sharing a specific Public meeting type links (URLs)

You can share a link to a specific public meeting type rather than the whole booking page.

• Locate the meeting type and click 'See more options (...)'.
• Click 'Copy Link' - Paste the link into a document, email, etc.
• Or, Click 'Share' then click 'Email' - Enter the recipient names in the "To" area, add a message and click 'Send'.

Sharing Private meeting type links (URLs)

You will need to share each private meeting individually using one of the following options:

• Click 'See more options (...)'.
• Click 'Copy Link' - Paste the link into a document, email, etc. ('Copy single-use link' will allow the user to book one appointment for this meeting type).
• Click 'Share' then click 'Email' - Enter the recipient names in the "To" area, add a message and click 'Send'.

 

Making a booking in a personal calendar

1. Click the link for the calendar.
2. Select a 'meeting type' (if there is more than one type).
3. Select a 'date and time.
4. Click 'Next'.
5. Enter 'name' and 'email address'.
6. Click 'Schedule Meeting'.

Important: The booking system may send an email with a verification code to the requester, which will require entering on the bookings page before the booking is confirmed. This is a security feature.

How to cancel a booking

As the personal booking system uses emails and calendar events to arrange meetings, the participant can decline calendar event or the organiser can delete the calendar event.

Alternatively, you can manage the booking via the link in the calendar invitation email they received upon booking.

Turn off your bookings page

If you want to temporarily suspend bookings, you can turn off the bookings page. This means that any links you have provided to both public and private meeting types will no longer work and an error page will be displayed.

• Click the 'more options' button (...) at the top of the bookings page.
• Click 'Turn off your bookings page'

Troubleshooting

No appointment slots are showing as available to book

1. Please check you do not have the time already booked out as 'busy' on your Outlook calendar.  Any busy time showing on your calendar will not allow appointments to be booked during that time. 
2. Ensure that your appointment type has not got custom hours set up. (See Point 7. under 'Create a new meeting type' instructions above).
3. Ensure your max lead time is far enough in advance. (See Point 8. under 'Create a new meeting type' instructions above).

Two people have booked the same time slot causing a "double-booking"

1. Advise people booking to "refresh" their browser before making a booking to ensure that the required time slot is still available. (If people are booking simultaneously, or you are expecting a high number of bookings, it is possible that multiple people could choose the same time slot).

 

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