Setting Scheduling Policies
- Austin Dion (Deactivated)
- Griffin Freiberg
Scheduling policies include the length of appointments, acceptable lead and cancellation times, and automatic notifications of booking changes. Additional customization can be added for each service within the Services page, with additional duration settings and policies that apply only to that service. Policies that are set here are top-level policies, so they are automatically applied to all the services you offer unless you choose to modify them on a per-service basis.
Types of Scheduling Policies
Policy | Explanation |
Time increments | Determines the intervals between appointments. You can set your time increments from 5 minutes to 4 hours. You can also set your own customized time increments. An interval of 15 minutes, for example, means a customer could schedule a 60-minute appointment at 8:00, 8:15, 8:30, and so on. Conversely, a 60-minute interval means that appointments are only available on the hour. |
Lead time in hours | You build your staffing plan based on the appointments that are scheduled so it's important to know in advance how many customers are coming in for service on any particular day. The lead time policy enables you to specify the number of hours in advance that customers should book or cancel an appointment. |
Maximum days in advance | If you want to limit how far in advance customers can book appointments, then this is the setting for you! You can set the maximum for 365 days or more. |
Notify when a booking is created or changed | Select this option when you want to receive an email any time a customer books an appointment or changes an existing one. The email will go to the mailbox specified on the Business information page. |
Set Your Policies
In Microsoft 365, select the app launcher, and then select Bookings.
In the navigation pane, select Booking page.
Select your policies under the Scheduling policy section.
Select Save and publish.