Microsoft intend for Personal Bookings to be another way to allow people to interact with your calendar. So if you’ve used Microsoft Bookings in the past you may well feel you’re already up to speed with the idea – but they are very definitely not the same.
This feature is intended to eliminate the back-and-forth of trying to find a timeslot to meet with someone. The idea is that you choose to make times available, and then can publish that availability yourself. You will be in full control of what, if anything, is made available to book.
Once this feature is rolled out you will be able to configure it either at https://outlook.office.com/findtime/dashboard/ or in Outlook Web App’s settings (search for ‘personal’).
Organisations which have access to early previews and beta releases will already be seeing this functionality, with it being made available from mid April 2022. The rest of us will have to wait until June 2022, according to Microsoft’s roadmap.
Meeting types
By default you’ll be offering a 30 minute online Teams meeting, although this can of course be changed. The options you can configure include duration, minimum and maximum amounts of warning you’ll get in advance, location (if not an online Teams meeting), and of course your selected availability. You’ll also be able to share direct URL links to a particular meeting type that you’ve created.