As part of Microsoft’s new Business Center which is included with Office 365 for Business Premium Microsoft has added a new app called Microsoft Bookings. Microsoft Bookings is a scheduling app for service companies that allow clients and customers to book and schedule services for a company.

Bookings is great Microsoft service for any size business that wants to start offering online scheduling of services provided by a company. Having your customers book their own services is more convenient for them and saves on unnecessary phone calls, emails and text to the owner or staff of a company.

Bookings is easy to set up first you must fill in all your business information into the online form and upload your company logo. Once that is complete Office 365 walks you through the steps of adding the hours and dates you would like to use for scheduling. On that page, you can put the hours you want customers to be able to schedule for example you may want 9-5 on Mondays but maybe Tuesdays you have something scheduled in the morning you may want says Tuesdays only 11-5.

The next thing you will need to do is add your services, prices and scheduling time increments. If you were a cleaning company, for example, you may want to list laundry services 20 dollars an hour and then carpet cleaning at 50 dollars for half hour. This way when the customers go to book you will know what service they need so you know what equipment and staff you would need.

You must link a calendar to Bookings and add staff permissions to that calendar if you have employees with Office 365. Once all of this is done you just hit publish and Office 365 will give you your link for Microsoft Bookings which you can add to your website and social media. Microsoft Bookings does a great job of connecting with Facebook Pages and their Book IT features.

Booking has a great scheduling app for iOS and Android what makes this even better is books has an app for your phone so maybe you get a text or call from a customer and they need you on Monday at 4 you schedule it in the app on your phone and it marks the time as taken so no other customers can book you at that time.

The Microsoft Bookings mobile app is very well put together besides the great features already mentioned the bookings app allows you to Create New Customers so you can track every appoint you have had with the client. You can schedule appointments, add staff and adjust settings to your Bookings page which makes the app very appealing.

I think Bookings is another huge step for Microsoft in competing in the CRM space with companies like Salesforce and many others. This product goes hand and hand with Outlook Customer Manager which Microsoft released earlier this year. This app feels like one of Microsoft better well-done apps but again Microsoft is focusing on their core strength which is business software which is what they do best.