eDesigner MS Bookings
From version 2.12 eDesigner includes the ability to provide integration between eDesigner forms and Microsoft Bookings. The integration components need to be enabled by IEG4 for the integration to become active. The bookings integration is a separately chargeable addition to eDesigner.
Customers will need to create the credentials required for eDesigner forms to read and write to a customers' Microsoft Office 365 Calendars and Bookings APIs. Further details on this can be found on the following link:
https://ieg4.gitbook.io/edesigner-new/building-services/adding-content/microsoft-bookings-items
Further details on MS Bookings can be found on the Microsoft website including:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/business/scheduling-and-booking-app
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/what-is-bookings-42d4e852-8e99-4d8f-9b70-d7fc93973cb5
MS Bookings Overview
In your MS bookings you need a shared booking page which represents the organisation for example we have IEG4 Council
Within your organisation you add the staff associated with it. For each staff member you can set their working hours and whether other events in their Office calendar affect their availability
Within your organisation you create Services for which appointments can be booked for example ‘Register a newborn’ and you assign to it the staff member/s who can take those appointments.
You also set the length of time that an appointment lasts.
Within your organisation you create Services for which appointments can be booked for example ‘Register a newborn’ and you assign to it the staff member/s who can take those appointments.
You also set the length of time that an appointment lasts.
In eDesigner you can add two new question types for Bookings. ‘Make a booking’ and ‘Cancel a booking’
Make a booking
When you add a ‘Make a booking’ item to your form you select the Service from MS Bookings that the question is for:
Other configurable fields to note here are:
Booking code
This is combined with the unique form reference number to create a unique ‘Booking code’ that can be used to identity a specific booking.
It’s main function is to allow a citizen to use it to cancel the booking should they wish in the aforementioned ‘Cancel a booking’ question.
Minimum lead time
This is used to calculate the soonest date time from now that appointment slots will be made available to book
Maximum lead time
This is added to the date time calculated above to work out the furthest in advance appointment that can be booked
Number of minutes to hold a reservation for
An appointment is only created in MS bookings when the form is submitted.
To prevent double bookings, when a customer selects an appointment slot in the form it is ‘reserved’ for a period of time specified here.
During this period, no one else can reserve the slot
(note, if multiple staff are assigned to a service this is catered for)
If the citizen submits the form after the reservation has expired and the selected slot is no longer available they will be given the opportunity to re-reserve a slot and submit the form.
Online appointment
If this is ticked then the appointment can be carried out in Microsoft Teams and a link to the meeting will be sent in the booking confirmation email
With the ‘Make a booking’ question added to your form page the citizen can select the date and time of the appointment they would like.
Note that in MS bookings the staff member for this service has the working hours on a Wednesday from 9:00 am to 11:00 am and the appointments available reflect that.
Also, remember in Bookings we set that the duration of an appointment as 25 minutes. You can also set a buffer time for the end of the appointment which we have set at 5 minutes.
(You can also configure a buffer before the appointment but we don’t make use of this as it seemed unnecessary to have both).
If you are happy with the slot you have selected click ‘Reserve’
The default message informs the customer the reservation will be held until a time calculated using the ‘Number of minutes to hold a reservation for’ field. It also states what your booking reference will be and that appointment will be booked when you complete the form.
If you change your mind about the selected slot you can click ‘Change Reservation’ to select another one
On submission of the form the appointment is made in the calendar of the staff member for the service.
Note, if multiple staff are assigned to a service, appointments will be allocated on a round robin basis.
Below is the email received by the customer. Note there is a ‘Join your appointment’ button which allows the customer to open the online appointment in Teams
Below that is an ‘Additional information’ field. The content of this comes from the ‘Custom appointment notification’ field of the ‘make a booking’ question config
Cancelling a booking
Typically you would have a separate form for cancelling bookings and like the process of adding a ‘Make a booking’ question, you can add a ‘Cancel a booking’ question
To use this, the customer enters their booking reference and clicks Search
If the booking is found then you can submit the form and it will be cancelled and both parties will be sent an email notification of this
Appointments that require payment
You can take payments for bookings by adding a payment item to the form in the same way as you would normally. The payment and the appointment are not explicitly linked.
When you submit a form for which you have reserved a booking that requires payment you are first redirected to the payment provider. Once you’ve completed payment you are redirected to the form for submission and the booking is then created.
If the booking creation fails (for example because your reservation timed out and the slot was since taken by someone else) you are shown a bookings error page.
On this page you are just given the ‘Make a booking’ question with which you are able to select a different slot and re-submit the form.