Turn Microsoft Bookings on or off

Article
09/14/2023

Bookings can be turned on or off for your entire organization or for specific users. When you turn on Bookings for users, they can create a Bookings page, create a calendar, and allow other people to book time with them. This article is for owners and administrators who manage Bookings for their organizations.

Note

The admin controls described in these sections aren't available for Microsoft 365 Operated by 21Vianet (China) customers.

Turn Bookings on or off for your organization using the Microsoft 365 admin center

Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center as a global admin.
In the admin center, go to Settings > Org settings.
Select Bookings and choose the checkbox for Allow your organization to use Bookings to turn on or turn off Bookings for your organization.

Note

Turning off Bookings will disable all access to the service including creation and management of Bookings pages.
Select Save Changes.

Turn Bookings on or off for your organization using PowerShell

To turn Bookings on or off for your organization using the PowerShell cmdlet Set-OrganizationConfig, Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell and run the following command:

   Set-OrganizationConfig -BookingsEnabled $false

Granular controls

Use the settings below to control who can use Bookings, decide on what Bookings information is shared, whether staff need approval before they can be added to a Booking calendar, and enforce naming policy.

Screenshot of settings that allow you to control who can use Bookings, decide what Bookings info is shared, staff approval, and naming policy.

Note

Changes to all tenant settings, such as "block bookings from outside the organization" or "require staff approvals," may take up to four hours to apply.

Block bookings from outside your organization

You can set up Bookings so only people in your organization can book appointments. Only users in your organization who have signed in and are authenticated can book appointments.

You can control how booking pages are shared on social networks. This setting is available in the Microsoft 365 admin center under Settings -> Org settings -> Bookings.

Staff details, such as contact information, will never be sent to customers via email or any other communication.

You can require employees in your organization to opt-in before their availability information is shared through Bookings and before they can be bookable through a booking page.

When this setting is enabled, people added as staff in booking calendars will get an email with a link to Approve/Reject the request.

Allow Microsoft to send SMS messages

Set up Bookings to send reminders and information customers might need for a meeting or appointment.

Disable direct search engine indexing

Hide your Bookings page from search results on Google, Bing or other search engines.

Enforce naming policy for Bookings calendar alias

You can enforce a naming policy in your organization for all calendars. When this setting is enabled, administrators can define Prefix and Suffix. If selected, these rules will be enforced across all calendars.

Screenshot that shows enabling the naming policy to define a Prefix and Suffix for all calendars in your organization.

Add Custom Prefix: When this setting is enabled, all new calendars will have the string you defined added as a prefix (for example: "Prfx_ContosoCalendar").
Add Custom Suffix: When this setting is enabled, all new calendars will have the strings you defined added as a suffix (for example: "ContosoCalendar_Sufx").

The screenshot below suggests how the Prefix/Suffix will be enforced while creating a new calendar.

Screenshot of the prefix naming policy enabled for all calendars in Bookings.

Note

The enforcement will not impact Bookings calendars that have already been created unless the business information of these calendars is modified. These policies will not impact SMTP addresses of existing calendars. SMTP addresses will not be updated or changed once created.

Restrict collection of customer data

For compliance reasons, you may not want to collect some customer information. If you select a checkbox for any of these options, these fields won't be included on any forms shown to your clients or customers.

Screenshot: Select the checkboxes to help prevent customers from sharing sensitive data with you

Turn Bookings on or off for individual users

You can disable Bookings for individual users.

Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center, then select Users > Active users.
Select the desired user, then select Licenses and Apps.
Expand Apps and clear the checkbox for Microsoft Bookings.

Allow only selected users to create Bookings calendars

By using policy restrictions, you can restrict licensed users from being able to create Bookings calendars. All users in your organization will have Bookings licenses, but only those included in the policy can create Bookings calendars and have full control over who can access the calendars they create.

Users who are included in this policy can create new Bookings calendars and can be added as staff in any capacity (including the administrator role) to existing Bookings calendars. Users who aren't included in this policy won't be able to create new Bookings calendars and will receive an error message if they try to do so.

You'll need to run the following commands using Exchange Online PowerShell. For more information on running Exchange Online cmdlets, see Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell.

Important

The steps below assume that no other Outlook Web App (OWA) mailbox policies have been created in your organization.

Create a new mailbox policy for users that should be allowed to create Bookings calendars. (Bookings calendar creation is allowed by default by new mailbox policies.)
```
New-OwaMailboxPolicy -Name "BookingsCreators"
```
For more information, see New-OwaMailboxPolicy.
Assign this policy to the relevant users by running this command for each user you want to grant permission to create Bookings calendars.
```
Set-CASMailbox -Identity <someCreator@emailaddress> -OwaMailboxPolicy "BookingsCreators"
```
For more information, see Set-CASMailbox.
Optional: Run this command if you want to disable Bookings for all other users in your organization.
```
Set-OwaMailboxPolicy "OwaMailboxPolicy-Default" -BookingsMailboxCreationEnabled:$false
```

For more information, see Set-OwaMailboxPolicy.

For more information on OWA mailbox policies, check out the following articles:

Turn Microsoft Bookings on or off

Turn Bookings on or off for your organization using the Microsoft 365 admin center