Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Microsoft Bookings and Education Sector

Microsoft Bookings is an appointment scheduling software that can help universities, colleges, schools, and individual educators in multifold scenarios. It simplifies the process of appointment scheduling, saving precious time for the students, and empowering educators and service providers to use their time efficiently. Education is one of the focus sectors for Microsoft Bookings and in this blog post, we will list some common use-cases.

 

Pre-Admission Events

 

Microsoft Bookings is a great solution to connect with prospective students and apprise them about your institution. You can conduct webinars for a group of students or connect with a student individually. These sessions can be online powered by Bookings’ integration with Microsoft Teams, or they can be at your university. In these sessions, campus ambassadors, university administrators or education consultants can connect with students and their parents.

 

The features, which can really enhance your experience, are online meetings and group appointments. Group appointments can be configured by setting the appropriate number in the maximum number of attendees setting.

  Example of creating an online meeting event in Microsoft BookingsExample of creating an online meeting event in Microsoft BookingsExample of creating a group appointment event in Microsoft Bookings via the "Maximum number of attendees" settingExample of creating a group appointment event in Microsoft Bookings via the "Maximum number of attendees" setting

One-on-One with Professors

 

Professors can have office hour sessions for many scenarios, such as thesis and project discussions, feedback sessions or general information sessions. They can use the Bookings calendar to set up a service for office hours. Students can connect with them as per their convenience.

 

One particularly useful setting in this scenario is the ability to restrict the Bookings calendar to only members of the university (tenant). Another useful feature is custom questions. Professors can ask more targeted questions to the students, such as areas of interests while they book an appointment.

  Example of the Custom Fields setting showing the option to choose a text or dropdown questionExample of the Custom Fields setting showing the option to choose a text or dropdown question

Resource Bookings

 

Universities are hotbeds for research activities. However, many of the equipment and lab resources that are needed are precious entities and they need to be utilized efficiently. Bookings allows users the ability to not only configure humans as staff members, but also resources as staff members.

 

To enable this feature, configure your precious resources, such as lab equipment, meeting rooms, and super computers as mailboxes on Exchange Online and add them to your Booking calendar as a regular staff member. For more information, check this helpful resource article: Manage equipment mailboxes | Microsoft Docs.

 

Viva Voce (Oral Examinations)

 

Universities have different methods of evaluating students. Often, many of them conduct oral examinations for evaluation. This can be efficiently conducted via Bookings. These examinations' can also be conducted online by configuring a service for Teams' appointments. 

 

Connect with Internal Stakeholders in Your University

 

Students need support from other stakeholders during their time at university, such as counselors, tech support or any other support staff. Students can utilize the university's staff services more efficiently and smoothly when Bookings calendars are configured for these stakeholders.

 

Career Connect with Companies (External Stakeholders)

 

Universities often run events managed by people outside the university's organization. Bookings allows the external stakeholder to connect with the student.

 

Bookings can be configured for these external stakeholders by adding them to the calendar as "Guest" staff members, and they will receive the student appointments on their respective calendars.

   Example of adding an external staff member as a "Guest" on a calendar eventExample of adding an external staff member as a "Guest" on a calendar event

The above use cases can be used by any educational institution, such as universities, colleges, high schools, and training centers.

 

Please let us know in the comments below how you use these features. Your experience will help other colleagues in the education sector become more efficient with Microsoft Bookings.

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