Has something changed with MS Bookings and staff availability?

Question

Has something changed with MS Bookings and staff availability?

David Howard 0

We have been using MS Bookings for quite some time successfully. For an upcoming staff day in Jan 2026, I setup a booking with multiple staff and services. All was looking good last week when we tested, services were showing on Jan 27, for 2pm and 3pm as expected. When the system went live yesterday (Monday), sessions dropped off e.g. 2pm there but 3pm not. Or 2pm, 2:50pm and 3pm. It seemed to change depending on which staff member I assigned to each session.

Each staff member is setup the same, team member with "events on Office calendar affect availability" deselected.

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Each service has the following settings:

Availability on one day only, 27th Jan 2026 between 2 and 4pm.
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1-hour sessions - this should create a 2pm and a 3pm session.

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Assigned staff are all set to "assign all of your selected staff" - we want 1 person running each workshop and ignore default scheduling as this is a one-off day.

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These settings have worked in the past but are not working this time around. Any ideas on what might have changed or could be going on in the backend that I am not aware of?

Some services are behaving as expected but then as shown below, this service is missing its 3pm slot

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Moved from: Microsoft 365 and Office | Other

2 answers

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Answer 1

Dear @David Howard,

Good day. Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum!

I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience you’ve experienced. I truly appreciate your patience during this time and thank you for bearing with us.

As per your description, I tested this scenario in my environment by assigning two staff members, and I encountered similar results.

Please note that Bookings availability is influenced by several factors, including:

Work hours and time zone settings for each staff member.
Assigned workload: If a staff member is assigned multiple bookings close together, the system may adjust available slots dynamically to avoid overlaps.
This behavior can occur even when “events on Office calendar affect availability” is deselected, as Bookings still considers staff allocation logic to prevent scheduling conflicts.

For one-off events like your staff day, you might consider:

Reviewing each staff member’s working hours and time zone settings.
Distributing assignments so that no individual is overloaded within the same time window.

I appreciate your patience and understanding and thank you for your time and cooperation.

If you have any further questions or need clarification, please feel free to reach out. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

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Jade Ng 6,395 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-12-03T12:47:40.12+00:00

Dear @David Howard,

I hope this message finds you well!

I just wanted to check in to confirm whether you have reviewed the clarification I provided and if everything is clear. Should you require any additional information or further explanation, please feel free to reach out to me.

Thank you for your time and your patience! Have a nice day!

Answer 2

David Howard 0

Thank you Jade. The system at this stage is not fit for purpose, there are some staff who have nothing in their outlook calendar, no other services assigned and they are not bookable! Their calendars appear empty yet they just cannot be made available no matter what I do.

I have checked time zones etc

I have attempted to shift services to other staff who are not running these sessions but I also need these staff to book into other workshops themselves.

How about the system provide some transparency as to why a staff member is not available to run a service in a given time slot?

Jade Ng 6,395 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-12-04T09:37:09.2133333+00:00

Dear @David Howard,

Thank you for letting me know!

In this case, the best way to further troubleshoot it is to report it to the related team. I sincerely recommend you try to create a support ticket from Microsoft 365 Admin Center>Support>New Service Request. You can raise support ticket from: https://admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal/Home?#/support/requests

The support team over there has higher permission than us to investigate the issue from background, they have more resource and correct escalation channel in handling this kind of issues. This would be a more efficient way in handling the case for you.

For reference:  Get support | Microsoft Docs     

If you’re unsure who the Global Admin is within your organization, you can find guidance on locating them here: How do I find my Microsoft 365 admin? - Microsoft Support.

I will also feedback this situation on our side. Please accept my sincere apologies for not being able to resolve the problem and for redirecting you to the related development team. I regret any inconvenience this may cause. The fix to your concern can be identified through the background logs, and I suggest you raise a support ticket from the Office 365 admin center, where the related team will investigate the problem further by collecting the necessary background logs.

Once again, I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused. We appreciate your patience and understanding and thank you for your time and cooperation.

Sorry for the inconvenience again. Your patience and understanding are highly appreciated. Hope you stay safe and healthy.

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Has something changed with MS Bookings and staff availability?

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