My bookings page is allowing customers to book appointments when I am busy

Question

My bookings page is allowing customers to book appointments when I am busy

AJD 20

Why can people book appointments when I am shown as busy on my calendar? In the attached image it shows that my Bookings page can see me as being "Busy" but I was still able to schedule an appointment at the same time as another event when I am not free.

My bookings page is set under General Availability to "Bookable when staff are free"

Under Staff, I am set up so that "Events on Office Calendar affect availability"

My service is set under General Availability to "Bookable when staff are free"

Screenshot 2025-09-13 at 10.30.27 PM

Screenshot 2025-09-13 at 10.25.53 PM

Screenshot 2025-09-13 at 10.26.53 PM

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Answer 1

Jeanie H 11,935 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hi @AJD,

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

To help clarify and narrow down the cause, I've broken down my answers to your questions.

1. Bookings shows you as busy, but still allows customers to book

This is a key function of Microsoft Bookings, especially when a service is assigned to multiple staff members.

Bookings sees you as busy, but this only applies to your individual calendar.
When a customer tries to book a service, Bookings checks to see if that service is assigned to more than one staff member.
If the service is assigned to a group (for example, you and a colleague), the system will look for anyone in that group who is available.
So, even if your calendar shows you as "Busy", Bookings might see your colleague is "Free" and allow the customer to book with them instead.

This is a helpful feature designed to ensure customers can always find an available time slot and aren't blocked from booking just because one person is busy.

2. Your Outlook event settings

To help me figure out the root cause, please try the following steps:

Screenshot your Outlook event settings: Can you please take a screenshot of the event settings in your Outlook calendar and send it to me? Specifically, I need to see the "Show as" setting for the event. If it's set to "Busy" or "Out of Office", Bookings should see you as unavailable. Also, please confirm if it is an "All day event".

Run a test: Can you help me by creating a new all-day event on your calendar just assign only you?

Set the status to "Busy".
Then, share your calendar with another account and check if that account can book a meeting on that day.

This test will help me determine if the issue is with your personal calendar settings or how Bookings is interpreting them.

Your help is much appreciated! Looking forward to your response!

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

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AJD 20 Reputation points

2025-09-14T12:43:54.58+00:00
Thank you for your help!

I am the only staff member on the bookings page, so there is no group.

All of my appointments are set as "Busy" but they are not all day events

I also ran the test you suggested and made an all day appointment on two different days and made sure they were set as busy, I then went to another browser and opened the public view of the bookings page and I was still able to schedule appointments when I should have been busy.

I'm sorry, what else could I check?
Jeanie H 11,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-09-15T06:11:18.0333333+00:00

Hi @AJD,

After researching, I’d like to share a few details to help clarify how it works when your Outlook calendar is set to Busy:

When you mark a time slot as Busy in your personal Outlook calendar, the Booking page may still show that time as available if the customer selects “Anyone” instead of choosing your specific name. This is because the Booking page is designed for team use - for example, if a team has 5 members and one is busy, the other 4 can still represent the team in meetings.

In your current setup, since only one user is using the shared Booking page, this feature may not seem very useful. By design, people booking through the link cannot see your personal calendar, and if a time slot already has a booking, it will not appear as an option.

However, if the customer selects “Anyone,” the system may still show the busy time slot. I tested this by setting my calendar to Busy from 5:00 PM to 5:30 PM, and when my colleague used the Booking link and chose “Anyone,” they could still see and book that time. But when they selected my name specifically, the time slot disappeared.

My Outlook calendar

When my colleague chose "Anyone", they still see 5:00 PM - 5:30 PM

When my colleague chose my name, the time 5:00 PM - 5:30 PM was disappeared. Colleagues can only book from 5:30 PM onwards.

So, when you share the Booking link, you might want to include a small note like:

“If you’d like to book directly with [Your Name], please select my name instead of ‘Anyone’ to avoid overlapping with my personal calendar.”

If anything is unclear or you run into issues, feel free to reach out. I’ll do my best to support you.
Jeanie H 11,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-09-17T00:01:28.4433333+00:00

Hi @AJD,
If you run into any difficulties, feel free to reach out. I’m here and happy to help. Also, I’d really appreciate it if you could share a quick update when you have a moment - just to keep me in the loop.

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.
AJD 20 Reputation points

2025-09-17T00:59:44.6166667+00:00

Thank you so much for your time and help. My booking page is set up where I am the only staff, so the users don't have an option to choose anyone else. I have attached a could screenshots.
Would it help to schedule a teams meeting so I could share my screen and show you my settings?
Jeanie H 11,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-09-17T03:45:40.6666667+00:00
Hi @AJD,

I’ve reviewed the scenario you described and would like to share some findings and suggestions:

When I create a service and assign myself to it, there are two possible outcomes:

1.Not assigned under “Only me” in Booking > Customers are still able to select the time slot 1:30 PM – 2:00 PM when booking.

2.Assigned under “Only me” in Booking > Customers cannot select the time slot 1:30 PM – 2:00 PM, even if they choose “Anyone” or select my name directly.

Additionally, in the first screenshot you shared, the “Tithing Declaration” booking appears in pink > I believe you’ve already assigned that booking to yourself.

Another issue is that in the lower screenshot, the selection bar for “Anyone” or a specific staff name is missing > this seems to be an abnormal behavior.

These unusual behaviors - such as missing time slots or selection bars - could be caused by configuration errors, display issues, or deeper technical problems within your tenant.

As a moderator of this platform, I have the following limitations:

I do not have access to your tenant, so I cannot check system configurations or logs.

I do not have permission to use internal Microsoft diagnostic tools.

I am not authorized to discuss sensitive or high-security information to ensure customer data protection.

Therefore, I recommend that you raise a support ticket to Microsoft so their technical engineers can assist you directly. They have access to specialized tools such as:

Diagnostic tools to inspect your Booking service configuration.

System logs to analyze abnormal behaviors or errors.

Internal telemetry to identify root causes.

They can also schedule a meeting with you, making it easier to explain the issue and receive tailored support.

To raise a ticket, you’ll need Global Admin permissions in your tenant. Do you know who the Global Admin is for your tenant? Only someone with this role can submit a ticket via the Admin Center.

Guide to raising a ticket: Get support for Microsoft 365 for business

How to find your Global Admin: How do I find my Microsoft 365 admin?

Once you’ve identified your Global Admin, please ask them to raise the ticket and share the ticket number with you so you can follow up accordingly.

If anything is unclear, feel free to message me - I’m here to support you!
Jeanie H 11,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-09-22T01:25:18.1933333+00:00

Hi @AJD,
I’m not sure if you’ve already raised a ticket yet. Did you have any difficulties with the ticket submission process? If you need any help, please feel free to reach out to me.

Also, has the technical support engineer provided any information so far? I’d really appreciate it if you could share any updates with me when you have time. This would also be very helpful for the community.

Thank you so much!
Jeanie H 11,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-09-23T00:54:26.65+00:00

Hi @AJD,
I hope this message reached you.

This is my second time reaching out to check if you've received my message. I really want to make sure your experience is as smooth as possible. If your issue persists or if you encounter any new difficulties, please share more details about the current steps you are taking. I am always happy to assist you whenever you need.

While waiting for your response, I will also be monitoring other customer questions on the forum to assist them. If you have any further questions or updates, please tag (@Jeanie) in the reply so I can assist you more promptly and thoroughly.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.
AJD 20 Reputation points

2025-09-24T18:08:11.0866667+00:00

Jeanie,

Thank you for following up with me. I did raise the ticket and worked for about an hour with someone over teams and we weren't able to find a solution. We concluded that it may be an issue with syncing to an iOS device that caused the unrecoverable glitch. So for now I am waiting for that issue to be resolved.

Here is what was stated to me: I have found an internal documentation listing a service incident between sync issues between Outlook for iOS and MacOS and significant bookings delays on how availability is display between the applications on the web and the mobile and desktop applications presented by Apple. Since this is a service incident and Microsoft is already aware of it, this concludes my support of this case because the next step would be to escalate to the service incident team to handle the development misconfigurations that have caused this lack of functionality.
Jeanie H 11,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-09-25T01:38:44.0733333+00:00

Hi @AJD,

Thank you so much for following up and sharing such a detailed update - I truly appreciate it, and your input is incredibly helpful to the community.

I understand how frustrating it must be to encounter a glitch that’s currently unrecoverable. I’ll continue to monitor the situation and keep you informed of any updates or resolutions as they become available.

Also, if you feel comfortable, you might consider marking this conversation as “Accepted” so that the post can reach more people. This would be incredibly helpful to the community - especially for those who may have similar concerns but aren’t admins and can’t easily raise a support ticket. Your shared experience with the technical team could be a valuable reference for others.

In the meantime, if there’s anything else I can assist you with or if you experience any changes, please don’t hesitate to reach out.