Book it! Using Microsoft 365 for event registrations and signups

Four event booking solutions using the tools you already have

Reading time: 8 minutes

This week we invested a little bit of time to help a member of our Your 365 Coach community achieve a solution to a business problem by using Microsoft Bookings.

Creating signups, registrations and booking systems is something that people in lots of different roles often need to achieve, so we thought a quick blog to highlight some of the Microsoft 365 options available could be useful.

Microsoft Bookings

This app literally does what it says on the tin. Bookings allows you to create a booking page with several different types of appointment available (called Services) that let your audience book appointments at a time convenient to them.

Bookings excels at open-ended appointment type reservations. It can also be a solution for time-bound activities, for example booking slots at a conference - it does take a bit of practice to understand the settings to do this though!

Pros

• Purpose made booking tool
• Can send calendar invites and email reminders
• Can share booking link externally
• Can set maximum number of people attending a session

Cons

• Set up is confusing to new users
• Booking page lacks customisation and cannot be opened at a specific date (ideal for time-bound)
• Custom fields can be added to booking page, but can’t be exported.

Microsoft Forms

Forms are a really versatile solution for a lot of business problems and could definitely be used has an entry point for a booking system. Forms can handle dates and times, and you can collect all of the information that you need from your audience.

While Forms is really great at collecting your audience is data, it does little in the way of processing it. It can't out-of-the-box send a calendar invite, for example. There is potential to use Power Automate for calendar and emails if that's in your skill set.

Pros

• Easy to set up
• Can be shared externally
• Able to see a live summary of activity
• All data can be exported

Cons

• Manual processing or Power Automate needed for emails and calendar invites
• Can’t set maximum attendance limits

Microsoft Lists

Lists also offers a versatile solution in a similar way to forms, but also presents similar limitations. You can easily collect lots of data from your audience and there's options to present that in a calendar view. Microsoft List Forms (not to be confused with Microsoft Forms) can create a more visually appealing booking page too.

Currently there's no way of sharing a list form externally so this could only provide an internal booking solution, you'd also need to be mindful of permissions as in some scenarios your audience might see each other's information.

Pros

• Easy to set up
• All data can be processed in Lists

Cons

• Setting permissions can be complex
• Manual processing or Power Automate needed for emails and calendar invites
• Can’t set maximum attendance limits

Microsoft Teams Webinars

If you're looking to hold an online event, then the webinar meeting type in Microsoft Teams might be exactly what you need. The webinar brings everything together for you to create your online meeting and can then build a booking page with fairly impressive amounts of customisation.

It's also possible add custom fields to collect information from your audience at the time of booking, as well as sending a calendar invite and reminder emails. If you want to, it will also email with a link to the recording after. You’ll need a Teams Premium licence to customise the automated emails otherwise standard emails are used.

It’s worth a note that webinars have different in-meeting options to a standard meeting, so get familiar or change them before holding your first event.

Pros

• Easy to create all-in-one solution within Microsoft Teams
• Can be shared externally
• Calendar and reminder emails automatically created
• Can set maximum number of people attending a session
• All information can be viewed live and exported after the event

Cons

• Only suitable for online events
• Premium licence needed for email customisation

Published: 7 June 2024

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