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If you own a small business that deals in offering services to the public, scheduling appointments is often part of your daily routine. You may find yourself playing phone tag so much that you sometimes lose focus on your clients. Being a small business, you may have to double up as the chief administrator and financial officer, as well as the inventory supervisor and janitor on some days.

Microsoft Bookings: empowering clients to handle the appointments part

Microsoft has a solution – Microsoft Bookings – designed to alleviate the burden of booking appointments. Microsoft Bookings is a new online and mobile scheduling tool that is available with the premium subscriptions of Office 365. It provides your business with a unique web page where customers can schedule appointments themselves. First, the customer selects the service they want, chooses a day and time based on the availability you’ve provided, then enters their contact information and proceeds to book the appointment.

First things first: set up your Microsoft Bookings portal

The first step is to sign up for an Office 365 plan that includes the Microsoft Bookings service. Once you do this, the Bookings portal is turned on by default. It’s available as a tile in the MS app launcher. If you check the app launcher page and do not see “Bookings” listed there, then you may not have the right plan.

Bookings are available with an Office 365 Business Premium subscription, as well as for customers with the Office 365 A3 and A5 subscriptions. However, enterprise customers with Office 365 Enterprise E3 and E5 subscriptions can now turn it on and set it up for their clients.

To turn on the Bookings app for Office 365 Enterprise E3 and E5 subscriptions, simply follow these steps:

Step 1: Login to the administrator portal

To configure Microsoft Bookings, start by logging in to the admin center of your subscription by clicking on the Admin icon and entering your administrator username and password. This gives you the admin rights to acquire new services from Office 365.

Step 2: Adding Bookings to your Office 365 Enterprise subscription

Once you’re logged on, select the Billing tab and navigate to the Purchase Services option under it. You should be able to see a whole selection of options that include a Business App (free) with a Buy Now button that shows up when you hover over it. Click on this button to add the app to your subscription free of charge.

You will then have the option to add the amount corresponding to the licenses that you want. Ensure that this amount matches the total number of users in your organization (preferably). You will want to enable this service for these users during setup.

When this is complete and you have assigned licences to the users that you want the service enabled for, the users will now see the Bookings app as a new addition to the multiple apps on Office 365.

Moving onto setup

To set up the Microsoft Bookings site for your small business, click on the Bookings icon to open the Microsoft Bookings app. This action should open the welcome screen on the Microsoft Bookings website.

Tap the “Get it now” button to begin the setup process. This should lead you to a new window where you can enter your new Bookings calendar name and add it by clicking the “Add a booking calendar” tab.

You will then see a new window that requests more information about your business. This is where you enter your business name and type (from a predefined list). Ensure that the name you provide is unique since it is what will be used as the email address from which meeting notifications are sent.

When you’re done, select the “Continue” button and give it a moment to build the site. Your new Microsoft Bookings site eventually appears, ready for customizing.

Click on the different options to add more details about your business, staff, and services. Take your time to explore the various settings, one by one to ensure that you customize everything correctly. Of course, you can go back and tweak things if you need to.

At the end, you’ll have a Home Page from which you can monitor Bookings, add activities, modify the services you offer, manage your staff by adding, removing, and/or setting them up in terms of, say, working hours and days of the week – with respective color codes for each staff member.

Wrap-up

With Microsoft Bookings, you can spend far less time scheduling appointments with your customers and instead concentrate more on actually serving them. The tool simplifies how customers schedule and manage appointments. It takes care of the appointment-booking side of your business management so you can focus on the service side.

This tool was built for small businesses that depend on scheduling appointments with customers. It’s great for companies such as an auto mechanic shop, insurance agent, accounting office, a dog groomer, hair stylist, a dentist’s office, and many more. Now customers can set up their own appointments and do it at their convenience. This frees up your staff for other tasks. Microsoft Bookings boosts customer satisfaction, plus it reduces the number of missed appointments.

A foolproof guide for increasing efficiency in Excel

Excel often gets a bad rap. It is misunderstood as the groan-inducing, spreadsheet monster with tricky-to-navigate features. However, the truth about Excel lies in the user’s commitment to making the most out of the feature-rich platform. If we put aside Excel’s tedious reputation, creating step-by-step guides for mastering Excel efficiency really is a no-brainer.

The Marvelous Macro: How Macros Make Your Life Easier

What better place to start than by creating a macro in Excel. Creating a macro is hands-down the best possible way for users to automate repetitive tasks and get tedious work done more efficiently. Can you think of something that you or one of your team members does repeatedly in Excel? Whether it’s data entry or calculations, creating a macro can help streamline team processes and seriously boost productivity.

Basically, a macro lets you record an action or series of actions that can then be run repeatedly as needed. The creation of a macro is essentially a duplication of some specific set of mouse clicks and keystrokes, which gets recorded and saved to help you work smarter not harder. The best part about macros? They’re completely customizable. Once you’ve created your macro, you can make tweaks and edits to ensure they work just the way you want them to.

Productivity Game Changer: Working Smarter Not Harder with Excel

When you think about it, this is a game-changer that’s super easy to implement. Consider this. Perhaps one of your team members creates daily, weekly or monthly reports for managers, customers or other staff members. The creation of these reports, on a repetitive basis, can be extremely tedious when done manually each time. This results in long completion times and a huge decline in morale for your tied-up workers.

Creating an Excel macro for projects like these helps keep your team moving forward while still staying on top of boring, yet mission-critical reports. An Excel macro can be tailored to help workers format names, color-coded report data, and customize formatting and presentation. The macro can then be run and applied to any selected cells, meaning monotonous tasks really do become as easy as the click-of-a-mouse.

How to Create a Macro in Excel – A Fool-Proof Guide

Alright, ready to cut to the chase? How exactly can you and your team start taking advantage of the Excel macro feature in hopes of improving productivity, efficiency, and morale? Check out the fool-proof step-by-step guide below.

Creating a Macro in Excel

Initial Steps

Before you record a macro, you must ensure the Developer tab is visible on the ribbon. As a default, Excel keeps the Developer tab hidden. In order to get it front and center, complete the following steps:

• Go to Excel > Preferences > Ribbon & Toolbar
• Under the Main Tabs list, select the Customize the Ribbon
• Then, select the check box beside Developer and then click

Record Your Macro

You’re now ready to record your series of actions to create your macro. With your desired keystrokes and mouse-clicks in mind, follow these steps to record your macro:

• Under the Developer tab, select Record Macro.
• If you wish, enter a name for the macro in the Macro Name
• Enter a shortcut key in the Shortcut Key
• Enter a description in the Description
• Select OK to start recording.
• Carefully perform the series of actions you wish to automate.
• Once you’ve finished the sequential actions, select the Developer tab from the Code group and select Stop Recording.

Fine Tuning Your Macro

In order to make the most out of your creation, be sure to check out the different ways you can customize and edit your macro. To edit a recorded macro, follow these steps:

• Under the Developer tab, click
• Select the name of the macro you wish to customize and choose
• This will open the Visual Basic Editor. Here, you can witness how your recorded actions play out as macro code.
• This is where the creativity comes in. Experiment with your code, then close the editor to run your macro again. Tweak and customize as much as you wish until the macro is running just as you envisioned.

Back to Basics: Reaping the Productivity Benefits Already Built into Your Infrastructure

It’s that simple! Suddenly, your team members have a more streamlined and efficient way of completing even the most tedious of Excel tasks. This means increased productivity, a boost in morale and a more efficient team overall. By keeping your team moving and productive, you keep your team occupied and happy, which can only have positive impacts on your day-to-day operations and ultimately, on your bottom line.

In an increasingly crowded marketplace of digital productivity solutions, it can become easy to get lost in the shuffle and postpone the mastering of your operational pains. However, when professionals remember to get back to basics, a world of difference can be discovered.

Excel has been on the scene for decades and Microsoft is working all the time to optimize features and prioritize user experience.

By paying attention to what your existing digital infrastructure can do for your business, professionals can save time, money, and frustration. Good leaders understand the trials their employees endure each day. Any organization can make solid improvements without subscribing to new or trending efficiency solutions.

IT experts know that helping professionals make better use of their existing infrastructure is a core part of the managed-service mission. Professionals don’t need all the very latest tools and gadgets to help their team navigate technology more productively. They simply need to learn how to maximize those tools they’re already using.

With a humble and level-headed approach, a strategic IT partner will be committed to helping every client make better use of what they have and become the masters of their own tech infrastructure.

If you’re looking to get a better handle on the tech resources your team uses daily, don’t hesitate to reach out to a team of IT experts for advice and consultation. One phone call can put your company on the path to revamping your existing infrastructure and mastering operational needs.