Set minimum notice and booking window in Microsoft Bookings

Set the page-wide policy#

1. Open Bookings, go to Shared booking pages and pick your page.
2. Select Booking page in the left pane.
3. In the Scheduling policy section, set:
   • Lead time in hours: the minimum notice. Microsoft describes it as "the number of hours in advance that customers must book or cancel an appointment".
   • Maximum days in advance: the booking window. The scheduling policy article says it can be "365 days or more".
4. Select Save and publish.

The Bookings FAQ and some screens call the same two settings Minimum lead time and Maximum lead time.

Two rules to know:

• The minimum counts clock hours. It's "based on regular hours and not business hours". A 2020 thread asked whether 120 hours meant 15 working days. It doesn't: 120 hours is 5 calendar days, measured against the appointment's start time.
• The two values must be at least 24 hours apart. The FAQ says so explicitly. The maximum can only be 1 day when the minimum is 0 hours. With a 48-hour minimum, the maximum has to be at least 3 days.

What we saw when testing (September 2026)#

We captured the public Microsoft booking page and the calls it makes, across 13 live captures in several time zones, and reproduced every slot it showed. Three findings help when the first available time isn't what you expect:

• Shared pages add about 3 minutes. The earliest slot offered is now + minimum lead time + about 3 minutes: the page adds 1 minute to the lead time, then drops any start within 2 more minutes. With a 4-hour lead time at 10:00, a 14:00 start is gone; the first offer is the next start in a free block after about 14:03.
• Personal "Bookings with me" pages add 15 minutes. There, a slot must start more than lead time + 15 minutes from now.
• Fallback values in the page code. When a policy value is missing, the shared page falls back to a 1-day lead time, 365 days in advance and a 30-minute increment. Personal pages fall back to 1 hour, 90 days and 30 minutes. A page that seems to ignore your settings may be reading a service policy you forgot about, or none at all.

Give one service a different policy#

Services inherit the page's policy. You might accept next-day bookings for a quick call but want a week's notice for an on-site visit.

1. Go to Services and open the service.
2. Switch off the Default scheduling policy toggle.
3. On Availability options, set this service's own lead time, maximum days in advance and time increments.
4. Select Save changes.

"The lead time is greyed out" or "stuck at 24 hours"#

A 2021 Q&A thread (21 "same question" votes) had exactly this: the page-level minimum was changed to 1 hour and saved, but the service still showed 24 hours, dimmed. The fix was to turn off the service's default scheduling policy, after which the service-level lead time became editable. In today's service editor, that's the Default scheduling policy toggle above.

If you've changed the page-level value and nothing seems different, check whether the service has its own policy. A service with the default switched off keeps using its own values, for every field.

Can the maximum go beyond 90 days?#

The scheduling policy article says the maximum can be 365 days or more. In a 2025 thread a user reported that the drop-down in their tenant only went up to 90 days, and the moderator said it depends on the service plan. Microsoft doesn't document any plan-based cap for shared booking pages, so treat that explanation with caution.

One likely explanation: personal "Bookings with me" pages use 90 days as their fallback in the page code we read. We haven't confirmed a hard cap there. If you see a 90-day ceiling:

• Make sure you're editing a shared booking page (Shared booking pages on the Bookings home page), not a personal page. The two have different settings.
• Check the service-level policy as well as the page-level one.
• If it's still capped, raise a Microsoft support ticket and refer to the scheduling policy article.

Related settings#

• The minimum lead time also governs cancellations. For what customers can and can't change, see stopping customers cancelling or rescheduling.
• A long minimum combined with narrow hours is a common reason the page shows nothing. See no available times.
• The shared booking page setup guide covers choosing these values when you first build a page.
• To check whether your minimum and maximum fit how customers actually book, measure how far ahead they book. Bookings has no report for it; see how far ahead customers book.

BookingsXP is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft.