Services in Microsoft Bookings: every setting

A service is the thing customers book, and it decides almost everything about the appointment: how long it lasts, where it happens, whether it gets a Teams link, what price is shown, how many customers can join, which staff deliver it, which questions are asked and which emails go out. Customers can't change any of that. They pick a service, then a time, so every variation you want to offer (30 or 60 minutes, Teams or in person, a named adviser) is a separate service. This chapter lists every setting in the service editor as of October 2026, with defaults and what breaks.

Services are per booking page. Open the page, select Services, then Add new service or an existing service. The service-types article on Microsoft Learn says you need the Administrator staff role to create one, and the services article says to keep a page to 50 services. Changes to business-related settings can take up to 10 minutes to reach the public page.

Basic details#

The price options aren't listed on Microsoft Learn's services page. The Microsoft Graph service resource lists them: not set, free, fixed price, starting at, hourly, price varies and call us. The currency is a page-level setting, not a service one.

What we saw when testing (September 2026)#

Two service settings behave differently from what the editor suggests. A Before buffer moves the first start time: in the public page code, the first slot in a free block is the block start plus the pre-buffer, so a 10-minute pre-buffer on a block that opens at 9:00 gives a first slot of 9:10. And for multi-staff services, the service data the page reads carries a flag that makes the page send the whole group of assigned staff with the booking instead of picking one person. Why Bookings shows odd start times has the full slot rules.

Availability options#

When you switch Default scheduling policy off, check every field on the service, not only the one you meant to change. In our captures, a service with its own policy is read entirely from that policy, and anything missing falls back to the page code's built-in values (1 day lead time, 365 days in advance, 30-minute increments) rather than to the page settings. How the page-wide policy works is in the scheduling policy chapter, and how hours, calendars and time off combine is in how availability is calculated.

Assign staff#

The two Microsoft Learn articles name the multi-staff mode differently. The services article calls it Multiple staff and an N:1 service. The service-types article calls the same radio button Assign all of your selected staff for an appointment, and describes combining it with Maximum number of attendees above 1 to make an N:N service, several staff with several customers. Test that combination on a non-public service before you rely on it.

Custom fields#

Customer email, phone number, address and notes are built in. The services article says they are "non-removable" and can only be made optional by clearing Required; the custom questions article shows them deselected. Your own questions come from one list shared by every service on the page, so deleting a question removes it everywhere. Customer email is required by default, and the FAQ explains that without it the customer gets no confirmation or Teams link. In our captures the public page offers only free-text and single-choice questions, and caps notes at 3,000 characters. Setup is in required custom questions, what to ask is in the custom questions guide, and the full reference is the custom questions chapter.

Our captures also show a separate requirement level for guest email addresses on each service, and the public page offers a field for extra guests when it isn't hidden. Microsoft doesn't document where that's set, and we haven't checked the editor for it.

Notifications#

Staff-side email settings live on the Staff page too, and the page-wide Notify when a booking is created or changed sends every booking to the Business information mailbox. The three switches are untangled in notifying staff, and the notifications chapter covers email and SMS as a whole.

Publishing and links#

Publishing options decides whether the service appears on the public page (On) or can only be booked by staff from the Calendar (Off). Off isn't an unlisted service: the public page leaves it out completely. Every published service has its own link under Service booking page, which opens the page on that service. See linking to one service.

Whether customers can reschedule or cancel is controlled by Let customers manage their appointment when it was booked by you or your staff on their behalf, but that only covers bookings staff create; customers who booked themselves keep Manage booking. See stopping customers rescheduling.

Microsoft doesn't document labels or categories for services on Learn or in the Graph v1.0 service resource. Our captures show a category-names field in the service data, but we haven't seen what sets it or where it appears.

One service per variant#

Because customers can only choose a service, a time and sometimes a person, most "can customers choose…?" questions end in the same answer.

Group capacity and attendee management are covered in the group services chapter.

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