Your bookings in Outlook, and Outlook’s busy times blocked
Connect LemonBooking to Outlook and your bookings appear in an Outlook calendar, a room’s calendar included. If someone books the room in Outlook, that time can’t be booked in LemonBooking. It’s a free module on every plan.
If your rooms are also booked through Outlook, by your organisation’s own staff or by another system, the new Outlook Calendar module keeps the two in step. It works in both directions, and you choose which.
Out to Outlook
LemonBooking booking
Yoga · Tue 18:00–19:00 · Main Hall
Main Hall calendar in Outlook
Yoga · Tue 18:00–19:00
Back from Outlook
Main Hall calendar in Outlook
Meeting · Tue 10:00–12:00
LemonBooking calendar
Busy in Outlook · Tue 10:00–12:00
Your bookings in Outlook
Each calendar sync sends the bookings for the facilities you pick to one Outlook calendar. That can be:
- a new calendar LemonBooking creates for you,
- one of your own calendars, or
- a room’s calendar in Microsoft 365, such as mainhall@pepperton.org, once your Microsoft 365 administrator has given the account you sign in with Editor access to it.
New and changed bookings go across as they happen, and cancelled ones are removed. Every morning the next 30 days are checked again, and Sync now on the module’s page sends every upcoming booking.
Outlook’s busy times blocked
Tick Block times when this calendar is busy on a calendar sync, and anything else in that calendar stops its facilities being booked in LemonBooking at the same time.
- Busy, tentative and out-of-office entries block the time, and an all-day entry blocks its whole day, even one marked free. Outlook marks a new all-day entry as free, so a day the room is closed would otherwise stay bookable; switch off Treat all-day events as busy under Busy times on the module’s page to block only those marked busy. Timed entries marked free, entries marked working elsewhere, and cancelled or declined ones don’t block.
- It reads the calendar every five minutes, so an entry made in Outlook blocks LemonBooking within a few minutes, and moves or frees the time when it changes.
- It blocks your staff as well as your customers, because the room really is in use. An admin or manager who needs the time anyway can open the block on the calendar and remove it.
- Only the times come across. We keep each entry’s start and end, never its title, description, place or guests, and no bookings are created from it.
Setting it up
- An admin installs Outlook Calendar from the Modules page.
- On the module’s page, press Connect Outlook and sign in with Microsoft. A Microsoft 365 work account and a personal Outlook.com account both work.
- Add a calendar sync for each calendar: choose the calendar, the facilities it covers, and whether it should block busy times.
Sign in with an account that belongs to your venue, such as a shared bookings account, rather than someone’s own. The sync stops if the person who signed in leaves or loses access.
Does Microsoft ask for an administrator’s approval? It does whenever you sign in with a work or school account: only your organisation’s Microsoft 365 administrator can approve LemonBooking. The module’s page has a link to send them: they approve it once, and you can then connect.
Already on LemonBooking?
An admin can install Outlook Calendar from the Modules page today, on any plan. If your room calendars are on your own Exchange server rather than Microsoft 365, get in touch first: the module reaches calendars in Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com only.