Reasons to Use Virtual Appointments in Microsoft Teams

For certain job descriptions, appointment scheduling is a standard task, and these days, much on people’s appointment calendars has gone from Zoom back to the old norm: face-to-face.

Zoom is no longer the primary vehicle for meetings, although it is still convenient and widely used, especially by those populating the remote workforce. Salespeople use it to answer questions about a product. Software companies allow people to schedule live demos. Telehealth therapists allow clients to book video sessions.

Those are just a few of the groups that are going to love this new Microsoft Teams feature. Virtual Appointments adds a new meeting style tailored for engagements with customers. It exists in the unique space between Zoom and in-person meetings.

If you use Teams but haven’t checked out the value of Virtual Appointments, you should take a look to see if it’s a fit for your needs. You don’t necessarily have to juggle Zoom vs Onsite meetings, since this new feature will streamline the experience.

What are Microsoft virtual appointments?

Do you want to see a handy all-in-one meeting platform for engaging with customers? Look at Virtual Appointments. You can schedule, manage, and conduct B2B or B2C meetings in Microsoft Teams.

This combines the scheduling component with the video conference interface. Anyone with the link can join the virtual appointment – and they don’t need to have a Teams account.

‘Bookings,’ Microsoft’s scheduling app, connects directly to Teams, making the Virtual Appointments function as seamless as possible.

Some of the features below will be available with any Microsoft 365 plan. Some are available with a premium plan.

Virtual Appointments: The Features

Appointments Management

You can see all of your scheduled appointments at a glance in a single view, making it easy to manage cancellations and time changes.

Sending Customized Confirmations & Reminders

You can personalize the meeting experience for those involved by sending them customized confirmation and reminder messages via SMS or email. You can also use automation to give that personal touch without having to send each one manually, which saves time.

Customized Waiting Room

Adding another personal touch to your virtual engagements is easy: you can customize the Teams waiting room, using themes and logos to brand your business. And, since sitting in a virtual waiting room is boring, this feature lets you chat with attendees while in the lobby waiting room - very helpful if your current appointment is running a little long. You can let them know you’ll be right with them, rather than leave them hanging.

Meeting Following-ups

After your virtual appointment you can easily send meeting follow-ups, which helps you reduce the time it takes to send any promised follow-up information. You also keep all the details in a single place, making your client communication chain easier to follow.

Organization & Department Analytics

This is a handy way to gauge how effective your appointments are. It’s hard to know if your demos are resulting in sales if you don’t have a good tracking system, and it’s also important to have visibility into customer appointments across the organization.

You can do this with a premium analytics feature, which gives you helpful reporting that provides insights into virtual appointments in all departments.

How to Use Virtual Appointments

Your admin must set up a few things before you start using Virtual Appointments in Teams. They do need to be a Bookings admin to access these settings.

It is advisable to consult with your IT services provider, whether in-house IT support or an outsourced Managed Services Provider (MSP).

How to Create a Calendar

This is easily done. In the Virtual Appointments app, go to the ‘Home’ tab and choose ‘Create a calendar.’

Large organizations may choose to create different calendars for different departments.

Populate

Just simply add staff members once you’ve finished the initial setup. You can populate with up to 100 employees. It is then important to assign them a role. Once you’ve added the employees, you can view their availability in both Teams and Outlook.

Cross-app compatibility is another nice thing about using an integrated platform like M365. Your calendar will sync across apps.

Create Types of Appointments

Choose your appointment types from these two options:

Scheduled: You schedule the day/time. The system adds this information to the email confirmation.

On-demand (Teams Premium): Customers can choose when to meet from your booking calendar.

Set up SMS Notifications

If you choose to, and have the right Teams plan, you can set up SMS notifications, which allows you to send appointment confirmations and reminders via text message easily.

Note: To receive the SMS notifications, attendees currently need a valid U.S., Canadian, or U.K. phone number.

Link Forms

You can also link to any forms you would like attendees to fill out. Virtual Appointments allows linking up to four cloud-based forms, which you would need to have created in Microsoft Forms.

Publish Your Booking Page

This next step applies if you have Teams Premium, and you want to give customers the ability to book on-demand appointments. If so, you will need to publish the booking page. Just go to the ‘Manage’ tab of Virtual Appointments, select ‘Booking page,’ and turn on ‘Publish booking page.’