Common questions
You can book desks up to 3 months in advance. Past dates are disabled in the date picker.
No. You can only book one desk per time slot to ensure fair access. That includes: you cannot book two desks for the same morning slot, you cannot book a morning and afternoon desk that overlap, and you cannot book a Full Day desk if you already have a morning or afternoon booking on that day.
Not yet. Each booking is made individually today. Recurring bookings (the same desk every Tuesday, for example) are in the v2 wave alongside the Microsoft Marketplace listing.
Three fixed slots: Morning (9:00 AM to 1:00 PM), Afternoon (1:00 PM to 5:00 PM), and Full Day (9:00 AM to 5:00 PM). Time slots are designed to be predictable rather than fully configurable so the conversation around availability is consistent across the team.
Green is available for booking, click to book. Red is already booked. Blue is your own booking, click to see information. Grey is inactive or unavailable. Hover over any desk to see its name and description.
Yes. After confirming a booking, click Add to Calendar to download an .ics file. The file works with Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and other apps. On the Standard tier, automatic Outlook event creation can be enabled so bookings land directly in your Outlook calendar with no manual step.
Cancel the incorrect booking from My Bookings and create a new one for the correct desk. Direct edits aren't supported on purpose: cancel-and-rebook keeps the audit trail simple and frees the original slot immediately.
Acquire Booking Planner from the Microsoft commercial marketplace, upload the .sppkg to your tenant's App Catalog, tick 'make available across the tenant', edit any page, add the web part from the gallery, configure its properties, and publish. The Get Started page has a step-by-step walkthrough.
Inside your own Microsoft 365 tenant, in standard SharePoint lists. Booking Planner reads and writes those lists; nothing is stored in an external database. If you uninstall Booking Planner, every booking record remains unchanged.
Only your Microsoft 365 tenant ID and the Booking Planner app ID, over HTTPS, to validate your subscription with the SaaS licensing service. No booking, people, floor-plan, or visitor data leaves your tenant.
Yes, as a tab on any channel (Standard tier or higher). Add the SharePoint page to a Teams tab, or use the dedicated Booking Planner Teams app if installed. Teams desktop, web, and mobile are all fully supported.
Yes on Outlook web and Outlook desktop (Standard tier or higher). Install via the Apps panel and pin to the side rail. Outlook mobile on iOS has a Microsoft platform issue that prevents SPFx apps from loading (not specific to Booking Planner). Workaround: use the Microsoft Teams mobile app or Outlook Web in the device's browser.
Booking Planner generates a permanent QR code per desk. Print and stick the QR on the desk; users scan it on arrival with their phone to mark the booking checked in. NFC tap is supported on devices that read passive NFC. Utilisation reports show actual occupancy versus bookings on the back of these check-ins.
Enterprise customers can delegate booking management to Executive Assistants and Reception staff via Azure AD security groups. The Assistant role can create, modify, and cancel bookings for any user, with full field-level edit access. The Reception role can create and cancel for any user and reassign which desk is booked, but cannot change dates, times, or who the booking is for. Both require Microsoft Graph API permissions (User.Read.All, GroupMember.Read.All).
The Visitor Management module (Enterprise) tracks external guests, internal visitors from other offices, and contractors through a lifecycle (Expected, Checked In, Checked Out, No Show). For meeting room bookings, external attendees from Outlook calendar invites can be pre-registered automatically; reception checks visitors in at arrival; the host gets a rich Teams card notification. Pre-launch: the data and services foundation is built; the reception kiosk and host dashboard ship progressively alongside the Marketplace listing.
Every fresh install will include a 30-day Enterprise licence by default once the Marketplace listing is live, so every feature is available out of the box. You can evaluate the admin panel, floor-plan drawing tools, role-based permissions, on-behalf bookings, group calendar routing, and the visitor management module before deciding on a tier.
The Updates page tracks what shipped, what is being enforced today, and what comes next. The Coming next section there lists the active roadmap.
Troubleshooting checklist
Web part not appearing in the gallery?
- Confirm Booking Planner is installed in your tenant’s App Catalog
- Check the
.sppkgwas approved and deployed tenant-wide - If you added the app to a single site, you don’t need to re-add it per site once it’s tenant-wide
Floor plan uploads but nothing is bookable?
- The plan image alone is not enough; you need to draw polygon boundaries on it to define bookable spaces (rooms, zones), then place desks inside each room with the Grid Editor
- Drawing tools and the Grid Editor live in the admin panel (Enterprise tier)
- On a pilot, JFDI can author the first plan with you remotely; contact us
Licence validation error?
- Ensure your SaaS subscription is active in the marketplace
- Check the tenant ID matches the subscription
- If the issue persists, contact us and we can help diagnose
QR check-in shows “expired” or “not found”?
- The QR encodes the desk identifier and the tenant; if the desk was deleted, regenerate the QR after redrawing the space
- If the user is not signed into SharePoint when scanning, they will be prompted to sign in before the check-in completes
- QR check-in requires Standard tier or higher
On-behalf booking creates events in the wrong calendar?
- By default, on-behalf bookings create the Outlook event in the creator’s personal calendar
- To route them into a shared M365 Group or Shared Mailbox calendar, enable Group Calendar Integration in the admin panel and provide the target calendar identifier
- If the configured group calendar is unreachable, the system falls back to the personal calendar (configurable)
Outlook iOS doesn’t load the app
- Known Microsoft platform issue with SPFx apps in Outlook iOS as of January 2025, not specific to Booking Planner
- Workaround: use the Microsoft Teams mobile app or Outlook Web in the device’s browser
- Microsoft is aware of the issue and is expected to fix it in a future Outlook update
Where to look next
Get Started
Step-by-step installation, floor-plan setup, and booking rules.
Features
Every view and capability, with the tier that includes it.
Updates
Release notes and what is shipping next.
Need a hand with floor plans or rollout?
JFDI can help with tenant rollout, remote floor-plan authoring, QR check-in setup, and policy configuration.