Add staff member from subsiders company

Hi @Suheir AlSaleh, 

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum. 

Regarding your scenario, where you want to add staff from a different domain (a subsidiary or external company) to Microsoft Bookings so they can act as team members and manage or share their own availability, I’d like to clarify the current product behavior and limitations. 

  At this time, Microsoft Bookings does not support free/busy availability sharing for external users (users outside your Microsoft 365 tenant). 

• You can add an external user (from another domain or tenant) as a staff member in Bookings. 
• However, their calendar availability cannot be synced or displayed in Bookings. 
• As a result, external staff cannot manage or reflect their own real availability for bookings in the same way internal users can. 

This limitation applies even if: 

• The external user is a guest (Azure AD B2B) 
• The external user belongs to a subsidiary company with a different domain 
• Calendar sharing exists outside of Bookings 

Bookings only pulls free/busy data from internal Exchange Online mailboxes within the same tenant. 

If you add an external staff member: 

• Availability must be set manually in Bookings 
• Appointments may be double-booked if their real calendar changes 
• They will not have automatic calendar conflict prevention 

So while adding them is technically possible, the experience is limited and not recommended for scenarios where accurate availability is required. 

You can review Microsoft’s documentation here for more context on how staff management works in Bookings:  Add team members to Bookings | Microsoft Learn

I personally agree that enabling full availability support for external or cross-tenant staff (especially for subsidiaries) would be a very valuable enhancement. 

The best way to request this capability is to submit feedback directly to Microsoft so the product team can review and evaluate the suggestion. This is the most effective path forward, as the Microsoft Teams product team actively monitors customer feedback, and many features and product improvements are driven by customer suggestions.   

• Visit: Bookings · Community (Feedback Portal) 
• Select Send feedback 
• Clearly describe your request, for example: 

“Allow Microsoft Bookings to sync free/busy availability for external or cross-tenant staff members.” 

Customer feedback is actively reviewed, and many product improvements come directly from these requests. 

If you submit feedback, feel free to share the link here. I’d be happy to upvote it, and it can help others with the same requirement support the request as well. 

As forum moderators, I don’t have the ability to change or override Bookings product limitations, but I'm always happy to clarify current behavior and point you to the correct feedback channels. 

Thank you for your time and understanding. While this may not provide the outcome you were hoping for, I hope it clearly explains what is and isn’t currently possible with Microsoft Bookings. 

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In Microsoft Bookings, only staff who are inside the same Microsoft 365 organization (tenant) can be given the full “Team member” capabilities to manage their own availability directly in the booking mailbox. Staff from another company/domain can be added as staff, but with limited capabilities.

From the provided information:

1. Staff from outside the tenant can be added by manually entering their email and details:
   • Go to the shared booking page → Staff → Add new staff.
   • For external staff, manually fill in their email and other information instead of selecting them from the directory.
   • External staff “will not be able to share free/busy information with Bookings.”
2. Available roles and what they allow:
   • Team member: “Can manage bookings on their own calendar and their availability in the booking mailbox. When adding or editing a booking in their calendar, they'll be assigned as staff.” This role assumes the user is in the same organization so that their calendar and the booking mailbox can be linked.
   • Guest: “Can be assigned to bookings, but they can't open the booking mailbox.” This is the role that applies to external people; they cannot manage availability directly in Bookings.
3. For external staff, Bookings can still:
   • Send them meeting invitations and email reminders when they are assigned to a booking (as long as they have a valid email address).
   • Let them deliver services, but they cannot access the Bookings app or edit their own availability there.

Because of these constraints, a staff member from a different company/domain cannot be added as a full “Team member” with self-managed availability in Bookings. They can only be added as a Guest-like staff member who:

• Receives invitations and notifications by email.
• Can be assigned to bookings.
• Cannot open the booking mailbox or configure their own availability in Bookings.

To summarize the setup steps for such an external person:

1. Open the Bookings shared booking page.
2. Go to Staff → Add new staff.
3. Enter their name, external email address, and other details manually.
4. Assign an appropriate role (for external users, this effectively behaves like Guest: assignable to bookings, but no direct access to Bookings or availability management).

They will then receive booking invitations and updates by email, but availability must be managed by someone inside the tenant (e.g., a Scheduler or Team member) on their behalf.

References:

• Add team members to Bookings
• Understanding staff roles in Microsoft Bookings
• Create your staff list
• Adding staff availability in Microsoft Bookings
• Add staff to your booking calendar in Microsoft Teams