How to make 'Select Staff' on shared Booking page not optional

Dear @Melanie,

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

Based on your description, you wonder is it possible to make ‘Select staff’ mandatory on a shared Microsoft Bookings page so customers must choose a staff member before selecting a time slot

At this time, Bookings does not provide a built‑in setting to make staff selection mandatory.

You can either allow customers to choose a specific staff member (which remains optional) or disable staff selection entirely and let Bookings automatically assign an available staff member. There is currently no option to force customers to select a staff member before choosing a time slot.

If this behavior does not meet your business requirements. In that case, I sincerely recommend you go to Feedback community to submit feedback via link Ideas · Community. Our product team is in charge of the site, and they constantly check customer reviews and feedback. The higher votes, the more attention the related team will pay on. And a lot of the features are developed and improved based on customer feedback.  

Note: Please understand that as forum moderator, my primary goal is to provide helpful guidance and support through general troubleshooting steps. While I don’t have access to internal systems or test devices required to resolve backend issues, I truly appreciate your understanding of these limitations. I genuinely hope the information I share helps guide you in the right direction, and I'm always here to assist as much as I can within my scope.   

If you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out or leave the comment below so I can support you.

On a shared Microsoft Bookings page, staff selection can be allowed or completely removed, but there is no setting in the provided documentation to make “Select staff” strictly required before choosing a time slot.

Available controls are:

1. On the Booking page (self-service page)
   • Use Allow customers to choose a specific person for the booking under Staff. When this is enabled, customers can pick a staff member, but it remains optional; Bookings can still auto-assign based on availability.
   • If this option is disabled, customers cannot choose staff at all and Bookings assigns an available staff member automatically.
2. On each Service definition
   • Under Assign staff, you can:
     • Enable Allow customers to choose a particular staff for booking, which lets customers pick from specific staff for that service.
     • Or disable it so Bookings automatically assigns an available staff member.

The documentation does not expose a configuration that forces staff selection as a mandatory step before time selection. The closest behavior is enabling staff selection (so customers can choose), but it cannot be made a required field via built-in settings.

References:

• Customize your booking page
• Define your services in Shared Bookings
• Shared Bookings Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)