Microsoft Bookings - Staff availability not loading

Dear @Jack,

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Q&A forum. I understand how concerning it is when specific services stop displaying staff availability, especially when the majority of your services are functioning correctly. 

The "loading" status usually indicates that the Bookings engine is struggling to resolve the intersection between the Service's scheduling policy and the Staff member's individual calendar. Since you have already tried recreating the services without success, the issue likely lies in a conflicting rule or a synchronization "glitch" for those specific configurations. 

I recommend checking these three specific areas, as they are the most common causes for the infinite loading state: 

Step 1: Check for "Not Bookable" Overrides in Service Availability Even if your general availability is correct, a service-specific override can cause this. 

• Go to Services > Edit the affected service > Availability options. 
• Look for the section "Availability during these dates." 
• If there are any custom date ranges set to "Not bookable" that overlap with current dates, or if the "General availability" is accidentally set to "Not bookable," the staff list will hang. Set this to "Bookable when staff are free." 

Step 2: Verify the "Minimum Lead Time" If the "Minimum lead time" is set too high (e.g., 24 hours) and you are testing the page for "today," Bookings may fail to find any valid slots, occasionally resulting in a loading loop for the staff list. 

• In the Booking page, check Default scheduling policy. 
• Temporarily set Minimum lead time to 0 hours to see if availability populates immediately. 

Step 3: Reset the Staff Sync (The "Toggle" Method) Since only 2 services are affected, there may be a stuck sync between those services and the staff calendars. 

• Go to Staff and edit one of the assigned staff members. 
• Uncheck "Events on Microsoft 365 calendar affect availability," save the changes, wait a minute, then re-check it and save again. This often forces a fresh sync of the free/busy data. 

If these services have a Buffer Time configured (e.g., 15 minutes before or after), and your staff calendars are tightly packed, Bookings might be unable to find a single valid slot that accommodates both the service duration and the buffer, causing the UI to hang while searching. 

If the issue persists in a specific browser, try accessing the booking page in an Incognito/InPrivate window. This rules out local cache issues which frequently affect the Bookings web interface.  Please note that as a forum moderator, I don’t have access to backend tools or internal systems to investigate further, and certain settings or configurations are managed exclusively by your organization’s administrators, so I’m unable to check or make changes on that side. That said, I truly hope these suggestions help you move forward.   

Thank you for your patience and your understanding. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. I'm looking forward for your reply. 

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For services where staff availability is stuck on “loading,” use these checks and workarounds that align with how Bookings handles staff and service availability:

1. Confirm staff are correctly added and active

• Go to Bookings homepage → Shared Bookings → select the affected booking page → Staff.
• Ensure the affected staff are listed and not removed or deleted.
• If any of these staff have left the organization and were removed from Microsoft 365, remove them from all Bookings calendars so they do not interfere with availability resolution:
  • Hover over the staff name → select the Delete icon → OK.
  • Repeat on every booking calendar if there are multiple calendars.

2. Verify staff availability configuration

• On the Staff page, edit one of the affected staff:
  • Check Use business hours if availability should follow the business hours configured on the Business Information page.
  • Or uncheck Use business hours and confirm that custom availability is defined for the days/times expected. If a day has no availability set, that staff member is treated as unavailable for that day.
• Ensure Events on Microsoft 365 calendar affect availability is enabled if free/busy from Outlook should be used to calculate availability.

3. Check service availability settings on the two problematic services For each of the two services:

• Open the service → go to Availability options.
• Confirm the service is set to Bookable when staff are free or Custom hours, and not inadvertently set to Not bookable.
• If Custom hours is used, verify that:
  • Weekly schedule is defined for the days/times expected.
  • Any Set availability for a different date range entries are correct and not set to Not bookable for the current date range.

4. Check for conflicting date ranges

• In the same Availability options area, review all added date ranges.
• If there are overlapping or incorrect ranges (for example, a long range marked Not bookable that covers today), remove or correct them so they do not override general availability.

5. Test with a simplified configuration To isolate the issue on one of the affected services:

• Temporarily set the service to Bookable when staff are free.
• Limit the service to a single staff member whose availability is known and correctly configured.
• Save and reload the page to see if the staff list still shows “loading.”

6. Browser-side troubleshooting If the configuration above is correct but the UI still shows “loading” for those two services only:

• Try accessing the Bookings web app in an Incognito/Private browser session.
• Clear browser cache/cookies and try again.
• Try another browser to rule out local caching or extension issues.

7. If the issue persists If only specific services are affected after these checks, and staff availability continues to show as “loading,” raise a support ticket so backend logs for the Bookings mailbox can be checked and any service-specific corruption or sync issues can be investigated.

References:

• Add team members to Bookings
• Adding staff availability in Microsoft Bookings
• Configure service availability in Microsoft Bookings
• Shared Bookings Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)