Gcal Appointment Slots

Posted on 3/18/2022 admin

Gcal Appointment Slots 3,8/5 2572 votes

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Appointment Slots

Using appointment slots

The appointment slots feature lets you set one period of time on your calendar, divided into available time slots for people to reserve. For instance, professors can have their students reserve time during office hours each week, or the library could let anyone visiting their website schedule an appointment for a room during a set time period.

Note that in order to reserve one of your appointment slots, people will need to have a Google Calendar account themselves. But it's free and easy for them to create an account, so don't let that stop you from creating appointment slots!

This is a handy tool with many possibilities. Read on to learn how to set up and start using it.

Set up appointment slots

Sign in to your Georgia Southern Google account and go to your calendar
Make sure that you're in Week view or any Day view, since the appointment slots can't be created when you're using any of the other Calendar views.
Click anywhere in the calendar grid. In the event bubble that pops up, click Appointment slots.
Indicate the details for the appointment slots using these fields:

What: Enter a short title for the appointment slots, like 'Professor Brown’s Office Hours.'
Calendar drop-down menu: Choose the calendar in which you'd like to create the appointment slots.
Offer as a single appointment: Select this button if the entire time will be used for one appointment.
Split into smaller slots: Select this option if you'd like to allow multiple appointments to be scheduled during the block of time. Simply select and indicate the duration for each appointment (in minutes) in the text box to the right.

If you're all finished, click Create slots on the bubble, or continue to the next step to add more details to your appointment slots.
Click Edit details to open the appointment slots details page and add more information, such as a location or description, or to make the appointment block repeat. To make the appointment block recur, click the Repeat checkbox to choose your settings. Read more about repeating events.
If other people should be present during the appointment slot, you can invite them using the Add Guests field. For instance, a professor may want their assistant to be there during office hours and could invite them using this feature.
Note: Anyone that you add here will be invited to every individual appointment throughout the block of time, and will also receive an email each time someone reserves an appointment. To show the event to people who might reserve an appointment slot, give them the appointment page's URL that's listed at the top of the event details page
When you're finished, click Save.

You're all set up! Your appointment block will display as a single event on your calendar and the calendars of any invitees. You'll be able to distinguish the appointment block from other events by its striped pattern. Once actual appointments are booked, they'll appear as regular events overlapping with the striped appointment block.

Booking Appointments (visitors)

To let people start booking appointments, simply direct them to the appointment page.

** You can find the URL for your appointment page at the top of the set-up page, which you can access via the Edit details link.

Visitors to this page will see a calendar showing the available appointments. They’ll also see their own calendar overlaid on the appointment page, making it easy to see what times work for them.
To book an appointment, visitors simply click one of the available appointment buttons and click Save. Visitors can also edit other fields in the popup to make changes to the title, location, and event description.
Appointments that have been booked won’t be visible to future visitors to the appointment page.
Attendees can cancel their appointment by deleting or declining the event on their own calendar, which will appear as a decline on your calendar. The appointment then becomes bookable for future visitors to the appointment page.

Want to allow you clients to book appointments on your website using Bookable Appointment Slots in Google Calendar? I wouldn’t be writing this tutorial if I could find a comprehensive tutorial online, or if Google help documents weren’t as confusing. It turned out not as simple and intuitive as I originally anticipated. I hope this short tutorial will help my clients and others find their way around google account in order to create google calendar and embed it on their website.

With appointment slots that you can open on Google Calendar, you can plan your focus time effectively. As these enable you to set the duration for each meeting, you can plan which part of the day will be filled with meetings and which part can be used for deep work. Go to your Google Calendar and click on a day to create an event.In the pop-up window, select Appointment slots (see top right of window). Name your appointments and enter the length of time for each appointment. Click the Edit details to further customize the appointment slots.

I know that your time is precious, so let’s keep this a point form shall we? Before we start we need a mind-map of what we are doing and why.

Prerequisites – You need G-Suite:
So what’s the catch? The catch is that google wants you to be on their G-Suite plan. Their basic plan is $6 / month. If you don’t have G-Suite you might want to create one.

I’d appreciate if you use my affiliate link: https://goo.gl/9HTDpa
As a bonus google hands out 20% discount for those who sign-up through a referral program.
G Suite Basic Coupon Code – UC9JMYD6HAUJLTP
G Suite Business Coupon Code – V3CAN4MDF6R6D7X
Coupons expire on: 05/2020 (if they expired, please let me know so I could update them)

Why we are creating bookable calendar on the website?

Because you might want your clients to book appointments with you on your website.
Because google calendar is likely already integrated with your every-day-life.
You avoid expensive client management systems by using free Google Calendar features.

What are we doing?

Creating a custom calendar that’s separate from your personal calendar.
Allowing public to use that new calendar.
Adding specific appointment slots.
Publishing it on a WordPress website (but any other website will do)

Before we dive in:

If you feel comfortable sharing your login information to your google account, we’ll be happy to setup calendar and embed it into your website on your behalf. So if you are an existing or a potential client of ours and feel comfortable sharing your login info to your google account, you can skip all of this and simply email us your login credentials and we’ll do everything on your behalf.

Deep Dive Starts Now:

Let’s create a calendar specific to your business.

Login into your google calendar.
Left menu click “+” to create new calendar, name it, Create it and click back to settings.

We now have created calendar specific to your business.

Setup Reoccurring Bookable Appointment Slots

Deselect all calendars and select only your new calendar. In our case it’s “Conference Appointment”
Click on any date or time and a popup will open. Select “Appointment Slots” tab and click “More Options” button.

How Do I Create Appointment Slots In Google Calendar

On a new tab that’ll open up enter name of your slot
Enter time that are allowed for people to setup appointments with you. I’ve selected 8:30am to 6pm
I’ve selected “Slots with duration” set to 60min.
Make sure to set how often it should repeat. In my case I set Monday to Friday every weekday.
Add a description and Save.

Making this calendar available to the public & notifications

Select the 3 dot icon and click on “Settings and Sharing”
On access permissions elect “make available to the public”

If you don’t want to have schedule conflicts, make sure to select “…do not conflict”

I’d recommend adding email notification so that you know that someone has booked an appointment with you

Allow people to book appointment on your google calendar

Many people think that embedding a calendar allows your website visitors book appointments using google calendar. That is however not the case. Google calendar creates specific link that can be linked to a button that will allow visitor to be redirected to a booking page. Here is how to find that link and add it to your website:

How To Use Google Calendar Appointment Slots

On you calendar you should now see appointment slots. You first need to (Left Click) to bring out a menu.
On the menu you will see a blue text “Go to appointment page …” you need to Right click to bring out another menu.
Left click on “Copy Link Address” to save it. Now it can be sent to a developer to add to your site.

How To Share Google Calendar

Add link to your site yourself

All that you’ll need is a code like this:

All that you’ll need to do is to replace “your_copied_link_goes_here” with the actual link and insert it into your theme template file that’s specific to your WordPress page, or to your static HTML page. It can also be inserted in a text editor of your WordPress content block.

If it sounds too confusing, please don’t do it, tampering with source code will likely ruin your site. Simply ask a professional and it can be done under a minute. If you are charged over $20 for this by a developer – you are being ripped off. Find someone else.

Last but not least

If you need help, feel free to reach out to us at 717-543-8020

All Best,

Calendar With Appointment Slots

Peter K.