The work days of teachers and school administrators are
nothing short of busy. One of the more difficult
things to coordinate amidst all the hustle and bustle is meetings. Finding common free times, making
appointments, canceling appointments, and just remembering it all is a huge
task in and of itself. Google Calendar
has a hidden gem of a feature called “Appointment Slots” to make all of this
simple, efficient, and easy.
Appointment Slots is exactly what you think it is. It is a way to create a calendar with
customizable time slots that people can reserve for meetings, conferences, or
any other kind of appointment. I’m
thinking of using this feature to create calendars for teachers to reserve the
use of iPad carts, so there are plenty of other uses for this feature besides
personal appointments. Here’s how to
create your own Google appointment calendar:
1. Sign in to your
school Google account, and open Calendar.
2. You can use your
existing calendar, or you can create a new calendar just for appointments. I recommend creating a new calendar to use
only for this purpose.
3. On the left side
of the screen, click the + sign next to “Add a coworker’s calendar”. Then, click “New calendar”.
4. Name your calendar
and add a description if you want.
5. Once you’ve
created the new calendar, click the calendar itself on the date for which you
want to create appointment slots. Then,
click “Appointment slots”. Now, you can
adjust the title, date, time, and duration of slots. You can also click “More Options” to change
other things. Click “Save” to finish
creating them.
6. To have people
book appointments, click on the title of the appointments on your
Calendar. Then, click “This calendar’s
appointment page”. This will open a
webpage to book the appointments. Copy
the URL of this webpage and send it to whomever you want to book
appointments. People must have a Google
account to book appointments. They can
book appointments by clicking on an available slot, and then clicking “Save”. They can return to this page to cancel or
change their appointment.
This is what the appointments page looks like:
You and the people booking appointments will get notifications and reminders through Calendar. Since teachers and school administrators do so much through Google as it is, this is an efficient way to make the scheduling and managing of meetings easier and simpler.
