Tips: Google Calendar: New Feature Appointment Slots

About Appointment slots

The Appointment slots feature lets you set time slots on your calendar that other people can book.
For instance, a CEO could allow his or her PA to reserve time during office hours each week.

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

Set up an appointment slot

To start, you’ll need to set a time slot that you’d like to make available for appointments. To do that, follow these steps:

1. Sign into your Google Calendar account at https://calendar.google.com.
2. Click anywhere in the calendar grid. In the event bubble that pops up, click Appointment slots.
3. Indicate the details for the appointment slot using these fields:
• What: Enter a short title for the appointment(s), like “Hasit Available Office Hours.”
• Calendar drop-down menu: Choose the calendar you’d like to create the appointment slot on.
• Offer as a single appointment: Select this button if the entire time slot will be for one appointment.
• Split into smaller slots: Select this option if you’d like to allow multiple appointments to be scheduled during the slot. Simply select and indicate the duration for each appointment (in minutes) in the text box to the right.
4. If you’re all finished, click Create slots on the bubble, or continue to the next step to add more details to your appointment slot.
5. Click Edit details to open the appointment slot details page and add more information, such as a location or description, or to make the appointment slot repeat. To make the appointment slot recur, click the Repeat checkbox to choose your settings. Read more about repeating events here.
6. 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.
7. When you’re finished, click Save.

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

Make appointments

To let people start booking appointments, simply direct them to the appointment page. You can find the URL for it at the top of the appointment slot details page.
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.