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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.

1. How To Make Appointment Slots In Google Calendar
2. Create Bookable Appointment Slots In Google Calendars

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.

Appointment slots will give you the ability to let other people book an appointment directly on your Google calendar. From a timeframe that you specify. This is useful for booking a 30 minute or one hour, or even a 15 minute time slot. You can do this using the Google Calendar appointment slots. Here’s how it works. You set up the Appointment Slots in your calendar with times, locations, descriptions etc. You share a link to your Appointment Calendar with your students. Students will have to be logged in with their Sheffield Hallam credentials to access the 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. If you use a Google Calendar to communicate with parents or share important dates with parents and students, this feature is a no brainer. Here are the steps to create an appointment slot calendar Open your Google Calendar. Appointment slots are ideal if you want to create a period of time where others can book appointments with you for fixed periods of time, like academic advising or open office hours. This video, while a few years old now, shows how to create appointment slots on your calendar.

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.

• 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:

• 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.

Add link to your site yourself

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

<a href=”your_copied_link_goes_here” target=”_blank”>Link</a>

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,

Peter K.

How To Make Appointment Slots In Google Calendar

Google has recently introduced a new feature in their favorite Google Calendar app. Originally, you could only use Google Calendar as your personal journal of what is coming. Google than added features allowing you to share calendars, so you could, for example, let your family or colleagues know what are your plans.

Now Google introduced new (so far experimental feature) I stumbled upon just the other day. It is called Appointment slots and at the first look it seems like a simple booking system.

How to create an appointment slot

Create Bookable Appointment Slots In Google Calendars

In Google Calendar, you have now two options when creating new appointment: event and appointment slots.

By selecting appointment slots, you are directed to further options. Here you can set how long the appointment will be, whether it is one session or session consisting of many parts, bookable separately.

You can also set Repeat for repeating bookings, like consultation hours or office hours, perhaps.

How can people book your appointment?

You are given an (incredibly long) link that leads to your booking page. Unfortunately, only people who are using Google Calendar can book your appointment slots. Others will be shown a log-in/sign-up screen.

Appointment slots are really just a basic feature, and while useful for infrequent users, it is far, far from ready for business use. The largest limitation being the dependency on users being signed in Google Calendar.