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How to Use Appointment Schedule in Google Calendar

1. Log into my.torontomu (your TMU Portal) and go to the Apps tab. 

Note: Appointment schedule do not work on your private/personal Google Calendar, they only work on the TMU Google Workspace version.

2. Click on Calendar from the Google Workspace menu.

3. Navigate to the week when you want to start your office hour.

4. Click and drag to create a regular appointment spanning the total length of that particular office hour session. An input box appears as shown in the Figure 1. Note that in this example we’re setting up a block of office hours lasting four hours.

5. Click on Appointment schedule in the input box and you will see a screen shown on the image right.

 

 

Figure 1

Note:  If you do not see Appointment schedule as a choice, but see Appointment slots, you will need to turn on Appointment schedule in your Google Calendar settings.  Information on how to turn on Appointment schedule can be found Appointment Schedule news article (opens in new window) .

 

6. Add a title, e.g. “Office Hours” as shown in Figure 2, and select "Create a new appoitment schedule" radio button and click Continue to proceed.

Figure 2

7.  You will now see this screen and here you can start inputting details regarding your appointments

Figure 3

8.  Here you can select the length of each appointment.  By default, it will start with 30 minutes slot, but this can be changed to any length of time of your choosing.

Figure 4

9.  You can change general availability here.  You can add multiple days within a week and have this appointment schedule repeat weekly.

Figure 5

10.  You can click on down arrow next to "Scheduling window" to see full options for scheduling window.  The image on right, you see the default values that you can change per your requirements.  

Figure 6

11.  You can update your availability here.  If for some reason you are unavailable on repeating schedule, you can select the days you are unavailable.

12.  You can update booked appointment settings here.  You can add buffer time between appointment slots and maximum number of booking to be allowed per day.

13.  After adding details on this page, you can click Next button to proceed to the second page of appointment details.

Figure 7

14.  In second page, you can take a look at Booking page photo and name.  This option will always grab your account photo and name.

15.  You can also select location and conferencing options.  Here you can select from Google Meet video conferencing, in-person meeting, phone call or none.  

Note:  Google Meet option will create a separate and distinct meeting ID for every appointment slots.

Figure 8

16.  You can enter the description of the appointments.

17.  Next section you can customize the booking form each individual needs to fill out.  Three form questions (First name, Last name, and Email address) are mandatory and you can add any additional questions that can be mandatory or optional by clicking Add an item.

Note:  Require email verification is in place to prevent malicious booking, where it will require emailed verificaiton code to be entered by the individual booking the appointment.

Figure 9

18.  Last section allow you to set up a reminder for those who have booked an appointment.  You can customize when the reminder is sent and add multiple reminders.

19.  After last details have been updated, you can click on Save button.

Figure 10

20.  After you have completed setting up the appointments, you can share the booking page to your students or colleagues.  You can click on the copy image (arrow) to copy the link and sent to your students or colleagues via email or post it on your D2L course or organization shell.

21.  You can open the booking page by clicking on Open booking page button.

Figure 11

22.  The booking page will be shown as on the right.

23.  A student  or a staff would click on any of the open slot to book an appointment.

Figure 12

24.  A student or a staff will fill out required information to book an appointment and click Book to finalize booking.

Figure 13

25.  A student or a staff will receive confirmation page and will receive an email to confirm the booking as well as link to add to their Google Calendar.

Figure 14

26. When a student books an appointment slot, you will receive an email message showing you the request and giving you the choice to accept or decline the appointment.  If you accept it, the appointment will show up in both your Google Calendar.