Environment
U-M Google, Calendar, appointment schedules
Issue
What are the features of Google Calendar appointment schedules?
Resolution
With appointment schedules, you can manage your availability and let individuals book time with you directly in Google Calendar. Appointment schedules replaced appointment slots on July 18, 2024. While many features from slots are included in schedules, there are some key differences. You can find an overview of appointment schedule features below.
- Once you create an appointment schedule, you can't edit it to be on a different primary or secondary calendar.
- You can create multiple appointment schedules in a single calendar.
- You can designate custom recurrence rules when creating an appointment schedule.
- These can be adjusted after an appointment has been booked, too.
- You can allow individuals who book an appointment on your schedule to add additional attendees/guests and rooms/resources to the event.
- The schedule creator/co-host must select the "Guests can invite others" option to allow this.
- Zoom or Teams meeting links and rooms/resources have to be added to the event after it has been booked and added to the calendar.
- However, you can add a Google Meet session link to the appointment before it's scheduled.
- Appointment schedules allow external users and those without a Google account to book appointments on your schedule.
- I.e., Anyone with any email address can book an appointment.
- To prevent malicious bookings, people who aren't signed in with a Google account can be required to verify their email before booking. They will be sent a verification code by email.
- You can add up to 20 co-hosts to your appointment schedule.
- You cannot add external (non-UM) users as a co-host.
- You can add MCommunity groups as co-hosts.
- You can assign co-hosts to a schedule regardless of whether they are shared directly on the calendar or not.
- Co-hosts cannot view appointment schedule details or make changes. However, if the schedule was created on a shared calendar, the co-host will have access to view details or make changes.
- Bookings will be visible on the host’s and co-hosts’ primary calendars.
- Co-hosts’ calendars aren't automatically checked for availability. To have your co-host's availability considered, select your co-host's calendar in the "Check calendars for availability" section when creating your schedule. However, you need to be subscribed to their calendar to find it.
- Co-hosts receive an invite to the booked appointment, but won’t find the full schedule of non-booked appointments on their calendar. To give other users access to an appointment schedule, use a secondary calendar.
- You can create appointment schedules on secondary calendars, including shared ones.
- Everyone with permission to use the secondary (or primary) calendar can make changes to the schedule and view all bookings.
- The appointment schedule can check the secondary calendar for availability, but cannot check the availability of all users with access to the secondary calendar.
- You cannot create an appointment schedule on a resource calendar.
- You can select “Check calendars for availability” to allow Google to check availability on multiple calendars you select (including co-hosts' if you are subscribed to their calendar).
- Your booking page automatically updates to avoid conflicts with other events on your calendar.
- By default, appointment schedules check your primary and secondary calendars for any conflicts. Unchecking this setting will turn it off.
- Account delegates can edit and delete your appointment schedules on your primary calendar.
Additional Information
The feature for accepting payments for appointments is not available in Google at U-M. (This is because Google Pay is not enabled for the university.)
Google Help Center article
Need additional information or assistance? Contact the ITS Service Center.