How to use Google Calendar for appointments

You can use Google Calendar to set up appointment time slots. Once complete, here is what it looks like on your calendar (the left side) and for people viewing it (the right side):

The steps to set up an appointment system in google calendar are:

1. create a google calendar dedicated to your appointments
2. create individual appointment event time slots
3. set appointment options:
   1. duration (default is 30 minutes)
   2. days to repeat
   3. location (if you want to share your personal zoom link or physical office location)
4. get a shareable link to your appointment calendar
5. share this link via email, possibly in your email signature, or even on a website if it is for your department
6. once people have made appointments, they show up on your google calendar

I recommend creating a new calendar rather than using your existing event calendar. This way it is clear which events are being creating as appointments, and you can publish appointment time slots for people to select separately from your other events.

1. Click on the gear icon in the top-right, then click on Settings
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2. On the left side, click Add calendar and then Create new calendar
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3. Name your calendar (i.e. “appointments”) and then click Create calendar
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After creating a new calendar to hold all your appointment events, create a new event to hold appointment time slots.

1. On your google calendar page, the Create button
2. Click Appointment slots
3. Change the calendar to the new appointments calendar
4. Click on More options to edit further settings

On this screen you can:

1. Set the name of the appointment (i.e. “office hours”)
2. Set options for:
   1. start/end time
   2. appointment duration
   3. days to repeat
3. Set a location:
   1. zoom link
   2. physical office location
4. Click Save

If you would like more appointment time slots at different days/times, then repeat steps 2 and 3 for each new block of time.

To get a link to your appointment slots that you can send to people, go to your main Google Calendar page, then click any of your new “office hours” appointment events, and find the link for Go to appointment page for this calendar.

I recommend right-clicking this link, then selecting Copy link address

I recommend saving this link in your email signature. For example, I made a link like this in my UCI gmail account's signature:

Please note that specific steps to create/modify your email signature will vary depending on which email system or program you are using, and is beyond the scope of this document. Try searching for “how to add a link to my email signature in _” and append the name of your email program (i.e. outlook, gmail, Mac Mail, Thunderbird, etc).