Mountain View, California — Countless people having hectic schedules greatly rely on Google Calendar to remind themselves of important appointments, but to keep a tab to ensure that they do not overbook themselves within their busy action packed days. Well, that is all possible now as the search engine behemoth Google has just unfurled a new feature called appointment slots in Google Calendar, making it easier for any individual or business groups and co-workers to manage appointment availability on the Web every day at any time.
The latest addition of “Appointment Slots,” the Google Calendar functionality now allows you to set up times and dates in your calendar — that inform others about your preferred availability, so now any individual or business can pick and choose the most convenient times for appointment availability online 24/7.
It is easy to start executing appointment slots into your daily life. For instance, a professor could permit his or her students to reserve time during office hours every week. And an hair salon could let anyone visiting their web site schedule an appointment during prescribed business hours.
“At Google, many people are already using appointment slots to administer their office hours or even schedule appointments with on-site fitness instructors,” Irene Chung, Google software engineer explained in a blog post. “I’m pretty excited to tell my hairdresser about it,” she added.
To create appointment slots you just have to click anywhere in your calendar and select the option. The next step is to classify blocks of time that work best for you to meet with people. Users will be able to select a section of the day they would like to block off for appointments, you can then create a single block of time or split it into smaller chunks, which can be divided into any type of time segment (e.g. 30 minute slots).
Google has made it so that each calendar in your account comes incorporated with its own personal appointments sign-up page, which can be embedded on a website or shared via email/IM with a URL or to your social media Facebook account.
The URL for your appointment page is located at the top of the set-up page, which you can get to from the Edit details link.
Interestingly, once you have your appointment slots set up and shared, when visitors start to view your sign up page, their calendar is overlaid over your slots and compared with yours to show them what the best possible time is for both of you and the user can then pick their designated time from any appointment slot that is clear. When they choose a time, Google Calendar will automatically create a new shared event that lives on both of your calendars.
However, if you are one of those people who needs constant reminder for their appointments and just wish there was a quick way to see what you had scheduled for the upcoming week, look no further than Google Calendar for all of your needs.
For more information on using and creating Appointment Slots jump over to the Google Calendar blog of full instructions. Google said the new feature started rolling out Monday and should reach everyone over the coming days, according to the official Gmail blog.