Let the parents make appointments in your Google Calendar

The Google Calendar is an excellent addition to the Google family, and the more I use it, the more impressed I become. Especially now, when I have to organize meeting times for all parent meetings. Once I figured out how it works, it didn't take much effort before the job practically did itself, and I could spend my time preparing for the meetings instead.

​Meeting appointments in Google is a service that allows you to add open appointments and set how long each appointment should last. Everyone who gets the link to the booking page can choose a time. Once the appointment is selected, it automatically shows up in the calendars of everybody who will attend the meeting. Your calendar, your colleague's calendar (if you will host it together) and the student's calendar. Easy as pie!

Let the parents make their appointments

In order to make an appointment booking-page, you need to have a business Google-account. Just use your job account for this one. To get to the calendar, just visit any page in the Google family, click the waffle and select "calendar".​

​Once you get to the calendar, click "Create" at the top left. You will now see a dialogue box, and at the far right, you will see the option "Appointment slots". Click it and then directly click "more options".
 
Now you will get to a dialogue box where you can make all the settings that you want. Start by choosing "Slots with duration", this is the time that each meeting should last. If you set it to 30 minutes, each appointment slot will be 30 minutes long. After that, you may choose the timeframe in which you are available for meetings. If you think that the first meeting can start at 13.00 and the last can start at 15.00 you set the time interval to 13.00 to 15.30.

Just let them know when you are availible and the rest will take care of itself.

If you click on the small arrow next to "doesn't repeat", you can choose how many appointment slots of the same kind there should be in a week. If you want them to be repeated every day for a week, click the arrow next to "doesn't repeat" and select "custom". This is where you can set which days of the week you may receive for meetings and which date the appointment slots will end.
 
When you have come this far, you are almost done! When you have made all the settings you prefer, you can click "This calendar's appointment page" to get to the page where you make the appointments. Don't worry that you can see your own calendar in the background, others will not. They will see their own calendar behind the slots instead to quickly find a suitable time. Clever, huh?
 
All that remains now is to click "save" and send the link to the parents or put it in your Google Classroom. The bookings take care of themselves, and you can see who you should meet at what time right in your Google calendar. If the appointment was made with the student's Google account, it automatically ends up in their calendar as well. In that way, they do not forget their meeting with you!

Further reading

Free Google Templates

What is Google Drive?

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Maria Rådstam

ICT-teacher