Google Calendar is a great tool for scheduling the events of your day, week, month, year, and life. It's easy to add an event to your calendar and even to invite others to that event. But some events require people to sign up for a time slot that you make available rather than being invited to one.

For example, I am the academic advisor for all of the graduate students in our graduate school of theology. At the beginning of each academic year, I meet with every one of them to provide advisement. Rather than send out individual calendar invitations to each student, I create blocks of appointment slots on my calendar and then I email all of them with the link they use to sign up for a time slot. Here's how to do that.

Create the Appointment Slots

On your calendar, select the block of time for which you would like to create appointment slots as follows:

Next, on the box that pops up, click the "Appointment slots" button.

Give your appointment event a title and set the duration for each time slot in the block. It's also a good idea to click "more details" and set other properties like location.

Click the Save button to create the appointment block on your calendar.

Invite Others to Sign Up

Double-click on the appointment event you just created. Click the link that says "This calendar's appointment page." This opens a view of your calendar on which the appointment slots display as buttons that a person could click to sign up for a time slot. Copy that link and send it to everyone who you want to sign up for a time slot.

What You See What Invitees See

Signing Up for a Slot

When an invitee clicks the link you sent and then clicks a time slot button, they are presented a window in which they may type in a message. Upon saving the appointment, the creator of the time slots gets a calendar invitation from the invitee, but it is already marked as accepted and is added to their calendar. Also, that time slot becomes unavailable for anyone else. The invitee's name is also visible to the owner of the calendar where the appointment slots were made, but no other invitees can see who signed up for that slot.