You Can Finally Offer Recordable Meetings in Your Google Calendar
Scheduling meetings online remains one of the worst user experiences. Almost everyone needs a simplified way to schedule meetings, whether it’s with friends and family or because you’re an independent contractor who needs an easy way to schedule work appointments. And while I, like many, use tools like Calendly to outsource scheduling work, it’s a subscription service, so I obviously pay for the privilege. It should be easier (and cheaper).
Google seems to have finally listened to this request, giving us a simplified solution: reserved blocks . If you use Google Calendar, you can create public time blocks and then give people a link so they can book the time. You can access it with free accounts, and despite earlier reports that it’s missing some bells and whistles, I tried it out and found it surprisingly reliable, mostly having everything I needed. Hallelujah.
How to set up a reserved block
Open Google Calendar and select Plus in the top left corner, as if you were going to insert a new appointment. This time, however, select “Schedule Appointments” and Google will present you with all the options you need to fill out. Like Calendly, each of these schedules can represent different types of appointments. For example, you can set one for 15-minute meetings and another for 30-minute meetings so people can choose what they need.
Google also creates a separate booking page for each schedule type, as well as a page that groups all the schedules together so you can choose.
Use Google Calendar blocks for paid meetings.
What impressed me the most was the ability to charge for meetings by connecting Google to Stripe . If you’ve never used Stripe, it has been a popular payment processing service for developers for the past ten years. It can be quickly set up and does not require a monthly fee. From here, Google allows you to customize your booking form, set up email confirmations, set a cancellation policy, and create reminders for your appointment.
You can use these features piecemeal even if you don’t use them for business. For example, you can set reminders to prevent people from paying for an appointment, or require email confirmation for everyone, whether it’s business-related or not.
Intuitive settings for comfortable meetings
Settings allow you to add buffer time between appointments or set a maximum number of appointments per day, regardless of availability. You can change your availability by one day, allowing you to add hours of operation beyond your normal availability. You can decide how far away someone can make an appointment or how soon they can make one. It takes me eight hours to avoid an early meeting for which I didn’t set an alarm.
Some bells are missing
While you can customize the blocks in a variety of ways, including how you want to meet, Google doesn’t allow you to set the default Zoom link. Additionally, while the tool will check which calendars you want before booking, if you have multiple calendars, it doesn’t allow you to set a block exclusively for a different calendar than your default. If you have set up a bookable calendar in your default personal calendar, you can say, “Please check my pickleball team’s calendar before booking,” and it will make sure not to book appointments for any time blocked in the pickleball calendar. But if you set up reserved spots in your pickleball calendar, regardless of the settings, those spots will be reserved in your pickleball calendar AND your personal calendar.
Overall this is a big improvement
In the end, this turned out to be Calendly’s killer for me. While I often meet with people via Zoom rather than Meet, as a workaround I can add my personal Zoom link to the confirmation email. This new Google feature adds tremendous value to a tool that many of us use daily.