Google Calendar: Set Up Office Hours With a Zoom Meeting | IT@UMN (2024)

The old office hours sign-up sheet on your office door can now be done with Google Calendar's feature: appointment scheduling. It is a new way to create blocks of time on your calendar and others can sign up for smaller appointments on a booking page.

Follow to create an office hours type appointment with a Zoom meeting or focus on a section:

• Scheduling a Recurring Zoom Meeting
• Scheduling Appointment Times in Google Calendar
• Editing and Posting your Appointment Schedule
• Google Calendar: Settings for Appointment Schedules Instead of Appointment Slots

Scheduling a Recurring Zoom Meeting

By scheduling a recurring meeting in Zoom, you can generate a link that can be shared with students to virtually join you. This will allow you to use the same meeting link for all of your office hour sessions throughout the semester.

1. Login to umn.zoom.us
2. Click Meetings on the left-hand side
3. Click + Schedule a Meeting on the right-hand side
4. In the Topic field, enter a name like "Office Hours" (maybe include class name)
5. Select Recurring Meeting
6. Change theRecurrence to No Fixed Time
7. In the Meeting ID field select Generate Automatically
8. In the Security field select Waiting Room
9. Choose other settings to your liking and click Save
10. Click the Copy the link button after the Invite Link

Note: You will be using this link to put in the description field described in the section below.

Consider Using your Personal Meeting Room

The Personal Meeting Room link can be used for office hours.

• You may need to change your personal meeting room id after some time for security
• You may also want different settings if you regularly use your personal meeting room
• Always use the waiting room feature for office hours

Scheduling Appointment Times in Google Calendar

You will be pasting the link you just copied as the last step in this section. These instructions are purposefully designed for an office hour type meeting and adding Zoom.The appointment schedule feature in Google Calendar can be used anytime you want to send many people a link so that they can schedule times with you at the times you are available.

1. On a computer, open Google Calendar
2. At the top left, click Create
3. Click Appointment schedule
   • If the drop down menu shows appointment slots you will need to adjust yourGoogle Calendar Settings to use appointment schedules instead of appointment slots
4. Click on Add title and type "Office Hours" (maybe include class name)
5. Set an appointment duration
   • For office hours you will likely use the minimum of 15 minutes
6. Under General availability, you can switch the Repeat weekly to Does not repeat and add a specific date and time period, but Repeat weekly works best for office hours
7. Make days unavailable by clicking on the first icon that looks like a do not enter sign
8. Click on the Start and End times to scroll to the nearest 30 minutes, or type in an exact time
9. Duplicate the times you just set across the rest days by clicking the last icon
10. Click on Scheduling window and select Start and end dates to select the semester time period
11. Choose additional options to your liking and click Next
12. In the Description box paste the Zoom link you copied down

Editing and Posting your Appointment Schedule

The steps above just included the minimum steps to create your Bookable Appointment Schedule. These steps include option settings you might want to use for office hours. In addition, it will help you if you need to update your Zoom link.

1. Open Google Calendar
2. Blocks of time you have made an appointment schedule always sit to the left, click the 2x2 grid icon
3. Click on the Edit appointment schedule iconin the upper right
4. Click Next in the bottom right corner of the Bookable Appointment Schedule interface that just opened
5. In the Description box add the reusable Zoom link
6. In the Location and conference section:
   1. Click on Select how and where to meet
   2. Select In-person meeting to add your office location
7. In the Booking Form section you can add questions
   1. Click Add an item
   2. Click Custom item
   3. Type a question like "Do you want to meet in person or on Zoom?"
   4. Click add item
8. Click Save
9. The Bookable Appointment Schedule dialogue opens and you can get the Share link to post in your syllabus, Canvas site or email your students
10. Click the Open booking pagelink so you can see what your students will see. (Since you are viewing this it will show your underlying calendar, your students will see their calendar)

Google Calendar: Settings for Appointment Schedules Instead of Appointment Slots

If you are seeing Appointment Slots in the Create menu you will want to change your settings to use appointment schedules. The appointment schedules feature will eventually replace appointment slots and work better. Setting Google calendar to use appointment schedules instead of appointment slots

1. Open Google Calendar
2. In the upper right corner click the Settings icon that looks like a gear
3. Choose Settings from the drop down menu
4. In the General menu on the left hand side choose Appointment schedules
5. The options on the right will scroll down to the Appointment schedules section
6. Select the check box Create appointment schedules instead of appointment slots
7. Exit Settings by clicking on left arrow in the upper left corner

Note: Any current slots or schedules remain active and available whether appointment schedules are on or off. By turning on appointment schedules you will notbreak anything currently set as an appointment slot. It only sets what is available in the create menu. If you share your calendar with others, they can't see you appointment schedule. They only see time people have booked with you. If you have people schedule for you, you might want to use appointment slots. They show up on your calendar to people you have shared your calendar.

Update: Google Workspace Update. Please view if you create appointment schedules for another.