How do I use YouCanBookMe for calendar appointments?
Answer
- Go to https://youcanbook.me and on the upper right corner, click sign up.
- Choose the google option and the correct google account.
- Follow the instructions and agree to the terms and conditions.
- They have a tutorial once you set up your account, take it, it shows a lot of the features.
- You will want to change the booking page title under general to something you would be ok for students to type in.
- Make sure it is feeding into and from your calendar from "Calendar and teams."
- Times and availability: Book me will give availability directly from your work calendar, but if you don't want to work on Saturdays or Sundays, make sure you check out his section to limit hours and days. Pick when you're broadly available. This means no one can book you before you arrive at work or after you've left for the day. Book me uses this to give people options for times they can use.
- Duration and Display: Pick how long you want your appointments to be. Click "Additional display options" to set up how far in advance users have to schedule you. It defaults to 2 hours. Save your changes before moving on.
- Appointment types: We're not paying for it, so don't worry.
- Language and time zones: You shouldn't have to do much to this one.
- Booking form: MAKE YOUR OWN BOOKING FORM. It automatically includes First name, last name, and email. I recommend adding "What class is this for?" and "What are you researching?" Only email is a required answer by default. I have created the research questions as required.
- After booking: This is where you put the text of the email that will be sent to the user once their booking has been made. It should be pretty broad. This is the one I use.
- Notifications and Workflow: There's not a lot we can do here without upgrading. You may want to fiddle with the calendar events if you find them helpful. I added an event location to mine.
- Style and Appearance: Again, we're limited by being free users, but I'd recommend using a higher contrast theme for the site. I can't read grey against grey very well and I'm sure that's the case for some of our students.
- Make sure once you are ready to hit the online button in the upper right corner to make your book.me page go live.
- Use the share and embed page at the bottom to get links and widgets to put on your Libguides. I recommend the bigger ones as the small one just looks like a tiny bookmark and no one will know what that means. Use the button.