Google Calendar has debuted a new feature this morning that allows others to schedule an appointment on your calendar. You can create an appointment slot on your calendar for a certain amount of time and then decide how many slots it is split into. You can then allow others to book appointments that work for them directly on your calendar.
When you create a new event on the calendar, you have the option to create an event or an appointment slot. If you choose appointment slots and look at the details, you’ll see some options you can configure as to how to divide up the block into appointments. You can also choose which calendar the appointment slot is made on. You’re provided with a long URL for your calendar’s appointment page which you can link to or share with others.
Appointment slots are color coded with diagonal stripes running across them on your calendar.
From your public appointment page, your public events can be seen and your appointment slots have buttons next to them, allowing visitors to book a slot. Clicking the button will also copy the event to their calendar. To cancel an appointment, as the page says, you just delete the event from your calendar.
Appointment slots are an interesting new feature that could be cleverly used a few different ways but it might take a little experimenting to see its true potential. A Google Calendar Help page provides more help on using Appointment Slots in your Google Calendar.
Update: Google has updated the Google Calendar Help page link with content. Appointment slots were also announced on the Gmail blog and Official Google Enterprise blog. Appointment slots are being rolled out to Google Calendar users over the next few days, so don’t be surprised if you don’t see it right away.