Updates to ScheduleOnce for Google Calendar Appointments

After everyone finished gasping at the news that Google was canceling Calendar Appointments, which we reported about last winter here at ProfHacker, many faculty pursued other online solutions for allowing students and colleagues to view available appointment times and make reservations. (And a brief note before the comments start coming in – Google has indeed since stated that they will keep Google Calendar Appointments for Google Apps for Education, Business, and Government users, but many ProfHacker readers still need the functionality for their personal Google accounts, which they want to use for this purpose.)

ScheduleOnce is one option that many educators are using, and the site’s blog just announced a number of very useful updates to the system. You can read more about them here, but below are a few highlights:

• The scheduling confirmation email and calendar event now have features that allow you or your meeting requestors to cancel or request a reschedule. This is helpful in contacting students efficiently when you need to change up a meeting them, or they with you.

• Notification emails have been neatened up with better HTML coding.

• You can edit the types of notifications you receive to include updates when a booking is made, when a booking is requested (if you have the system set up to require your approval), if a booking is cancelled, or to cc: you when a reminder is set to a person who has made an appointment. Or you can opt out of any of these.

There are several other updates which may be of use of readers, so click through to the blog for more details.

How about you? How have you been handling requests for appointments through an online calendar? Let us know in the comments. 

[Image Creative Commons licensed / Flickr user Photo Extremist]