Simplify Your Scheduling: A Step-by-Step Guide to Google’s Appointment Schedule Feature

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Are you an attorney looking for a simple scheduling software? In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer podcast, Tyson introduces Google's new "appointment scheduling" feature.

Having a good scheduling app can help anyone, especially attorneys stay organized and up to date on their day to day tasks and meetings. Tyson shares Google’s Appointment Scheduling feature. The simple feature makes scheduling faster and easier. What it entails is sending an acuity link to someone and giving them the ability to choose available times in your calendar. 

You can customize the settings on your end like meeting windows, how long the meetings can be, where the meeting will happen (such as Google Meets or in person) and buffer times. This feature allows you to avoid the back and forth of scheduling and spend time focusing on other priorities.

Listen in to learn how to incorporate this feature in your life!

Episode Highlights:

• 02:10 Overview of Appointment Schedule
• 04:53 Customizing Appointment Settings 
• 08:16 Benefits of the New Feature

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Transcripts: Simplify Your Scheduling: A Step-by-Step Guide to Google’s Appointment Schedule Feature

Tyson Mutrux 00:00:02 This is maximum lawyer with your host Tyson Metrics.

Tyson Mutrux 00:00:11 Welcome back to another Saturday episode of Maximum Lawyer, and today's podcast came about because of an accident. It was something that I learned from Becca that I had zero idea that Google had rolled out. So this is going to be a fun little feature that's going to save some of you some money. We shall see. If you're watching this, you're going to be able to see the things I'm doing. I am going to also talk about it in a manner that even if you're listening to it, you're going to be fine. So you don't actually have to watch this to see what's going on. But it will be helpful. I did, instead of sharing my actual calendar, which would give some of you probably a seizure. I'm just sharing my Jiu-Jitsu calendar because it gives me the options of when I have Jiu-Jitsu. That way I'm not sharing all of my information, all my client information, all the good stuff. So just, you know, if you're looking at my calendar, it's just my jiu jitsu ops and options.

Tyson Mutrux 00:01:04 But before I get into that, we've had some really good submissions lately. I've recorded a couple episodes about things that people have submitted to me, so keep them coming. I'd love to hear from you all as usual. So text me 31450192603145019260. We put it in the show notes too, so you don't have to memorize it. Save it to your phone. It'd be a lot easier, trust me. Or you can go to maximum lawyer.com/ask if you want to do that as well. But let's get to today's episode. So I was texting with Becca about scheduling. We're doing some recording in Atlanta because we like to batch them together. And so I'm flying to Atlanta and we're going to record these, and we need a specific guest to book it. I'm not going to call that person out by actually I well, Stephen left off. Stephen left. How was that booking his his time slot like he was supposed to. And by the way, Stephen and I are really good friends, so I get to tease him a little bit, but he had not been picking his time slot and I was asking for how he does it from Becca, and she shared the link to, Google.

Tyson Mutrux 00:02:10 Well, what what do they call it now? They call it. It's called appointment schedule. That's what they call it. So I said, what the heck is this? And it was a it was kind of like an acuity link where you click on it and you pick times and that's it. It was it's really simple. And so I was like, what? And she told me that it apparently got rolled out late last year and I just copied the link, send it to Stephen and boom, done what is really, really cool. And I'm going to what I'm going to do is I'm going to share my calendar. That way people know what I'm doing, what they can see, because it really is cool. It's a very, very simple setup. All right. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to share my screen with everyone so you can see what I'm doing. And what you have here is you've got my my calendar. And if you're if you're wanting to share just a few days time slots, let's say you're going to be in, let's say you're gonna be in a place like Atlanta for a day and you want to meet with people some of you could do and you could do this with clients, whatever.

Tyson Mutrux 00:03:08 But boom. So you want to meet with some clients in Atlanta. All right. So you're going to be there, let's say on the sixth. I'll just say the sixth is what it's going to be. Boom. Let's let's call this, you know, meeting day is what we'll call it. And so it gives you this bookable appointment schedule. And you type in the name of it is what you do and then the duration of each meeting. So let's call it an hour. Let's do an hour for each. And what we'll do is this is not going to repeat. It's going to be a one day thing. Let's let's pick it on the sixth. It has it where you can actually do recurring and you can have it repeat every week on the on Thursday. So let's say you only meet clients on Thursday. That's something you could do where clients can pick those times. But right now I'm only going to pick. It's a one day thing between the hours. Let's say 8 a.m. and five.

Tyson Mutrux 00:03:58 Let's go, let's go 6 p.m. because I want I want to make sure I can meet with as many people as possible. And, you know, let me make these meetings. Let's make them 45 minutes. I want to make sure I can squeeze in as many as I can. Plus, you can put multiple dates. It shows. So let's say I did. I want to do I'm gonna stay a little bit longer. But on day two I'm only going to go from nine because I got to, you know, fly out or something. So let's go, you know, 9 to 1230 so I can pick I've got a couple different days, different time slots. I've got my scheduling window. And it also allows you to pick when people can book. So you can book as far as 60 days out. And obviously we're with them definitely within that. But I don't want anybody to book the last minute. So let's go, let's go. Let's give them 18 hours. Most likely I would pick 24 hours, but 18 hours, if it's within 18 hours of the actual day, they could not book that day.

Tyson Mutrux 00:04:53 That means that they could still on Thursday book for Friday. And then you also have some additional settings, which is kind of cool. You have some buffer time. I do like a buffer time. That's a feature that I really like on Google Calendar. So I'm going to pick a ten minute buffer. That means that it gives me actually you know what? Just because people sometimes like they like to be late sometimes or or maybe a meeting might run long. I'm going to give myself a 15 minute buffer, although that may not even be enough. If I were actually doing this, I would probably create a 30 minute buffer just to be safe. Then you can also choose maximum number of bookings per day. So let's go. Let's go on. I don't want to do any more than six because that's a lot I am that's actually what I'm recording. You know, 60 to 90 minute episodes of recording six while I'm in Atlanta. And then you can also have it where guests can can invite others.

Tyson Mutrux 00:05:44 I'm not going to give them that option for this scenario. And then this is pretty cool too. You can have it check calendars for availability, and this is one where you could actually click on it and choose your personal calendar and then see if it conflicts with that, which is that's a that's a pretty cool thing I think as well. And then you can have co-host. So co-host that means anyone else that can can you can add to this to sort of make modifications, change things. That's another option. There's no one that I need to share that with here. And then you go next. Boom. Okay. Send booking reminders to prevent show no shows. So this is where you get into a more advanced some more advanced settings. I'll also say this. Don't expect as many features as something like acuity or there's several others out there. You're not going to get as many options, but you are going to get enough options. What I like, it's built into, it's built into Google. And this might save a lot of you a lot of money.

Tyson Mutrux 00:06:38 I guess a lot of the scheduling softwares are not super expensive, but it's going to save you. Maybe, I don't know, 500 bucks a year. I can't remember what the current pricing is on all of those, but so you choose the, you know, whether it's in person, Google Meet phone call or none on this one would be in person. I don't remember the name of the studio, so I'm not going to put it in there. But you know, I put in the studio name. I'd put any instructions here in the description. This is where you could put in, you know, please make sure you're on time. I'm meeting with other people. Have the following items available, yada yada yada, whatever it might be, if you're meeting with a client, you're going to put very specific things. You're not going to put in names, client names and all that, because that is something that might be accessed by other people. So make sure you remember that part of it.

Tyson Mutrux 00:07:23 And then you can also do a booking form. So that's pretty cool too. You can customize this where this one has first name, last name, email address, but you can actually add items that you can have people fill out, which is pretty cool. That is nice. You can also require an email verification. And then below that you've got where you can send the email reminder, send them the calendar invitation boom. And you hit Save and done. And that's the link you can you can share. You can also send out the email request. So it's a pretty it's a pretty cool thing. It's fairly new. I didn't know about it. I was very surprised I had not heard about it. We like Google at the firm, but I do think it's something that a lot of you, if you don't know about it, you're going to get a lot of use from because one is going to save you some money. And I think a lot of people that need calendaring links, they don't need them because they're scheduling a bunch of client appointments.

Tyson Mutrux 00:08:16 They're not doing a bunch of advanced features. They're doing just pretty simple. Hey, do you want to go meet and have coffee sometime? Here's my availability that day. What do you have? You know, next week I'm going to have the following times available. Pick pick a time that something pretty simple. Or we just need to just let's hop on a call. Pick a time tomorrow out of these available times. Let me know when you're free. That way, instead of going back and forth, it should save you a bunch of time. Should save you a little bit of money. Not a ton of money, but a little bit of money. And you're going to get most of what you need. If you need more advanced features, you're going to obviously have to go with something like acuity that can send email campaigns, yada, yada, yada, but you can do a lot of that inside of Google Now, which is which is pretty cool. And if you want to have some sort of automated campaign, you can use Zapier or make or one of those different platforms to to do that too.

Tyson Mutrux 00:09:09 But for the very basic stuff. This will work. This is pretty cool. Something I'm going to I'm going to start using. I like it pretty neat. Not all the bells and whistles, but you don't really know that. But that's all I have for you today. This is a little bit of a shorter one, but I thought it was one that would be pretty beneficial for people, just given the nature of people using calendar links and it being a fairly new feature that most people hadn't heard of, and I like to think that I stay on top of technology. And I had not heard of this, and it's kind of a neat little feature that Google has almost snuck in, which is pretty cool. But if you have anything else you want me to cover as a reminder, (314) 501-9260. You can go to Maxim lawyer.com/ask, but until next week, remember that consistent action is the blueprint that turns your goals into reality. Take care.