Free/Busy Calendar Sync for Advising Appointments - How it works and staff set up instructions

Overview:

To assist with scheduling and avoid adding appointments in two calendars (a personal calendar and GLCC calendar), advisors can use free / busy calendar sync to keep both calendars up-to-date regardless of which calendar is updated.

Free/Busy Calendar sync allows an advisor to block out time on their personal calendar and have it update availability on the advising calendar in GLCC.  Appointments added into GLCC will also update the personal calendar.

This feature saves time, ensures accuracy in scheduling and allows colleagues to see when the advisor is truly booked as opposed to just having time blocked for a potential appointment. 

Note:  This feature is only available with scheduling blocks and appointment types.  The school must have the add-on feature Calendar Integration set up to utilize this functionality. 

Here is how it works:

An advisor or coach indicates their availability for advising appointments by scheduling blocks of time in GLCC.  Students can then schedule appointments within these scheduled blocks of time.  Scheduled appointment blocks then sync to appear on your personal Outlook or Google calendar but the time is marked as "free" until a student schedules an appointment.  These appointments then block out the time as "busy" as they are scheduled.  In addition, if a meeting or appointment is scheduled on your personal calendar, this time is also blocked out on the GLCC calendar so that a student cannot schedule an appointment during that time. 

For example:

An advisor has a block of time scheduled every Monday and Wednesday from 1pm to 4pm for coaching appointments.  However, this Monday, they have a team meeting from 2-3pm.  The advisor accepts the meeting invitation creating an appointment on their personal calendar.  This time slot will then show their time as busy in GLCC and students will not be able to schedule appointments during that time. 

In addition, an advisor can add an appointment on their personal calendar during any time outside of a scheduled block and this will also update in GLCC.

If the advisor does not want their GLCC calendar to be updated, they can mark the appointment as "private" in their personal calendar.  If an appointment is marked as "Private" in Outlook, it will not sync up to the GLCC appointment calendar. 

Staff Set up:

After calendar integration has been set up for your school, the calendar sync must be enabled for each staff member using it.  

Click on Yes to enable calendar sync with a personal Outlook or Gmail calendar. 

Designate the reminder default time for appointments from the dropdown.