Comments on: Appointment Booking System.

By: John Kenworthy

John Kenworthy — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:39:36 +0000

Have a look at tungle.me – they choose an available timeslot – free
Bookfresh.com – has distinct advantages if you want to set fixed time slots – but pay about $30 a month after 30 day trial.
Setster.com – straightforward and a free version
scheduleonce.com – probably the easiest within google itself

By: Laremy

Laremy — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:16:13 +0000

That’s a good option. But I want to remove the hassle of students having to own Google Accounts cos not all of them may have one.

Basically I just want it to be as simple to create appointments as possible. But on hindsight, it might not be necessary – I think students will not take the initiative to create appointments with teachers unless:

It’s a life or death situation e.g. going to get retained or possibility of failing, or
They’re really motivated/self-directed learners

These students are few and far between, and the current system of e-mail seems to work, so I’m temporarily shelving this project aside for now. If need be I’ll come back to it in the future.

By: Laremy

Laremy — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:05:59 +0000

Thanks for the tip re: other CMSes and what your prof does. I think I’m moving toward doing the latter until I find/create (!) the system I want.

By: Laremy

Laremy — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:03:11 +0000

Yup, but I try to keep my Mac for my personal stuff/non-work purposes. My work computer’s a PC and I want the flexibility of cloud computing in the event I need to update my schedule at home, hence the use of Google Docs.

By: Ashley Tan

Ashley Tan — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 03:44:14 +0000

I’m thinking out loud…

Google Calendar already allows you to do what you suggested provided 1) all users are on Gmail/Gcal, 2) you give them “make changes to events” access.

You might be able to sent up one Gcal to mirror a second calendar and allow student access to the second calendar only.

You can then be alerted of changes in the second calendar over the air to, say, your phone.

By: yanjie

yanjie — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 03:04:21 +0000

If the students have the admin rights to add stuff into your calendar, it also means that they have the admin rights to delete stuff from your calendar. That includes whatever you put there or what other students have put in.

If you want to limit access rights to solve the above problems, google calendar will not be the suitable frame work for you, but other CMS can.

If you want to stick to Google calendar, you could do what my prof does. Put his google calendar on display on his website, and appointments are booked via email. See http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~bleong/calendar.htm

By: yanjie

yanjie — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:58:26 +0000

iCal can sync with Google Calendar.