Today, we’re going to dive into a common question when using online calendars: who can see your appointments? And specifically, if you make your booking page public on your website, will potential clients be able to see who else has already booked?
So I plugged this question into an AI bot just for fun, because I know the answer but I wanted to see what it would come up with, and it was SO WRONG!
You can watch the video, or read the article to find out what AI got wrong, and what reality actually is:
What AI told me:
That’s pretty scary and probably a good reason not to use Google Calendar Appointment Schedule!
EXCEPT this is completely wrong. Let’s see that scenario in action shall we?
What does someone see when they book with my Appointment Schedule?
At my end
I’ve created a fake Appointment Schedule, imaginatively called Booking Schedule. And I’ve also set my Google Calendar to public under Google Calendar Settings.
Now I’ve created a fake event at 1:30 pm on Tues 1 Oct and made that public as well.
At the client’s end
Let’s pop over to Ms Throw Away who is looking to book an appointment with me.
What does she see on the booking page?
Ok, no indication of my test event, other than the fact that 1:30pm isn’t available but she can’t see why it isn’t available which is good.
But what happens if Ms Throw Away books an appointment with me?
There’s nothing when the booking is confirmed:
In her email she’ll see that an appointment has been booked – still nothing about the test event on my ‘public’ calendar! But she does see an event she’s added to her own calendar.
Let’s try one more thing
Let’s view this appointment on Ms Throw Away’s Google Calendar and nope, nothing – just the event she created and the booking she made with me:
The reality is actually AI’s scenario 2
but it doesn’t matter whether your calendar is public or private – anyone using your booking page will only see available booking times with no indication of who else has booked time with you.
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