To hold an advance sign-up for special office hours on a problem set, including students from two different classes: choose a day, define a block of time, set up multiple slots available to both sites’ members, and then adjust the time slots as desired. For example, suppose you want to schedule a 3-hour block of time for office hours with some 15-minute slots, some 30-minute slots, and a 15-minute gap for a break:

1. Make sure that the Sign Up tool is available in both course sites.
2. Set up a 3-hour meeting called “Office Hours - Problem Set” with 15-minute time slots according to the instructions for creating a meeting with multiple slots. In the Available To options, leave the current site checked and open the Other Sites list to select the other course’s site (which must also have the Sign Up tool), as well.
3. After you get the initial allocation of time slots, select Advanced user-defined time slots, then Create Timeslot(s).
4. Adjust the time slots as needed.  Edit the Start and End Times to change the time period to 30 minutes on some slots. Delete a 15-minute slot, to reserve a break time.
5. Publish the event to invite the students of both classes to sign up. The entry will appear to them under a single title “Office Hours - Problem Set” with several time slots specified by start and end times.

To schedule in-class presentations either by individuals or groups:

1. Recurring Method: Set up a single slot recurring meeting within the time of the class period. This method is easy, but it produces several separate meetings and allows an individual student to sign up for more than one presentation slot by mistake. See the steps to create a single slot meeting in the article on creating meetings.
2. Multiple-slot Method: Create one meeting using Advanced user-defined timeslots, specifying additional new time slots for each class period as needed. This method requires more manual entries, but produces only one meeting with several date options. You can choose to prevent an individual student from signing up for more than one. See the steps to create a meeting with multiple slots in the article on creating meetings.

You can also ask the students to indicate the topics of their presentations by typing them in the Comment box when they sign up.

To get an estimate of how many students would attend a review session, set up a meeting with no limit on the number of participants who can sign up. This is useful in choosing a room of adequate size for the session.

To set up a two-day recurring meeting, use the Advanced user-defined timeslots, following the instructions to specify the meeting frequency when creating the meeting. For example, suppose a group of six pharmacy students on professional rotations in the field are to return to campus for consultations together on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning every other week, from April until the end of July. In the Pharmacy site, the meeting organizer sets it up according to this procedure:

1. Add a new meeting, titled “Fri-Sat Campus Consult,” with the appropriate location and description.
2. Select the Advanced user-defined timeslots and specify the first week’s time slots, e.g., Friday, April 1st, 4:00 – 6:00 PM, and Saturday, April 2nd, 9:00 – 11:00 AM. The maximum enrollment value is irrelevant, as participants will be added manually. Delete extra time slots using the red X (delete the timeslot) icon.
3. For the meeting frequency, select Biweekly and specify an end date of Sunday, July 31st.
4. Set the other parameters as appropriate for the circumstances (display names, use e-mail notifications, no wait lists, no comments, etc.).
5. Select Assign participants and publish and select the participants for both time slots. On the Assign Participants page, check the box Yes, assign participants to the same timeslot for all occurrences, then click Publish. In each resulting meeting, if desired, select the time slot and lock against further participant sign-up.

This creates a series of nine meetings under a single title, Fridays and Saturdays on alternate weeks, with the same group of participants.

To determine the best schedule for a series of meetings with a group of participants—for example, student tutorials—define a weekly time by soliciting input from the participants on several choices.  Select the optimal choice, and copy that time slot across several weeks as a recurring meeting.  When an exception must be handled, adjust that particular meeting according to the instructions for editing a meeting.  Here is the detailed procedure:

1. Using a representative week, such as the first week of the term, create a new meeting for each possible time slot across the various weekdays, and ask the participants to sign up for all candidate meetings that they can attend on a weekly basis. You might name these meetings "Tutorial Option Monday, 3-5," "Tutorial Option Thursday, 9-11," and so forth.  Select Single slot, and Unlimited number of participants for these meetings.
2. When the sign-up period has ended (as you specified in the meeting details), find the best choice for the regular time slot, one that includes all or most participants.  Each meeting will have to be opened or exported to see the list of participants who signed up.  Select the chosen candidate meeting and choose Copy. The Meeting Frequency setting can be switched to Weekly, and the End After date set to the end of the term, producing a population of meetings across the desired duration.  The rejected candidate meetings can be deleted with Remove.
3. Any of the separate meetings can be modified, if it becomes necessary. To make the entire series visible, in the Meetings list, click the plus sign (+) (Expand recurring meetings) icon. Select the title of the meeting to edit. Then, select Modify. At the top of the Modify Meeting page, select Modify current meeting only.