Hello and welcome to our blog exploring the questions piano teachers and owners of home-based piano studios often ask. Have you ever considered using an app for scheduling? There are many paid scheduling products on the market. And one day we will have a separate article about some of them so stay tuned! Today we’d like to show you some of the features of the Google Calendar app that is free.
From Stone to the Cloud
The calendar as a timekeeping tool goes back to prehistoric times. Nowadays calendars live in the cloud. Therefore we have access to them from our laptops and smartphones. If you are looking for a free tool to get your piano studio schedule going, there is no better alternative than Google Calendar. It is one of the most widely used scheduling applications in the world. Read more in the Get starter with the Calendar tutorial.
Where to Start?
First login to your Google Account https://accounts.google.com/servicelogin. And if you do not have it, create a brand new one for your piano studio.
Now toggle the Apps icon in the top right corner and launch the Google Calendar app from there.
Firstly you will find various views of the calendar including the one we recommend for the scheduling time called ‘Week’. It will give you a nice view to work with.
Lessons are Events
To clarify piano lessons would be ‘events’ in Google Calendar’s terminology. For instance, you can create an event by simply clicking on an empty area of the calendar. Or you can re-arrange the events, drag and drop them, and change their duration this way.
Another way to define start and end times would be inside the event details. Simply double-click on the newly created event. Adjust the title and details of the lesson. Usually, your lessons will repeat every week hence Weekly would be the way to set the repeating pattern.
Alerts and Notifications
Alerts and notifications can be useful features too. You may want your smartphone to buzz at the time of the next lesson or a few minutes before. Meanwhile, you can keep the notifications and opt out of the emails.
Another nice feature of the Google Calendar is the way to add an email address. This way notification about any changes to the event will automatically be sent to this email address.
Sample Schedule
To give you an idea of what the piano studio schedule may look like in Google Calendar, here is a sample for you. The working hours in this piano studio are from 4 PM to 7 PM and Friday is off. Note that only one piano teacher works there and only 30 and 60 min lessons are offered.
Wrap Up
To sum up, Google Calendar has many useful features. Eventually, you may decide to transition to a paid scheduling app. But when you are just starting your home-based piano studio Google Calendar can serve very well as a basic scheduling tool for your needs. Thank you for reading! Please share this article with your fellow piano teachers, as one of them might be looking for a basic scheduling solution for their piano studio right now.
