How to: Schedule Ripple Events using your Google Calendar

How to: Schedule Ripple Events using your Google Calendar

Scheduling a participant for a linked Ripple Event

After integrating your Google Calendar and Ripple Events, all event scheduling should first happen in Google Calendar. Once Google and Ripple are linked, on every participant’s profile card in each linked Event you will find a Schedule icon. 

To schedule a participant for a study event that has a linked Google Calendar we recommend that you follow these steps:

1. Open the linked Google Calendar. If you are in Ripple you can open your Google Calendar in a new tab in your browser by clicking the “Schedule” icon in the Events detail pane.

2. Schedule the Ripple Event on the appropriate Google calendar. Once in Google follow the steps below when you are ready to schedule a participant.

• Using the drag feature or the “Create” icon, create a new event for the desired date and time of the event
• From the new event, select the calendar you would like to schedule that corresponds to the proper event type in Ripple. In this example, I am scheduling for the Brain Imaging study. Note: The intended event calendar is not often the default calendar selected by Google, so make sure that you are scheduling the event on the correct calendar.
• Set the time, description, and the title of the event as you would like it to appear in your Google calendar.
• Insert the event identifier inside brackets within the event Title or Description.
• Insert a pound / hashtag sign (#) and the Custom ID of the participant for the event within the event Title or Description.

NOTE: You MUST include the event identifier within brackets as well as a pound / hashtag sign (#) and the Custom ID of the participant in the title or description for the event to properly link to your participant in Ripple. 

The proper format is: [event identifier] and #(Custom ID) with no spaces. For example, #2004 for a Custom ID of 2004 in Ripple. This is the only accepted format to link to Ripple, as no other characters or spaces will be recognized. Additionally, all participants must have a Custom ID in Ripple to be able to have events scheduled for them.

3. The scheduled Event will automatically appear in Ripple. Once this event is created in the Google Calendar and properly linked using the participant’s Custom ID, it will automatically reflect in their participant profile as well as on your Ripple Calendar.

Rescheduling a linked Ripple Event

To reschedule an event, this can be done within Ripple using the Event Date/Time field or editing the event in your Google Calendar.

 After an event is created, the “Schedule” icon will be replaced with a “Reschedule” icon. The Reschedule icon will open your Google Calendar and will open the scheduled event so that you can edit it as needed.  

When you reschedule or delete an appointment in Google Calendar, it will reflect the changes in Ripple automatically. This includes:

• Changing the Date or Time of an event, using either a Google’s Date/Time picker or dragging the event to reschedule to another time slot
• Changing the Custom ID in the title or description, which will reassign the event from one participant to another
• Deleting/cancelling an event from your calendar

Participant Scheduling Tip: Using placeholders to indicate availability

When setting up your scheduling process, the Ripple Team has identified an effective workflow to manage open slots and booked participant events on the same Google Calendar. Teams can do this by using placeholder events in your Google Calendar to show what times your team has reserved for participant appointments.

Here is an example of a Google study calendar  for our Brain Imaging study with open slots pre-defined:

1. Identify open slots. Indicate the available event slots. For the Cornea study, this study has 1-hour open slots at 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM on Monday - Friday. This set-up allows for those scheduling appointments to know what open slots exist and easily edit an open slot event to a scheduled appointment for a participant by adding their Custom ID and the Study Name.

2. Schedule a participant into an open Google calendar event. To change the open slot to one that is scheduled for a specific participant, change the Google event title to include the participant’s Ripple Custom ID.

3. Ripple is automatically updated with the scheduled time and date. The linked Ripple Event for participant 2004 is updated automatically with the date and time of the appointment specified on the Google calendar.

This process can be replicated for all linked Google Calendars so teams can see both open and scheduled appointments.