Creation of the Sign-up tool was motivated by requests from faculty who wanted to replace the "sign up sheets on the door" with an online alternative. Faculty needed a system that would allow students to sign up for office hours, meetings, review sessions, and other events in one convenient place. This tool can also be used in project sites to create meetings for the participants.

Various scheduling, participation, recurrence, and notification arrangements can be made.  An instructor can assign participants to timeslots or allow them to select their own choices. If a timeslot is full, the instructor can allow participants to add themselves to a wait list, which automatically "promotes" a participant when a slot becomes available and sends an email notification. The Sign-up tool is group- and section-aware, which gives instructors the ability to set up office hours or meetings that are visible only to their sections or to a group.