Previous Article - Tracking Settings: Walk-Ins | Table of Contents | Next Article - Tracking Settings: Class Attendance

Appointments

Purpose: Customize your appointment restrictions and scheduling process.
How to Access: Administration > Control Panel > Appointments

TIP: If you would like to see the change history of each of these settings you can click the green Show History button on the top bar:

Once you do simply click on the history icon to see changes to that setting. These changes will only be kept logged for 90 days so any setting set before this time means that it was not recently changed.

When you access this area, you'll be asked to select the Scope of what Locations do these appointment settings and options apply. There are certain general settings that can only be found on the school scope and not on the classroom scope, however, most settings will be the same for all the scopes. Notice that if you change a specific setting at a classroom scope then that setting would apply for that Classroom regardless of the similar setting you can find on the school scope, so for most settings what you set at the Classroom scope takes precedence over the settings at the school scope, it is recommended to do the changes when possible to the Classroom scope. Options are broken into several sections of settings that you can change from the defaults:

Status

Disable appointments scheduling - Use this option to disable appointments until you are ready to use them.

This setting is unlike most in Accudemia's Control Panel as it follows these rules instead of the norm of overriding the College-level at the Center-level:

At the college level, it disables the Appointments module for the entire system (menu items will disappear).
At center-level, it just prevents Appointment Schedulers (Appt. Wizard, New by Tutor, & New by Date) from showing the Center you selected.

New appointment default screen: Default screen for scheduling appointments. Below are the options it has:
- Wizard (Highly Recommended)
- Wizard (Older Version)
- Date Range Search (was New By Tutor)
- Multiple Tutor Search (was New By Date)
Use visual calendar by default: Place a check in this checkbox if you want the virtual calendar to be the default viewing option when making appointments.

Instructors

Used to set Instructors as an option to choose when setting up appointments.

Instructor - Set the option below based on your center's needs for Instructors to be reported to about Appointments. Select from the following options:
- Optional: Allow Students to select an Instructor, but do not force them to do so, they could skip the selection as needed.
- Required: Force Students to select a Instructor when creating new appointments.
- Do not Show: Students will not be asked to select an Instructor, this selection step on the wizard would be skipped altogether.
Use registration information: Allows you to only display the Instructors linked to Classes they are enrolled in at the moment.

Using the registration enrollment typically is recommended to avoid confusion and/or wrong selection from students, in general students would only need to select from the instructors who belong to their enrolled classes, not the others.

Subject Areas

Used to set Subject Areas as an option to choose when setting up appointments.

Subject Areas - Set the option below based on your center's needs for Courses to be reported on Appointments. Select from the following options:
- Required: Force Students to select a subject area when creating new appointments.
- Optional: Use this option to allow Students to select a subject area, but do not force them to do so.
- Do not show: Students will not be asked to select a subject area.
Default: Choose which Subject Area will be selected by default.
- Use student enrollment: Allows you to only display each student the Subject Areas based on Classes they are enrolled in at the moment (i.e student John Smith is enrolled in the class: “Algebra II” which is linked to the Course: “Mathematics”, then he can only choose the Course “Mathematics”)

Using the student enrollment typically is recommended to avoid confusion and/or wrong selection from students, in general students would only be concerned with their courses, not others.

Services

Used to set the Services as options to choose when setting up appointments.

Services - Set the option below based on your center's needs for Services to be reported on Appointments. Select from the following options:
- Optional: Allow students to select a service but not force them to do so.
- Required: Force students to select a service when creating new appointments.
- Do not Show: Students will not be asked to select a service.
Default: Choose which Service will be selected by default (we typically would not recommend choosing a default Service because some users might think that this is the only option, while in fact if they click on the Service they could see other options, so unless you only have one Service or one of the Services is truly the most used above all others and you want to simplify the selection process by setting it as default )

Default Screen

New appointment default screen

This screen might look a little different for each school based on the configuration selected by the admin

Appointments Restrictions

This area is used to establish a range of times to schedule appointments and sets the rules when and how the appointments can be made.

Prevent users from handling appointments:

Prevent students from scheduling appointments - This option allows you to stop students from scheduling appointments with your center (Admins and tutors can still create appointments for them).

Prevent users from canceling appointments starting less than X minutes ahead - This option stops students/tutors from canceling appointments X minutes before the appointment start time, so they give the other person enough time to know they canceled.

Prevent students from canceling, restoring, and re-scheduling appointments - This disables the ability for students to make changes to appointments that are scheduled.

Administrators:

Allow administrators to bypass restrictions - If checked, appointments administrators will be able to make appointments even when they break any restriction (such as time-restrictions, Student-Tutors restrictions and more).

Tutors:

Allow tutors to bypass appointment time restrictions when scheduling, editing, or canceling appointments - If checked, tutors will be able to perform these actions even when they are breaking appointment time-restrictions (i.e create appointments for the immediate future even when appointment rules say that appointments can only be created with X hours ahead of time).

Tutors load balancing:

Hide tutors' names from students when they make appointments - Use this option to hide the names of tutors when students schedule appointments, this way it is a random pick so all tutors get the same chance to be selected by students.

This is used in case some tutors are been selected much more often than others (due to the student previous experiences, familiarity student-tutors and more…), so all tutors have the same chance to be picked

Hide tutors' filter from the New Appointment by Tutor screen - Use this option to remove the “Tutor filter” from the “New Appointment by Tutor” screen.

Comments (commonly referred to as Appointment Notes)

Use this option to show the Appointment Notes to the students who are logged into Accudemia.

Allow creating appointment:

No less than X days, Y hours, and Z minutes ahead - This setting defines the least amount of time necessary to set up an appointment before the start of the appointment.

No more than X days ahead - This setting defines how far out a user can set up an appointment.

Setting one or a few weeks ahead (at the most) is highly advised, this way you keep the number of appointments under control

In future terms - This allows appointments to be made in future semesters or terms.

If the student does not have one with the selected staff on the selected day - This setting makes it so that an appointment can only be made with the same student and tutor once per day.

Starting every X minutes from [time] to [time] - This setting defines the hours that Appointments can be made in your center and the increments that they can start. If the increment is set to 15 minutes, for example, you could make appointments on the hour, 15 minutes after the hour, 30 minutes after the hour, and 45 minutes after the hour each hour that is specified in the time range.

be careful when picking this time range, whatever you specify here will restrict the appointment from happening even if some tutors schedule availability before and/or after this time range

Maximum hours per week:

Staff: X hours - This is the maximum number of hours a staff member can be scheduled for appointments per week.

Students: X hours - This is the maximum number of hours a student can be scheduled for appointments per week.

Maximum number per week:

Staff: X visits - This is the maximum number of appointments that can be scheduled with each staff member per week.
Students: X visits - This is the maximum number of appointments that can be scheduled with each student per week.

It is encouraged to set a maximum # of visits so all students have a limit and they all have a chance to schedule time with available staff.

Maximum number per day:

Staff: X visits - This is the maximum number of appointments that can be scheduled with each staff member per day.
Students: X visits - This is the maximum number of appointments that can be scheduled with each student per day.

It is encouraged to set a maximum # of visits so all students have a limit and they all have a chance to schedule time with available staff.

No-show restriction:

Prevent creation with a student with more than X not voided no-shows in Y days - This setting is how you want your College to handle Appointment No-Shows. X is the number of no-show occurrences, and Y is the number of days that have passed before these occurrences reset.
And cancel all student's existing appointments - If the maximum number of no-shows is exceeded from the first setting in this section, then the student's existing appointments will be canceled, and an automatic email notification will be sent to this student.

The process will be executed only once per semester meaning if you voided their previous no-shows and they had already had all their future appointments canceled then this option will not trigger again until the next term/semester. Also, note that this setting gives you a 3-5 day delay from the time of the last no-show to avoid any unnecessary cancellations.

Count no-shows for the current semester only - This setting means that the no-shows will only be considered for the current semester when determining whether students should still be allowed to schedule appointments.

Tip: Once you have updated these settings to cancel future appointments or set parameters to enforce a “no-show limit” you can click here to go back to the Centers > Appointments > View All section.

Back-to-back restriction:

Prevent the creation of back-to-back appointments with the same or an unspecified subject area until X minutes have passed - This setting is used to prevent or allow setting back-to-back appointments for all centers (college-level only setting).

Notice that if a student creates a back-to-back appointment with the same tutors, but they select a different Subject Area (for the second appointment), the system will allow this scenario; so to guarantee so you can use this setting in combination with the “If tutor does not have an appointment with the selected tutor” restriction to help prevent these from happening but it will limit them to one visit per student with each tutor each day.

Duration restriction:

The minimum appointment length is X minutes - This defines the shortest appointment time length an appointment can be made for a visit.

The maximum appointment length is X minutes - This defines the longest appointment time length an appointment can be made for a visit.

The default appointment length is X minutes - This defines the standard appointment time length an appointment can be made for a visit and will be set to this value when scheduling appointments by default.

Show valid durations: Enter valid durations (in minutes) or duration ranges separated by commas. For example: 15,30,45,60-120. If empty, the End Time field will be shown.

Tip: If you notice students can schedule appointments for different durations you may want to check the new Service-specific Duration Restrictions.

Early by X minutes - This defines the start of the window that a student will be counted as showing up for the appointment when they sign in at a Sign-in Station.

Late by X minutes - This defines the end of the window that a student will be counted as showing up for the appointment when they sign in at a Sign-in Station.

And stays signed in for at least X minutes - This defines how long a student must stay signed in to be counted as showing up for the appointment when they sign in at a Sign-in Station. This will prevent students from quickly signing in and out for an appointment and leaving the center.

If you wish to have your students not sign-out for appointments then uncheck this option.

Group appointments:

Tutor can assist with different subject areas - Set if tutors at the college can help in different subject areas during the same time slot.

Allow only the following days:

Place a check next to whichever days you want to have appointments be available at the college.

Contact Information Update

Students must confirm their contact information once every X days - Place a check next to this option if you want your Students to confirm or update their contact information in Accudemia. This also allows them to add a Cell phone number if they would like to be notified via SMS text messaging regarding appointments and other notifications in the system. X is the number of days that can pass without them having to update this information.

Email Notifications

Enables users to receive confirmations and reminders via emails and allows you to set the amount of time before the appointment they will receive this message.

This settings uses the user's primary email address. Each user can disable this behavior by accessing the My Settings section when they are logged in.

Send reminder X hours before the appointments start to tutors - Check this option if you would like an email reminder to be sent to the corresponding tutor before the appointment time. X is the number of hours before the appointment that you would like them to be reminded of.

Send reminder X hours before the appointments start to students - Check this option if you would like an email reminder to be sent to the corresponding student and tutor before the appointment time. X is the number of hours before the appointment that you would like them to be reminded of.

Send confirmation by email to tutors - Choose whether the College/Institution will send a confirmation email to tutors when someone creates a new appointment.

Send confirmation by email to students - Choose whether the College/Institution will send a confirmation email to students when someone creates a new appointment.

Group recurring appointments in a single email - When a recurring appointment is created, a single email is sent with all the appointments. Please note that many email clients will not process the calendar invitation correctly.

Send an iCalendar with appointment information attached to the confirmation email - The College/Institution will select this option if they would like their Students and Tutors to receive an iCal appointment reminder that is compatible with MS Outlook, Google Calendar, other popular calendar applications.

Group recurring appointments in a single email - When checked, the recurring appointments (scheduled all at once) information will be grouped into a single email.

Send an email to students when they do not show to an appointment - When checked, An e-mail notification will be sent to students who do not show to an appointment

Please note that many email clients have limitations in the way they process a calendar invite (ICS file) and might only add the first one to the calendar. Either way, the appointment description will detail all the dates (and links for virtual appointments) of all the appointments.

Text Notifications

Send reminder X hours before the appointments start to tutor - Check this option if you would like an SMS reminder to be sent to your tutors before the appointment time. X is the number of hours before the appointment that you would like them to be reminded of.

* Send reminder X hours before the appointments start to students - Check this option if you would like an SMS reminder to be sent to your students before the appointment time. X is the number of hours before the appointment that you would like them to be reminded of.

Send confirmation by text messages (SMS) to tutors - Choose whether the College/Institution will send an SMS confirmation to your tutor when someone creates a new appointment.

Send confirmation by text messages (SMS) to students - Choose whether the College/Institution will send an SMS confirmation to your students when someone creates a new appointment.

This feature allows sending SMS notifications for upcoming appointments. You need to purchase AccuCredits to enable this feature. Learn More.

Instructions When Making Appointments

Use these fields to update the instructions on the various appointment schedulers in Accudemia. These messages are customizable per Center, so they can contain specifics needed for student scheduling appointments with each Center.