Designate Your Availability (Support Staff)

Verify Your Time Zone

Make sure that you and your calendar stay in sync with your students by verifying your time zone setting.

1. In the page header, click your User icon, and then click Settings.
2. In the My Personal Information menu, click Language and Time Zone.
3. If the default Time Zone setting that your school uses doesn't match your own, change it to the correct time zone.
4. Save your changes.

Specify Your Appointment Settings and Recurring Availability

Use your Availability Settings to define the blocks of recurring times and details associated with your availability for student appointments. For example, you can customize the length of the buffer between appointments and the amount of advance notice you require for scheduled appointments. Availability Settings is also where you define the in-person, phone, and virtual locations where you can meet with students, and the topics you're available to discuss.

1. Open your Availability Settings by clicking Appointment Manager in the footer. Then click .

2. Specify your General Settings.

   Appointment Buffer

   Enter the number of minutes between back-to-back scheduled appointments to wrap up and prepare for the next. For more information, see Designate Your Availability (Support Staff).

   Advance Notice

   Specify the lead time you require for scheduling an appointment, in hours.

3. Specify your Length Settings.

   Custom Appointment Lengths

   When enabled, you can set custom appointment lengths for Topics and Subtopics.

   Default Appointment Length

   The default length, in minutes, of appointments, as set by your Student Success Hub admin. Change the default if you'd like. (You can schedule one-off appointments that run longer or shorter than the default by specifying a custom time slot when you create or edit an appointment.)

4. Create or edit your Appointment Locations.

   Appointment Locations are where (or how) you're available to meet with students.

   In Person

   In-person appointment locations are for on-campus meeting sites, such as conference rooms or faculty offices. You can provide these details for an in-person location: Campus, Building, Room, and Additional Details.

   Phone

   For phone locations, you can provide the Phone (number) and Additional Details. Include your phone extension, if any, in either field.

   Virtual

   For virtual locations, provide a Meeting Link (URL) and Additional Details. For example, enter your standing meeting room (a static link) for a third-party web-conferencing tool for the Meeting Link. Then provide manual, dial-in instructions in the Additional Details. Be sure to include the http:// or https:// prefix in the meeting URL.

   

   Note The Virtual Appointment Location Meeting Link has a limit of 255 characters. Shorten the URL to fit in the Meeting Link. Alternatively, add custom CSS in the Learner Portal:

   1. .meetingLink {
   2. overflow-wrap: break-word;
   3. }

   Other

   For other locations, provide a descriptive Name and Additional Details.

   At least one Appointment Location is required.

   Click Edit for any Appointment Location record to change its details. To create additional Appointment Locations, click New. You can have multiple Appointment Locations of each type. For example, a Phone location for your mobile phone (for when you're working from home), and a Phone location for your office phone (for when you're on campus). Specify a unique, descriptive Name for each Appointment Location so you can distinguish locations of the same type. And enter phone numbers and web meeting links carefully; Student Success Hub doesn't perform validation on the text you enter in those fields. If desired, you can also leave the Meeting Link blank and add a URL to a scheduled virtual appointment later.

   When you define your recurring availability blocks for appointments (in the next step), you'll associate each block with one or more Appointment Locations.

5. Save your Appointment Location and review it on the Availability Settings page.

   

6. Create or edit your recurring availability blocks.

   In the Recurring Availability section, click New to create an availability block or Edit to edit an existing block. For example, if you're routinely available for scheduled appointments on Mondays and Tuesdays from 2:30 PM to 4:30 PM, schedule a recurring availability block for those days and times.

   Subject

   Enter a Subject that indicates your availability. For example, Open for Scheduled Support Appointments. This text appears on your Calendar and your students can see it if your Student Success Hub administrator has made it visible.

   Type

   Specify whether you're available for Scheduled, Walk-In, or Group appointments. For group availability, enter an Attendee Limit—the maximum number of students who can reserve a spot in a group appointment during the block.

   Topic

   If enabled, select one or more Topic-Subtopic combinations that you're available to discuss, and click Save. If you don't select any, your availability shows that you can meet about all Topics.

   Location

   Select one or more in-person, phone, or virtual locations for the availability block, and click Save. If you don't select any, your availability will show that you can meet at all of your Appointment Locations.

   Date and Time

   Enter the start and end dates and times for this recurring availability block.

   Recurrence

   Specify the cadence of the recurring block: how many weeks the block repeats (Repeat Every), and the days of the week it repeats on (Repeat On).

7. Save your recurring availability and review it in the Current and Future Availability table on the Availability Settings page.

   

   Tip If your record doesn't save, try choosing fewer days, a less frequent weekly pattern, or a shorter duration.

   

8. Save your Availability Settings.

Edit One-Off Availability from the Appointment Manager

Make a one-off change to a time slot that you've designated as being available for support appointments from the Appointment Manager.

1. In the Appointment Manager, go to the day with the scheduled availability.

2. Click the action menu for the available time and select Delete Availability or Edit Availability.

3. Confirm your deletion or edit the details of the availability occurrence and save your changes.

If the deleted or edited occurrence was part of a recurring availability block, other occurrences are not affected. One-off exceptions don't show in the Recurring Availability section of your Availability Settings page.

Understand How Appointment Buffers Work

Appointment Buffers are applied between scheduled appointments, both support and non-support, within an availability block. While buffers don’t apply before the first appointment or after the last appointment in a block, buffers at the end of non-advising events can overlap with the beginning of an availability block.

For example, you have an availability block from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM, with a non-support event for a staff meeting from 9:30 AM to 10:00 AM. Your default Appointment Length is 30 minutes and you set a 10-minute Appointment Buffer. That means two support appointments can take place during the block: one from 10:20 AM to 10:50 AM and one from 11:00 AM to 11:30 AM.

In this example, there isn't time to fit a 30-minute support appointment and the 10-minute buffer before the staff meeting at 9:30 AM.

The first available appointment starts at 10:20 AM because Student Success Hub first calculates the available appointment slots (accounting for buffers) and then removes the overlapping slots with scheduled events. The staff meeting overlaps with the 9:40 AM to 10:10 AM slot, followed by a 10-minute buffer, so the first available slot is 10:20 AM to 10:50 AM.

Also, buffers don't explicitly appear in the Appointment Manager, on your Calendar, or on the portal. When you or a student creates an appointment, the times offered for appointments account for your buffer.

Understand How Group Availability Works

Group availability is time on your Calendar that's dedicated to appointments with groups of students—specifically, for group appointments that students sign up for in your student portal. You set these parameters for Group Availability blocks:

• The number of students that can attend (Attendee Limit).

• The topic that you're available to discuss.

• The time and place that you're available.

After you set up Group Availability, students can reserve a spot in a group appointment. For complete details on how students make group reservations and manage group appointments, see Review How Students Experience the Portal (Support Staff).

Considerations and Best Practices for Availability Settings

Availability Settings are just one of the factors Student Success Hub uses to optimize your available appointment times. Student Success Hub also considers times on your Calendar that you've blocked as not available, times you've defined as one-off availability, and exceptions to your recurring availability.

• Be sure to cancel availability when you need to, and to Keep Your Calendar Up-to-Date with Your Availability (Support Staff).

• Recurring availability blocks are subject to system limits on Event records. The more recurrences (Events) in the series, the shorter the date range you're able to schedule. In other words, if you're only available once a week, you're able to schedule farther out than if you're available several days and times per week. If possible, align your availability with your academic calendar by defining blocks that last no more than a term. You can schedule for a shorter duration (such as additional hours during registration periods), but try not to schedule a recurrence that lasts for more than a few months.

• Try to not create overlapping blocks of availability. For example, say you create Scheduled availability on Mondays from 1 PM to 3 PM and Walk-In availability on Mondays from 2 PM to 4 PM. Students see both scheduled and walk-in appointments available with you between 2 PM and 3 PM. While Student Success Hub doesn't double-book you, too many concurrent or intersecting options for availability types, locations, or topics, creates a confusing experience for students in the Scheduling Wizard.

• When you edit a recurring availability block or Appointment Location, the changes take effect immediately and apply to all future days in the recurrence. Anyone who schedules an appointment in Student Success Hub or in the portal sees the updated availability options.

• You can't delete Appointment Locations that have upcoming appointments associated with them. Also, Student Success Hub requires at least one Appointment Location. So, if you only have one Appointment Location, you can't delete it.

• When you cancel a recurring availability block:

  • If the recurrence has started, canceling it changes the end date to the current date. Any remaining future availability is removed from your Calendar, starting from the next day onward. The recurrence is moved to the Past Availability table, also from the next day onward.

  • If the recurrence hasn't started, canceling it removes all associated availability from your Calendar and deletes the entire recurrence. When you cancel a recurring availability block before it starts, the canceled recurrence isn't saved in Past Availability.

• Additional Details in Appointment Locations aren't included in appointment email confirmations. However, students see the Additional Details on the appointment card in the portal and, if they have access to them, on Appointment record detail pages.

• View your Appointment Settings and current or future Scheduled Recurring Availability in the Appointment Availability component on your User page. View your current, future, and past recurring availability on the Availability Settings page.

• Expired and canceled recurring availability blocks show for 90 days in the Past Availability section of the Availability Settings page, and then they're archived. To see older availability, look on your Calendar.

• We saved the best (and most important) item for last: Update your availability early and often! As soon as you schedule a recurring availability block, it's almost inevitable that exceptions or conflicts will arise. Remember to update your availability when they do.