Appointments

Based on our experience, schools will generally have two different types of staff allocation for course counselling appointments:

Assigned

Students have a specific member of staff they should see for guidance with their Selections.

Unassigned

A number of Staff will be available for appointments, and the Student will see whoever is available at the time they've booked.

In SSO, both of these configurations are available, and will be applied across all Year Levels (i.e. you can't have one setting for one Year Level, and the other setting for another Year Level).
 
Before you start setting up the available times, consult with your team and decide which of these two options you're going to run with for all Year Levels who'll use the Appointment functionality in SSO.

Once you have decided on the most suitable option for your school, go to the Settings, and in Appointments, choose which of the two options you're going to run with.

The function to book Appointments can be put into each Selection Process once.

Think about where you want it to appear in your Selection Process.

Do you want it at the start so that Students have a chat to someone before they move forward with making Selections, or do you want the Students to come in after they have made their Selections to discuss anything they are still unsure about?

It is completely up to you, but bear in mind that if you are using the Parent PIN function as well, you should always have Appointments before it. If you put the Parent PIN before Appointments, chances are that it will be done in top to bottom order, and the PIN will drop out if the Appointment is done afterwards.
 
Functions like Appointment are treated as an Instruction, in the context of the Selection Process.

To insert the function go to the Selection Process for that Year Level, click the dropdown next to the desired Section you want it to appear in, then Add Instruction. This will bring up a modal asking you to give it a report name - you can give it any name that you want (but 'Appointment' probably makes the most sense).

Once you've created the new Instruction, go to the Settings tab, and choose Appointments from the Functions dropdown.

This will reconfigure what you see. You have two other options here - you can choose to make Appointment bookings mandatory or not mandatory (the default setting is No).

Additionally, if you would like to add a few words to appear generically to all Students you can type them into the black box at the bottom of the Instruction.

When you're done, click Save.

The new Instruction you created for Appointments will be added at the bottom of any other Instruction that are linked to that Section.

If this isn't the right place for it, it's really easy to move it around.

Select the Instruction you want to move, click the Re-Order tab near the top, use the arrows next to the Instruction to drag and drop the Instruction into the correct location, then click Save.

This configuration will allow Students to book for the Course Counsellor you've assigned to them in SSO.

If you need more detail about any of the following, please check on the specific subsections in the documentation, but make sure the following has been done as you go, so that everything will fly:

1. The Staff profiles exist in the Staff area of SSO, in the grey bar at the top of the page.
   
   

2. Upload the Student Data with the relevant Course Counsellor's SSO Staff Code for each Student in the Counsellor field. The code entered must match what was entered in Staff in the top grey bar.
   
   

3. Verify that the Staff member has been correctly assigned. SSO will only show a code in the Counsellor column, where it has been correctly recognised. You can also check and make changes in the Staff area of the Checklist (not the grey bar at the top)
   
   

4. Make sure that the setting for Assigned Course Counsellors has been selected (Assigned or Unassigned), as outlined above in 'Types of Appointments.'

 
To set up the appointment times that Students are able to book go Appointments in the top grey bar and click the Add Time Slots button.

This will open a modal, where you'll fill in the parameters of the time slots you're creating. If you're setting up time slots for multiple Course Counsellors at once, click Save and Add More after the first set of information is entered.

SSO will create the time slots, then retain what you've entered in the fields - this means that you can make minor tweaks (like changing which Course Counsellor you're creating time slots for) without having to re-enter the parameters again.

When you've completed the last one (or the only one, if you're just setting up one set of parameters that are all the same), click Add, and this will finalise what you've been working on.
 
On the right is the modal that will display for adding time slots when the setting is for Students to book with their Course Counsellor as assigned in SSO.

This configuration will allow you decide who will see the Students when they arrive for their booked time.

You can still have the Course Counsellors in SSO with access to everything the role allows, but when it comes to Appointments, they won't be assigned to a specific Staff member. 
 
To begin, make sure that you have selected the Unassigned Course Counsellor option in Settings > Appointments (don't forget to click Save).

Once you've set this up, the Appointments page will configure to match your setting.

To add new time slots, go to Appointments, and click Add Time Slots. 

Fill in the modal as required. Remember the 'Appointments per time slot' field will be the number of available slots it will create for every time slot that fits into the parameters that you enter.

For example, if you will have 3 time slots and you enter 3 bookings per time slot, you will have a total of 9 time slots for Students to book Appointments.
 
This is the modal that will appear if the Appointments to be booked for unassigned Course Counsellors, meaning that bookings are made up to the number of Staff who are available for Appointments and the Student will see whoever is free when they arrive.

Once you added the required time slots, you can make adjustments. Referring to the example on the right:
 

• The grey rows show the time slot information. All the details for the date, time, duration year level and statistics are highlighted in purple in the image. 
  
  

• To add more spaces to an existing time slot, click the plus icon alongside that time slot.
  
  

• To delete a space for an existing time slot, click the relevant checkboxes to the left of the white rows, then click the 'Delete Selected' button that has appeared.

If an Appointment is booked, the name will appear in the far-right column under 'Students' - all other parts of the row will be blank.

How to delete individual timeslots

How to delete timeslots in bulk.

Open

Open

There are three settings available for when Students can book Appointments.

1. Up to the start of the appointment time
   
   

2. A certain number of days before the appointment
   
   

3. A static date before any appointment
   
   

For options 2 or 3, the time will be available until 11:59pm of the respective day.

If a Student needs to rebook their existing Appointment after the cut-off point, either an SSO Co-ordinator or the Course Counsellor assigned for that interview can:

• Rebook - if the new Appointment time is known, and is available, or
  
  

• Cancel - the existing booked Appointment (if the new time is unknown, or the Appointment is no longer going ahead)
  
  

By default, a school's Booking Cut-Off is set to the day before the Appointment, at 11:59pm.

To change the Appointment cut-off setting, click the Edit icon (pencil).

When setting the times, you'll see only hours to begin with.

Once you've selected the hour of the day, you'll then be able to select the minute of the hour.

Let's say you wanted to set appointments to start at 11.30am - enter the date, then click the Start Time field.

Choose 11:00 to start with, then 11:30 right after it. 

Times will be greyed out if they aren't available.

This could be for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the time may be in the past. Secondly, the time might overlap with something you already have booked for the same person. Thirdly, it may be impossible to achieve (like an end time that is before a start time). 
 
Everything works on 5 min blocks. This means the minutes need to end with a 0 or a 5 (like 11:00, 11:05, 11:10, etc). You can't set times in between these. 
 

The name of Students who have booked an Appointment will appear in the 'Student' column for their respective time slot.