Create Office Hours and Sync Your Calendar
This lesson will focus on the Office Hours and Settings tab on the left side User Panel. Once Office Hours & Settings is clicked, a new window will open that reveals three tabs: (1) Office Hours, (2) Scheduler Settings, and (3) Calendar Integration (see Figure 1 below).
Figure 1
Three Options Under Office Hours & Settings
To start, create your office hours on the first tab as shown in Figure 2. On this tab, there is a calendar for setting up office hours so that students can schedule appointments. You can also set up walk-in office hours for drop-in availability at a center or on campus.
Figure 2
Office Hours Tab
To set your availability, click on the date and time you want the hours to start and move your cursor to the hour you want it to end. A pop-up box will appear asking you to choose what kind of event you would like to make. For this example, you would choose office hours as illustrated by Figure 3.
Figure 3
Event Creation: Office Hours
The office hour can be created as a single occurrence or a recurring series. You must select a group to associate these hours or the students will not be able to schedule an appointment with you. Choose one or more of the locations where you will be meeting with students. Those location choices are (1) video meeting, (2) phone meeting, or (3) in-office meeting as shown in Figure 4. If you choose In Office, you must also choose the physical location where the meeting will take place.
Repeat this process for other days/times you wish to set available times for students to schedule appointments. If you are in multiple groups, you can set times for each group in this same tool by choosing the group from the drop down menu. You can have overlapping availability in multiple groups. When a student makes an appointment in one group, it will block the time from the second group, so there is no worry about double-booking appointments.
Do not check the box Walk-In. If this box is checked, students will not see these times as available for appointments. The Walk-In box is only checked if you are offering on campus, in person, drop-in availability and can be used with the Check-In Kiosk tool.
Figure 4
Choose a Location
A busy event is an event typically added on top of currently existing office hours that blocks a student from scheduling during that time. An example may be a center meeting that you need to attend but already have office hours set. A Department Director can create a schedule exception to block those hours from appointments; however, faculty/staff can also block these hours by removing those office hours from the calendar, syncing an outside calendar that has an event that would block those hours, or creating a busy event on top of the existing schedule in ConexED.
To create a busy event, click on the day and time the event starts. A pop-up box will appear asking you to choose what kind of event you would like to make. For this example, you would choose busy event as illustrated in Figure 5. Add an event description, select a start and end time, and decide if it is a one-time event or will it repeat, then click create busy event. The busy event will appear in black on the calendar as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 5
Event Creation: Busy Events
Figure 6
Busy Event
Creating Office Hours Quiz
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Scheduler Settings
The second tab of the Office Hours & Settings page provides the Schedule Settings as shown in Figure 7. On this tab, you can personalize and customize your scheduler settings as follows:
- Select your timezone ensures that appointments coincide with the working time zone.
- Default meeting length is set to 30 minutes; however, this field is only important for non-group meetings. The meeting length for group meetings will be based on the reason codes set for that particular group.
- Schedule time buffer sets the amount of advance notice a person has before students can schedule a meetings. For example, if the buffer is set to 15 minutes, that means a student is able to make a 9 a.m. appointment up until 8:45 a.m. the same day.
- Scheduling time frame limit sets how far in advance students can schedule a meeting. This time is set for non-group meetings. The scheduling time frame limit for group appointments is set at the group level.
- Send meeting reminder establishes how far in advance of each appointment a reminder is sent.
Figure 7
Options to Customize Schedule
Each ConexED user can also add a personalized message to the email confirmation messages for each meeting location: in-office, online, or telephone as illustrated in Figure 8.
Figure 8
Location & Message Options
Click the Preview Message button to see how your customized message looks as illustrated in Figure 9.
Figure 9
Preview of Personalized Message for a Telephone Meeting Reminder
Navigating Office Hours & Settings Quiz
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