Change or cancel an appointment

A student calls and cannot make Thursday. You do not need their booking link to fix it. When your program has scheduling switched on, every booked appointment carries its own controls, and you can move it, cancel it, or record what happened, on their behalf.

Nothing you change here reaches the student. TRIOPilot does not email or text them when you move or cancel an appointment. Someone whose appointment was cancelled simply does not come, but someone whose appointment moved will still turn up at the original time, because that is the only time they were ever told. Call or text them yourself. If they have agreed to texts, you can do it from their profile: see Send a text message. One thing to allow for: if the advisor has connected their Outlook calendar, the student is an attendee on the Outlook event, so Outlook may send them something of its own when the appointment is cancelled or moved. Treat that as a side effect rather than as the student being told, and tell them yourself anyway.

Where the Buttons Are

The same controls sit on every appointment that has not been cancelled, in two places.

• Your dashboard. The Upcoming Appointments card lists your next few meetings, and each row carries the buttons. This card is yours alone: it shows appointments on your own calendar, and only ones still to come.
• A student's profile. The Appointments tab lists their upcoming and past appointments, whoever the appointment is with. This is where you go to change a colleague's appointment, and where yesterday's meeting is waiting to be closed out. The tab only exists when your program has scheduling switched on.

The buttons are Reschedule, Mark Completed, Mark No-Show, and Cancel.

If you cannot see them, one of three things is true: your program has scheduling switched off, which also removes the Appointments tab entirely, the appointment has been Cancelled, or your role is not allowed to change appointments. That last one is the same permission that lets you log a contact. Admins always have it. Advisors have it unless an admin has taken it away, and an assistant has it only if an admin has granted it. Both are set on the Team tab of Settings, so a program that switches contact logging off for a role has switched appointment changes off for that role too.

Move an Appointment to a New Time

1. Choose Reschedule on the row. The form opens on the appointment you picked, so there is nothing to look up. One case is worth knowing: if the advisor who held it has since been archived, the Advisor box opens empty on purpose, and Move Appointment stays greyed out until you choose someone who can take it.
2. The times offered are the real free times on that advisor's calendar: their published hours, with anything already booked or blocked off taken out. How far ahead the list runs is your program's booking window, which is 30 days unless an admin has changed it, so a program set to two weeks offers two weeks. Pick a day along the top, then a time.
3. Add a Reason for the Change if you want one. It is optional and it is saved on the record.
4. Choose Move Appointment.

The appointment type and the format carry over, so neither is asked again. The form shows both as plain text.

Two things happen that are worth knowing. The original appointment is not edited: it is cancelled, and a new appointment is created at the new time. So the student's profile keeps both, the old one showing as Cancelled in the past list, and both turn up in the activity feed. Second, if the student booked online themselves, the link they already have keeps working and points at the new time, so the move does not strand them.

One thing to check before you rely on that feed: an admin can hide appointment entries from it, on the Features tab of Settings. They are shown unless someone has turned them off, and the rest of this article assumes they are on.

If the time is taken between opening the form and saving, nothing is changed and the original appointment stays exactly as it was. The message tells you what got in the way.

Move It to a Different Advisor

The Advisor dropdown in the same form is editable, so a reschedule can also hand the appointment to someone else. It offers the advisors and admins in your program who can carry a caseload, and never assistants.

Some moves are refused, and most of the time the message names the cause:

• The new advisor does not offer that format, for example the appointment is online and they only take in person. The message says exactly that, and points you at the outside hours option if you want to book it anyway.
• The new advisor has that time blocked off. The message says that too, and tells you to pick another time or ask them to lift the block.
• The new advisor has a meeting on their Outlook calendar at that time, if they have connected it. The message names the Outlook meeting rather than blocked time, unless they happen to have both, in which case the block is named first. Pick another time, or ask them to move the meeting.
• The program is closed that day, a holiday or a day off an admin has set. The message names the closure, and the fix is a different day, or an admin changing the program's days off in Settings under Features.
• The new advisor already has something booked at that time. This is the one that does not explain itself: the message says only that the time is no longer available, and does not mention the appointment in the way. Pick another time, or ask the advisor what they have on.

Hand an Appointment to Another Advisor

On any booked appointment, choose Transfer. Pick the new advisor and confirm; the date and time stay exactly the same. You can transfer to any advisor or admin in your program, even outside their published booking hours. You will see a notice if the time falls outside those hours, or if they do not usually offer that format, so make sure they know.

You cannot transfer onto time an advisor has blocked off, onto a meeting on their connected Outlook calendar, or to someone who already has an appointment at that time; the message tells you who and why, and names which of those it was. Both advisors get a notification, though you are never notified about your own change. The student is not told automatically, so make sure they know who they are meeting. (When a student books, moves, or cancels an appointment themselves, they do get an email confirmation; changes made by staff still send them nothing.)

Book a Time Outside Posted Hours

Sometimes the right time is not on the list, because nobody publishes 7:00 AM and the advisor has agreed to it anyway. Tick Choose Any Time on the booking or reschedule form, then type a date and a time. Every time you type means the program's timezone, which the form names, not the clock on your own device.

Be clear about what this does and does not cross. It crosses published hours, and nothing else.

• It will not double book. If the advisor already has an appointment overlapping that time, the booking is refused outright.
• It will not book over blocked time. Those are two different statements. Unpublished hours are just hours nobody got around to publishing, so filling one is harmless. Blocked time is that advisor's own dated note saying they are not there, for a conference or a week away, and the only person who would find out is the person on leave. So TRIOPilot refuses and tells you to pick another time or ask them to remove the block. See Manage your schedule for how blocks work.
• It will not book over a meeting on the advisor's Outlook calendar. Advisors can connect their college Microsoft 365 calendar, and once they have, their Outlook meetings block booking here exactly as blocked time does. The refusal says plainly that it is an Outlook meeting rather than a block, so you know whether to ask them to move a meeting or to lift a block. See Connect your Outlook calendar.
• It will not book on a day the program is closed. A closure is the admin's dated statement that the whole program is shut, a holiday or a day off set on the Days Off card, which is a stronger statement than one person's posted hours. The refusal names the closure; if the day genuinely should be open, an admin unticks it in Settings under Features.

If the picker shows nothing at all, read the sentence in the box. It tells you whether the advisor is not switched on for booking at all, which they fix on their own Schedule page, or simply has nothing free to offer.

Mark What Happened

Mark Completed and Mark No-Show save straight away, with no confirmation step. They change the status on the record, which changes the label on the profile, the colour of the chip on the week calendar, and the wording of the entry in the activity feed.

Four things to expect:

• Only a Cancelled appointment loses its buttons. A cancelled row is the one nothing on this screen can act on, which is why a cancelled appointment that should still happen means booking a new one.
• You can change your mind after marking one. A row you have already marked keeps Mark Completed, Mark No-Show and Cancel, so a No-Show you recorded by mistake is one click from being corrected. Only Reschedule and Transfer disappear, because there is nothing live to move. Both the dashboard card and the profile's Appointments tab behave the same way.
• Marking an upcoming appointment closed does not free its time. If you mark tomorrow's meeting Completed by accident, that slot is still held against you, and there is no button that turns it back into a live booking. Cancelling it is what gives the time back, which is why Cancel stays available on an appointment you have already marked. The confirmation tells you what it will replace.
• Marking an appointment completed does not log a contact. Nothing about your APR changes. If the meeting was advising you need to report, log it as usual: see Log a contact.

A meeting that has already happened but is still marked Booked is the one that needs you. Those rows sit in the Past list on the profile's Appointments tab, and the tab deliberately keeps them visible instead of folding them away behind the show-more link. They are not on your dashboard card, which only looks forward.

An appointment that was cancelled cannot then be marked completed. Book a new one instead of rewriting the old record.

Cancel an Appointment

Choose Cancel, and confirm on the box that appears. Keep It backs out.

• The time is freed immediately, so someone else can book it and it stops showing on the week calendar.
• Nothing is deleted. The appointment stays on the student's record as Cancelled, and the cancellation stays in their activity feed.
• The student is not told. The confirmation box says so, because it is the thing most easily forgotten.

What You Are Told About

Changes to appointments arrive in the notification bell, and they open the student's profile. One of them also comes by email: when a student books with you online, you get an email notice as well as the bell entry. Everything else stays in the bell.

• A colleague cancels an appointment on your calendar, or moves one, or moves one on to your calendar or off it. The notification names who did it and the time involved.
• A student books an appointment with you online, or cancels or moves one through the link they were given when they booked.
• If your program has the student portal switched on and a student changes an appointment from there, two people are told rather than one: the advisor whose calendar the appointment sits on, and the student's assigned advisor.
• You are never notified about a change you made yourself.

Two silences are worth planning around. Marking an appointment completed or a no-show notifies nobody, which is deliberate: it is record keeping, not news. And booking an appointment on a colleague's calendar sends them nothing at all, so tell them, or expect them to find it on their Schedule page.

Good to Know

• Every change you make is recorded. Cancelling, moving, and marking an appointment all land in the audit log with your name and the time against them, reading as "Cancelled Appointment", "Rescheduled Appointment", or "Updated Appointment Status". A change a student makes through the one-time link from their booking leaves no entry in that log, because the link belongs to someone with no account here: the appointment record itself is the record of what happened. If your program has the student portal switched on, a change a student makes there does land in the log, under their own name and marked as a student, so read the name and the role beside an entry rather than assuming staff made it. See See who changed what.
• Times belong to the program, not to your device. Every time shown and every time you type is wall clock in your program's timezone, which is named on each form.
• Your dashboard card is personal, even for an admin. To reach an appointment that is not on your own calendar, open the student's profile and its Appointments tab. Admins can also see the whole program's week on the Schedule page, and each appointment there opens the student it belongs to.
• Scheduling is switched on by an admin in Settings, on the Features tab, along with your booking rules and your appointment types. See Set up appointment scheduling, and Manage your schedule for posting your own hours.