Manage Your Schedule

When your program turns scheduling on, Schedule appears in your sidebar. The page holds your week as a calendar, the hours you publish for booking and the time you block off. If Schedule is not there, your program has scheduling switched off, and an admin turns it on in Settings, on the Features tab. While it is off, a bookmark to the page opens your dashboard.

Publish the Hours You Can Be Booked

Find the Weekly Hours section and build your normal week.

1. Choose Add Hours on a day. The first window opens at 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, so adjust the two times to yours.
2. Add a second window on the same day if you need one, and choose Remove on any window you do not want. A second window opens an hour after the last one ends, or earlier late in the day so it ends by 11:59 PM, and is as long as your program's shortest appointment, or an hour when that is shorter.
3. Leave a day empty to take no appointments that day. It reads Not available.
4. Copy Monday to Weekdays copies Monday's windows onto Monday through Friday. It leaves the weekend alone, and it stays grayed out until Monday has a window to copy.
5. Choose Save Availability.

The line above the days tells you how much you are publishing in total, for example "6 hours 30 minutes published per week". If a window does not end after it starts, both of its boxes turn red and Save Availability stays grayed out until you fix it. A window that starts and ends at the same time counts as wrong for the same reason: it holds no time. A single day holds at most six windows.

Each window must be at least as long as your program's shortest appointment, because a time is offered only when the whole appointment fits inside a window. If a new window is shorter, a note under it gives the shortest length, its boxes turn red, and Save Availability stays grayed out until you lengthen or remove it. If a window you saved earlier became too short because an admin lengthened the appointments, the same note shows under it, but you can still save your other changes.

A lunch break is a gap between two windows, not a separate setting. To keep noon to one o'clock free, give the day two windows: 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM, then 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM. Nothing is offered in between. This is also where a break you take every week belongs. Do not use Time Off for it, because that card is for one specific date, not for a repeating pattern.

What you save is what you get back. Two windows that overlap or touch on the same day, such as 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM and 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM, are merged into one, and the page redraws with exactly what was stored rather than what you typed. If you change something while the save is running, the page keeps your newer change on screen. That change is not saved yet, so choose Save Availability again.

If you try to leave this page with changes to your Weekly Hours, the Available for Booking switch, or Formats I Offer that are not saved, TRIOPilot asks first. Choose Keep Editing to stay, or Leave Without Saving to discard them. Moving between weeks on the calendar, between Week and Month, or between My Schedule and All Advisors, keeps your changes and does not ask, and so does moving between months. When you close the tab or reload the page, most desktop browsers show their own message instead. Browsers on an iPhone or iPad do not ask, and your browser's Back button does not always ask, so save first. The same question covers the Time Off card: if you changed the form there and have not chosen Block This Time yet, TRIOPilot asks before you leave, and the message names what is not saved.

Turn Booking On

The Available for Booking switch sits just below the calendar, at the top of the card that holds your hours. It starts off, so publishing hours alone does not open you up for booking.

• With it on, students are offered times inside your published windows, minus anything already booked.
• Turning it off stops new student bookings straight away. It does not cancel appointments you already have, and it does not erase your hours, so you can switch it back on later and pick up where you were. It does not stop a colleague, though: a staff member booking on a student's behalf can still place an appointment on you by ticking Choose Any Time, whether or not you are open for booking. See Change or Cancel an Appointment.
• If you turn it on before you have added any hours, the page tells you so in an amber note. No hours means no times to offer.

Students see at most your published windows, and your program's booking rules narrow them further: a student cannot book sooner than the minimum notice (24 hours unless your admin changed it) or further out than the booking window (a month unless your admin changed it). So hours you publish for tomorrow morning may be offered to no student. An admin sets both rules. See Set Up Appointment Scheduling.

Choose the Formats You Meet In

Appointment Formats is where you say how you meet: in person, online, by phone, or however your program words it. The choices are your program's own contact modalities, the same list behind the Modality question on Log a Contact, narrowed to the ones your admin allows for booking.

Select the ones you offer, or select none to take any format your program books. A student who picks a format you do not offer is not matched with you.

If there is nothing to choose from, the card says so in an amber note and points you at an admin. Usually that means your program has not set any contact modalities up yet. It can also mean the ones your admin picked for booking have since been renamed or removed. Either way an admin fixes it in Settings.

Read Your Week

The calendar is at the top of the page. Previous, Today and Next move between weeks, and the heading names the week and the time zone the times are shown in.

• A soft green wash is time you published. It is your posted availability, not a booking.
• A solid chip is an appointment, and its color is the status: your program's main color for Booked, green for Completed, amber for No Show. The legend above the grid names each one.
• Each chip shows the start time and the student's name. Select it to open their profile.
• A gray hatched band is time nobody can be booked in. In your own view every band is yours, and each one carries its label: the note you typed on a block (Time off when you typed none), or Outlook for a meeting read from your connected Outlook calendar.
• A day tinted rose with a Closed label in its header is a program-wide day off: a holiday, or a closure an admin has set. Nobody can be booked then, whatever your posted hours say. Only admins change these, on the Days Off card in Settings under Features. If an appointment was booked before the day was closed, it stays on the calendar on top of the tint.
• Cancelled appointments are not shown. That time is free again, so it should look free.

The grid always covers at least 8 AM to 6 PM, and stretches to fit any hours you published, appointments you have, or timed blocks that fall outside that. A whole-day block does not stretch it. On a phone the same week appears as a list of days instead of a grid, with the same information in the same order.

If you have connected your Outlook calendar, your Outlook meetings are drawn here too, as gray bands labeled Outlook, so one week view covers both calendars. They appear in your own week only, never in the whole program view, and the appointments TRIOPilot already put on your Outlook calendar are not drawn a second time. An amber note above the calendar means your Outlook calendar could not be read this time, so those meetings are missing from the picture, though booking still treats that time as busy. Connecting is optional. Where it is available, advisors and admins find the card to connect at the bottom of this page. See Connect Your Outlook Calendar.

Admins get one extra control here: My Schedule and All Advisors. The whole-program view shows every advisor's bookings and blocked time, and hides the green availability shading, since published hours differ from one advisor to the next. On a wide screen, an appointment longer than about half an hour shows the advisor's name, and you can point at any appointment or band to see whose it is. On a phone, where the week is a list, the name is printed on each one. The whole-program view works in both Week and Month.

See a Whole Month

Week and Month above the calendar switch between the two views. The week is what opens by default. Switching keeps your place: Month opens the month of the week you were looking at, and Week opens this week if you were looking at the current month, or else the first week of the month you were looking at.

• Month shows bookings, time off and program closures, not the hours you posted. Previous, Today and Next move between months.
• Each day shows up to three appointments, in start order, with the same status colors as the week. Select one to open the student's profile. When a day has more, +2 more (or however many) opens that day's week, where you see them all.
• Select a day's number to open that week.
• Time off is a gray hatched strip. In your own month it reads the note you typed or, with no note, Blocked all day or the blocked times; a day with several timed blocks reads how many, such as 2 blocks. In All Advisors it says how many advisors are off, such as 2 off; point at it to see their names.
• A rose tint with a Closed label is a program-wide day off, as in the week.
• Days from the months before and after are dimmed, so every row is a whole week.
• Outlook meetings appear in the week view only. If your Outlook calendar is connected, the month says so under the legend.
• On a phone, Month lists only the days that have something: an appointment, time off or a closure.

Block Off Time You Are Not Available

Use the Time Off card for a one-off absence: an external meeting, an appointment of your own, a week away.

1. Tick All day for whole days, then set the first day and the last day. Or leave it clear and set a start date with a start time and an end date with an end time.
2. Add a Note so you know later what the block was for, such as "Conference" or "Dentist". It is optional. Students never see it, but an admin looking at the whole program's week does: pointing at the block shows your name, and on a phone your name is printed beside it. Write it for a colleague to read.
3. Choose Block This Time. Until you do, nothing is blocked, and if you changed the form, leaving the page asks first.

Before you use it, know these four rules:

• It stops new bookings, and nothing else. Students are not offered any time inside the block, and they never see the block or your note. One exception: a student moving an existing appointment through their own link, at a time when every advisor is blocked, is told that every advisor has that time blocked off, never whose block it is or why.
• An appointment already inside the block is not cancelled. The student would not be told and could still come. Instead, the confirmation tells you how many appointments fall inside the block, so you can handle them yourself. Now and then it says it could not check, and asks you to look at your calendar for those dates. Either way the block saves, and those appointments keep showing on the calendar, drawn on top of it.
• A block cannot be booked over. Even a staff member booking outside your posted hours cannot place an appointment inside one. To free the time, remove the block.
• A timed block with two different dates is one continuous stretch, not the same hours repeated on each day. Noon to one o'clock from Tuesday to Thursday blocks the whole of Wednesday too. The form warns you the moment the dates differ. To block the same hours on several separate days, add one block for each day. One block runs no longer than 366 days, to catch a mistyped year.

Remove a Block You Did Not Mean to Add

Blocked Time Coming Up lists everything you have blocked that has not finished yet. Choose Remove beside it, confirm, and that time can be booked again inside your published hours. If the block cannot be removed, the confirmation stays open and says why.

Blocks that have already finished are not listed there. They still show on the calendar for the week they fell in. If you block a time that has already passed, the confirmation says so, so a row that never turns up in the list is not a save that failed.

Good to Know

• Your hours use the program's time zone. Every time on this page is in the time zone named on the page, never your own device's. If you are working from another time zone, type the hours you want students to see.
• Only advisors and admins take bookings. Assistants, observers and guests do not carry a caseload, so students are never matched with them. Schedule is still in their sidebar and the page opens with the calendar, but without the Weekly Hours and Time Off cards, and they cannot connect an Outlook calendar.
• A block is taken exactly as you set it. If your program keeps a gap between appointments, that gap is added around appointments, not around blocked time. To keep time free after a meeting elsewhere, make the block longer.
• Changes here are recorded. Publishing hours and blocking time both land in the audit log, along with who made the change. Connecting and disconnecting an Outlook calendar are recorded there too. See See Who Changed What.