Set Up Appointment Scheduling

Scheduling lets students book a time with your program online. Admins decide what can be booked, how long it takes and how much notice is needed; advisors decide when they are free. This article covers the admin's part. For the advisor's part, see Manage Your Schedule.

Setting it up is four steps: turn it on, name your appointment types, choose which formats can be booked, and set your booking rules. After that, at least one advisor has to post their hours before anything is bookable.

Turn Scheduling On

Open Settings, choose the Features tab, and press the switch on the Scheduling row. It saves the moment you press it, and a green check and Saved. appear beside it (under it on a phone). Choose Manage on the row to open its settings: Booking Rules, Appointment Types, Days Off and Outlook Calendar. Manage again closes them.

Two other settings also change. The Activity Feed Display card, on the Participants tab, gains an Appointments row, which decides whether booked, rescheduled, and cancelled appointments show up in the activity feed on a student's profile. It starts switched on, so change it only if you want those entries out of the feed. Turn scheduling back off and the row disappears again, along with the entries themselves. Program Activity, the last row on the Features tab, which lists your program's newest activity on the staff dashboards, gains an Appointments choice under What It Shows in its Manage. It also starts switched on, and turning scheduling back off hides the choice along with the appointment entries on the dashboards.

A Schedule entry also appears in your sidebar.

With scheduling off, the feature is out of sight: no Schedule entry, no appointments on profiles or dashboards, and no scheduling settings beyond the switch itself, which stays on its row. The booking address still answers, on purpose. A visitor who follows an old link sees a short page headed Online Booking Is Not Available that asks them to contact your office.

Turning it off deletes nothing. Appointments already on the books are kept exactly as they are and reappear the moment you turn scheduling back on, so a program can switch it off for a term without losing history. If your application form was set to invite applicants to book, they see only your confirmation screen while it is off.

If any appointments are booked from now on, the switch first asks you to confirm and says how many. Students keep those bookings, but your staff will not see them on the calendars, the dashboard or student profiles until scheduling is back on, so contact those students, or switch it off after their appointments.

Name Your Appointment Types

An appointment type is what a student books, such as an enrollment consultation or financial aid support. Nothing is set up for you, for any program type. Your list starts empty and the words are yours. The faint example text in the form is a placeholder, not a saved entry.

Add your first type under Appointment Types:

1. Give it a Name, up to 80 characters. This is what students and staff see.
2. Add a Description if it helps. It is optional, up to 400 characters, and it appears under the name when a student is choosing between types. For example: "Bring any award letters you already have." If your program has only one type, students skip that step and never see the description.
3. Choose a Length from the list, which runs from 15 minutes up to 2 hours.
4. Choose the Modalities this type can happen in, or leave it empty to allow any format your program offers for booking.
5. Choose Add Type.

The small arrows beside each type move it up or down, and that order is the order students see.

Until you have at least one active type, no student can book. Staff can still book from a student's profile: they choose Other and name the appointment themselves. If your booking page says it cannot take bookings, an empty type list is the first thing to check.

Turning a Type Off

Types cannot be deleted, on purpose. Clear the Active box instead and confirm. Students can no longer book that type and staff no longer see it when booking on someone's behalf, but every appointment already booked keeps the name it recorded, so your history still reads correctly. You can turn a type back on at any time.

Choose Which Formats Can Be Booked

Bookable Modalities, in Booking Rules, decides how an appointment can happen: in person, online, by phone, or whatever your program calls those.

These are your program's own modalities, the same list your advisors choose from when they log a contact, which you manage on the Participants tab in Settings.

• Leave it empty and every modality your program has defined can be booked. Most programs can stop here.
• Pick some and only those are offered to students. Use this when a modality fits logging but not booking, such as a field visit your staff arrange. Staff booking on someone's behalf can still choose any modality your program has defined, so this narrows what a student is offered rather than what your office can record.

An individual appointment type can narrow this further with its own Modalities. A type with none of its own accepts anything on the bookable list.

When you rename a modality under Participants, the new name reaches this menu, Teams Meeting Links, your appointment types and each advisor's Formats I Offer in the same save. An appointment already booked keeps the name it was booked under. When you remove a modality that any of those still offer, the page names each one, so you can update it: students cannot book a format your program no longer has. If this menu still holds a name your program no longer has, the menu lists it, ticked, and a note under the menu names it. Untick it before you save: the card saves only your program's current modalities.

If your program has no modalities at all, Booking Rules says so and points you to the list. Add at least one before going further. Without a modality, the booking page refuses every booking.

Set Your Booking Rules

These rules shape what a student is offered on your booking page. Each advisor still sets their own hours.

• Booking Rules names your program's time zone, the zone your posted hours use and times are shown in. You set it on the Program tab of Settings, whether or not scheduling is on. See Time Zone.
• Default Appointment Length is the length the calendar is laid out in before a student has chosen a type, and the length staff get when they name an appointment on the spot. Every appointment type carries a length of its own, so this is not a fallback for a type that lacks one.
• Buffer Between Appointments is padding held on both sides of every booked appointment, for notes or travel. With a 15 minute buffer, a 2:00 to 2:30 appointment also keeps 1:45 to 2:00 and 2:30 to 2:45 out of the offered times.
• Minimum Notice is how soon a time may be booked, from no minimum up to a week ahead.
• Booking Window is how far into the future students may book, from one week to six months. The booking page shows only the next 30 days (fewer if your window is shorter) and cannot page further ahead, so a window longer than one month does not let students book any later online. Staff who tick Choose Any Time can book any date.

If an advisor who is available for booking has weekly hours shorter than your shortest appointment, Scheduling names them above Booking Rules, because no time can be offered in those hours. The shortest appointment is your shortest active appointment type, or the Default Appointment Length when you have none. The names update after you save Booking Rules or an appointment type, so you see at once whose hours a longer appointment leaves without a time. Each advisor lengthens their own hours on their Schedule page.

Your Minimum Notice must be shorter than your Booking Window. With a week of notice and a one week window, the earliest time a student may book is also the latest, so no time is ever offered. If you choose such a pair, a note under Minimum Notice says so and Save Booking Rules stays unavailable until you choose a shorter notice or a longer window.

Choose Save Booking Rules when you are done.

A program that has never saved these runs on 30 minute appointments, no buffer, one day of notice, and a one month booking window.

Staff booking on someone's behalf can step outside these rules. The booking form staff use carries a Choose Any Time box, and ticking it skips your minimum notice, your buffer, your booking window, and the advisor's posted hours all at once. It never skips four things: it will not double book an advisor, it will not book over time an advisor has blocked off, it will not book over a meeting on an advisor's connected Outlook calendar, and it will not book on a day the whole program is closed. See Change or Cancel an Appointment.

How Times Are Worked Out

Within each block of hours an advisor posts, times are offered one after another from the start of the block, and a time is only offered if the whole appointment fits inside the block. With a 30 minute length and hours of 9:00 to 12:00, a student sees 9:00, 9:30, and so on through 11:30. Times then drop back out where an appointment is already booked, inside the buffer around it, and anywhere the advisor has blocked off. Your minimum notice and booking window trim the two ends of the list.

Ask Your Advisors to Post Their Hours

Nothing is bookable until an advisor does two things on their own Schedule page: switch on Available for Booking and enter their Weekly Hours. The booking page's message tells you which is missing:

• Nobody in your program is set to take bookings, because no one has switched Available for Booking on, or the only person who did has since been archived. The booking page tells students your program is not booking appointments online right now and asks them to contact your office.
• Someone is switched on but has posted no hours, or every time is taken. The booking page says there are no open times available at the moment and suggests checking back soon.

Advisors can also list the Formats I Offer to take only some of your bookable modalities. Left empty, they take any of them.

Only advisors and admins can be booked, because those are the roles that carry a caseload. Assistants, observers and guests are never offered, and someone who has been archived stops receiving appointments even if their hours are still on file.

When more than one person is free at the same time, the appointment goes to whoever has the fewest appointments in that stretch. A student who already has an assigned advisor gets that advisor whenever that advisor is free. When a student books online and has no advisor yet, the advisor who takes the appointment becomes their assigned advisor. A staff member booking on a student's behalf does not change anyone's assignment, so an unassigned student stays unassigned until someone assigns them.

Time Away From the Desk

Weekly hours say when an advisor is generally free. Time Off, on the same Schedule page, is how they take specific dates back out again: an external meeting, a day at a conference, a week away. A block removes those times from what students are offered, as a booked appointment does, but no buffer is held around a block. A block from 2:00 to 3:00 takes out 2:00 to 3:00 and nothing more, even when your buffer is 15 minutes.

A break that happens every week is not time off. A daily lunch belongs in the weekly hours as a gap between two windows, such as 9:00 to 12:00 and then 1:00 to 5:00. Time off is for one specific date or stretch of dates.

Advisors manage their own blocks; you cannot enter one for someone else, but you can see them all. In the All Advisors week view described below, every advisor's blocked time is drawn as a hatched band showing the short note they typed on it, or Time off when they typed none; point at a band to see whose it is. On a phone, a tablet or a narrow window, the week is a list instead, and each block is printed with the advisor's name beside it. Students never see the bands or the notes. See Manage Your Schedule.

Days Off for the Whole Program

Time off belongs to one advisor. When the whole program is closed, a holiday or an institutional closure, use Days Off instead. It sits under Manage on the Scheduling row of the Features tab, and only admins can change it.

It arrives already filled in with the US federal holidays, for this year and every year after: New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. TRIOPilot calculates the dates, so each new year's list appears on its own. When a fixed-date holiday lands on a weekend, it lists both the day itself and the weekday it is observed on, each with its own switch.

Untick any holiday your program stays open for, and it goes back to being an ordinary day. To close a day the list does not know about, a staff development day or a weather closure, pick the date at the bottom, type a short reason, and choose Add a Day Off. A day you add is listed however far ahead it is, so you can always find and remove it; the holidays are listed for the coming year. The reason is shown to staff on the Schedule calendar; students never see it.

On a closed day, nobody can book: the public booking page offers no times, and staff booking is refused too, even with Choose Any Time ticked. What a closure never does is touch appointments already on the books. If any exist on a day you close, the card tells you how many right after you save, and they stay until someone reschedules or cancels them; the students who booked them are not told about the closure. Find them on the Schedule calendar, where a closed day is tinted and labeled.

Invite Applicants to Book After They Apply

Open the Application Builder, find After Submission, and choose Invite them to book an appointment. Save the form.

Applicants then stay on your confirmation screen and see an invitation to pick a time just underneath your confirmation message, with a button that opens the booking page. See Build Your Application Form for the other two options.

The option stays visible when scheduling is off, but you cannot choose it until you turn scheduling on.

This invitation is the only way an applicant can book online. While scheduling is on, anyone with the link can open the booking page and see your open times, but only someone who has just submitted your form through this route can finish a booking. Everyone else is told that only applicants can book, with a Start Your Application link and a note to contact your office if your program does not invite applicants to book. Leave this option unchosen and visitors to the booking page can look but never book.

If someone reports a problem, check these two limits:

• The invitation works in the same browser tab the applicant submitted from. Opening the booking page later, in a new tab or on another device, will not carry it over.
• It stops working about two hours after they submit. Someone who comes back the next day should call your office, and staff can book for them from the student's profile.

Outlook and Teams

Advisors can link their own college Microsoft 365 calendar. Once one does, their Outlook meetings count as busy time when students are offered slots, and each appointment booked with them while they are connected lands on their Outlook calendar with the student invited. You do not connect anyone: each advisor does it from their own Schedule page, and only they can undo it. See Connect Your Outlook Calendar.

You set two things:

Teams Meeting Links, in Booking Rules, decides which of your formats get a Teams link. Pick the online ones, and appointments booked in those formats are created as Teams meetings on the advisor's Outlook calendar. Leave it empty and no Teams links are added at all. Two conditions apply whatever you pick: it only happens for advisors who have connected Outlook, and only where their calendar offers Teams. A calendar without Teams gets an ordinary event.

Outlook Calendar, under Manage on the same Scheduling row, is where you see how it is going. It lists your advisors and admins with Connected, Not connected, or Needs reconnecting beside each name, and the row itself says how many are connected and how many need reconnecting. It appears only while scheduling is switched on.

If it says the integration is not enabled on this TRIOPilot installation, there is nothing for you to set up.

The Link for Your IT Department

Some colleges do not let staff approve apps for themselves. An advisor at one of those colleges gets a message from Microsoft saying an administrator must approve the app, and cannot get past it alone.

The same section carries the link to fix that. It opens Microsoft's own approval page for the TRIOPilot app, for your college as a whole, but it works only for a TRIOPilot admin who is signed in. So open it yourself while you are signed in to TRIOPilot, with someone from your IT department who can approve apps for your college, and have them sign in on the Microsoft page it opens. It does not connect anybody's calendar: it only clears the way, so advisors can then connect their own.

These are the answers IT usually asks for; Outlook Calendar prints the permissions and the return address:

• TRIOPilot asks for delegated permission only. It acts as the advisor who signed in, never as the college, and it can reach that person's own calendar and nothing else. No other mailboxes, no mail, no files.
• The three permissions are printed there under their Microsoft names, offline_access, User.Read and Calendars.ReadWrite, which mean staying signed in so the connection keeps working, reading the person's name and email address, and reading and writing their own calendars.
• The exact sign-in return address is printed there as well, which is the detail IT is most likely to ask for.

See the Whole Program's Week

Open Schedule from your sidebar. As an admin you get two links at the top: My Schedule and All Advisors.

Your own week opens first, because this page is also where you set your own hours. All Advisors widens it to every advisor's booked appointments for that week, each one named, so you can see the program's week at a glance. Blocked time widens with it, so you can also see who is away.

In that view the green shading for available hours is hidden, because hours differ from one advisor to the next. The whole program view shows what is booked and who is away, not what is open.