TracCloudGuideBasicsSchedule: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:14, 3 May 2023

Getting Started / Basics

• TracCloud Terminology

• Training Resources

• Creating Course Lists

• Schedule Management

• Recording Visits

• Non-enrolled Courses

• TracCloud Dashboard

Schedule Management
The TracCloud schedule is where you can create and manage your consultant’s availabilities. The availability blocks created here will appear when staff or students are searching for appointments based on the criteria chosen during the search process. This article will walk you through how to utilize these features, from creating availabilities to booking appointments.

The schedule can be reached by clicking the “Schedule” button at the top of the dashboard. Click the "Expand" options below to view more information on different parts of the schedule management process.

Navigating the Staff Schedule

Navigating the staff schedule is a crucial part of managing your Trac System if you host appointment-based sessions. This is where you can create new availabilities/time slots, review past and future appointments, and even book new appointments on behalf of students.

Starting at the top of the schedule view, you'll find options for changing your date range and selected consultant. The date field can be clicked on so that you can select a specific day or week (depending on your current consultant selection), and you can cycle through past/upcoming dates using the arrow buttons. The "Today" button will always take you to the current date.

Following this is the consultant menu. Your consultants will be grouped by the centers they're assigned to (or profiles then centers for systems with 5+ profiles). Selecting an individual consultant will display their schedule for the selected week. You can alternatively select "All of this center" to view all of your consultant schedules for a single day. This option also allows you to hide unavailable consultants with a checkbox along the schedule settings bar. You can also choose your selected center, which applies to both the "all of this center" view as well as individual consultants who work across multiple centers.

Lastly, you will find your Schedule Display Options. These can be used to change your visible time on the calendar, as well as hide certain record types. Changes made here will only affect your own account, and only in your current browser session. The icon indicates whether or not you have the ability to modify availabilities, and the icon indicates the same for appointments.

Creating Availabilities / 1-on-1, group, and drop-in

After selecting the consultant you want to create an availability for, click-and-drag to begin creating an availability block in an open space on their schedule. Before you let go of left-click, tapping the 'a' key on your keyboard will cycle through different options. Adhoc appointments (white), reserve blocks (red), and standard availabilities (green). Standard availability is what you'll want to select to create a new time slot on your consultant schedule.

Once you release left-click, you will be brought to the availability entry window where you can configure the time slot.

Subject and Reason allow you to restrict what this time slot can be utilized for. If left blank, which is a typical choice, the consultant and center course lists will be used. If you wanted to restrict the availability to a specific subject, you can select it from the search menu, or use a wildcard entry (such as "MATH*" for all sections that start with "MATH) or a course list if your preferences allow it.

The following option, Meeting Type, determines if this is a remote/online availability, in-person, or asynchronous. The latter option will be covered in the next portion of this wiki article. Depending on which option you choose, additional Location fields will be made available. In-person availabilities may be assigned to a specific room or building number, while online sessions will be assigned a specific online invite link. That link can be the consultant's specific invite link from their profile, a breakout room, or a new invite can be copy/pasted directly into the "Online URL" field. Students can join these online appointments from their dashboard, as TracCloud will provide a hyperlink to them at the appointment start time.

The Max Students option determines the availability type. 0 would be a drop-in event, 1 is a one-on-one meeting, and 2 or more would be a multi-person group.

The date range and days of the week fields allow you to determine how this availability will repeat going forward. By default, just the one day you created the block on will be active, however, you can push the “To” date farther out and deselect the days of the week that this availability shouldn’t be active for to create a schedule such as “Every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday until May 30th.”

Increments and Breaks control how the block is split into different times. If you create a 5-hour block on the schedule, setting the Increments to 60 minutes will split that into 5 1-hour blocks instead. Breaks allow you to schedule breaks for your consultants in-between appointments. For example, you could set Increments to 55 and Breaks to 5 to give your consultants 5-minute breaks in between their 55-minute appointments.

Overrides will show you gaps in the series. For example, if you have an availability that repeats for some time, but a block in that series is removed (maybe the consultant isn't available that week or their time changes on that one day), that will appear as an override date for the rest of the series.

Documents can be uploaded to the availability, which will automatically be carried through to booked appointments so that students can access them.

Notes is an internal notes field for staff to share information about this availability with each other. This field is not shown to students, and can be used for any purpose.

Click “Save” once you’re happy with the availability configuration.

Asynchronous Availabilities / Document sharing & asynchronous messaging New!

Asynchronous is an additional meeting type available for multi-person availabilities. These are created like normal availabilities, but appointments are held asynchronously. A text chat will be provided for a student and consultant to communicate with each other, and documents can be uploaded to the appointment for each user to download and review. This functionality must be enabled in your profile before it can be used, go to Other > Other Options > Profiles > [Your Profile] > Prefs > Scheduling > Other Schedule Options > Allow multi person group availabilities to be asynchronous

Some concepts in availabilities are less important in the context of asynchronous sessions. For example, the time of day and max students, since there isn't a strict time limit for when each conversation is concluded, and the consultant can respond to multiple independent conversations from their dashboard. In the example below, I'm creating an availability at 5:00pm, after the rest of my standard availabilities (which gives students more time to book compared to the morning), and I've set the max student limit to 15.

Asynchronous availabilities are shown on the schedule view as a purple box with a icon. Students will see the same color in their availability searches, and the availability time will be hidden as it's irrelevant for asynchronous sessions. Similar to drop-in sessions, asynchronous availabilities also ignore the "Schedule no later than" preference in your profile. Students can book these slots at any point up to the start time of the availability.

After the appointment has been booked, you will notice a couple differences compared to standard appointments. The Status field now contains only "In Progress" and "Concluded", as standard synchronous statuses no longer apply, and an additional Messages tab has been added. This tab will contain all communications between the consultant and the student.

Students and consultants will primarily be communicating and managing the session from the dashboard. This will display all "In Progress" asynchronous sessions that you (a consultant or student) are a part of. Clicking "Show Previous Concluded" will let you review past asynchronous sessions, download documents, or even re-open the session if needed.

Clicking on one of these entries will open the appointment record with two tabs available. Appointment Information contains the current status of the appointment, any custom fields, as well as uploaded documents. Messages (pictured below) shows the current discussion between the student and their consultant, along with a log of document uploads/deletions. Either party can conclude or reopen the session at any time with the button in the lower-right corner.

Reserve Blocks / Prevent booking and cancel appointments

Reserve Blocks can be created over existing availabilities and appointments, to prevent booking and automatically cancel conflicting appointments. This is typically used for holiday breaks, sick days, or to block off specific times of the day when a consultant will not be available.

There are two ways to create a reserve block. You can click-and-drag an availability as usual, then tap the 'a' key to cycle to a reserve block, or create a normal availability then uncheck "is Availability" in the top-right corner.

Once you've started creating your reserve block, you will find a few options that don't exist in normal availabilities which have been detailed below.

All Staff this Center is used to create a block for all consultants across your selected center, rather than exclusively for the consultant account that you had originally selected.

All Staff for All Centers goes beyond what the "this center" option does, placing this block on all consultant schedules across all centers.

Description can be used to record why this reserve block exits. For example, "Time off for holiday."

Status will apply to all overlapping appointments. For example, "Canceled - Holiday" to differentiate these cancellations when running reports. If this field is left blank, a generic "Canceled" status will be used instead.

The rest of the reserve block is created like a standard availability, set the time and days that should be blocked, then click "Save" to add it to the schedule.

Booking Appointments

The process for booking appointments is almost identical between the staff and student point of view. If your permission group allows you to schedule appointments, you will see the following box on your TracCloud dashboard.
File:53j46kj46k4k64k466kj.png

Here, the staff member or student will select the course and/or reason the student needs assistance with. Selecting search will either bring up the search results, or ask for additional information if “Find first available” is set to “Choose a Date & Center” instead.

If “Choose a Date & Center” is selected, this will be the following menu to appear. This will allow you to be more specific with your search to only include availabilities in a specific center/profile or on a specific date.
File:64kk5j55kk5k5kj5j.png

After searching, you will be brought to a results screen such as this, allowing you to view the time of the appointment, which center it takes place in, whether it’s a Group, 1 on 1, or a Drop-In class, and the consultant. The results will load one day at a time, more results can be loaded by clicking the “Load more for [the following day]” at the bottom of the screen.
File:5851206.png

Select the appointment you’re interested in booking, and you will be brought to the appointment entry screen. At this point, you can fill out the appointment location, fund, reason, subject, any information that wasn’t specified in the availability itself or during the search process. Once the appointment is saved, a confirmation email will be sent to both the student and consultant informing them of their upcoming appointment.
File:4460435.png

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 {| style="width:100%; vertical-align:top; "
 <big><b>Schedule Management</b></big><br>
-The TracCloud schedule is where you can create and manage your consultant’s availabilities. The “blocks” created here will appear when staff or students are searching for appointments based on the criteria chosen during the search process.
+The TracCloud schedule is where you can create and manage your consultant’s availabilities. The availability blocks created here will appear when staff or students are searching for appointments based on the criteria chosen during the search process. This article will walk you through how to utilize these features, from creating availabilities to booking appointments.<br><br>
+The schedule can be reached by clicking the “Schedule” button at the top of the dashboard. Click the "Expand" options below to view more information on different parts of the schedule management process.
+<hr>
+<!-------------------------------------------- Navigating Schedule -------------------------------------------->
+<div style="float: left; margin-top: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><big><b>Navigating the Staff Schedule</b></big></div><div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"><br><br>
+Navigating the staff schedule is a crucial part of managing your Trac System if you host appointment-based sessions. This is where you can create new availabilities/time slots, review past and future appointments, and even book new appointments on behalf of students.
+[[File:4062955.png|900px]]
 <br><br>
-This article will walk you through how to utilize these features, from creating availabilities to booking appointments.
+Starting at the top of the schedule view, you'll find options for changing your date range and selected consultant. The date field can be clicked on so that you can select a specific day or week (depending on your current consultant selection), and you can cycle through past/upcoming dates using the arrow buttons. The "Today" button will always take you to the current date.<br><br>
-<br>
-[[File:57kl68k7k56jht4.png|800px]]
+Following this is the consultant menu. Your consultants will be grouped by the centers they're assigned to (or profiles then centers for systems with 5+ profiles). Selecting an individual consultant will display their schedule for the selected week. You can alternatively select "All of this center" to view all of your consultant schedules for a single day. This option also allows you to hide unavailable consultants with a checkbox along the schedule settings bar. You can also choose your selected center, which applies to both the "all of this center" view as well as individual consultants who work across multiple centers.
+[[File:2492377.png|440px]] [[File:4782273.png|440px]]<br><br>
+Lastly, you will find your <b>Schedule Display Options</b>. These can be used to change your visible time on the calendar, as well as hide certain record types. Changes made here will only affect your own account, and only in your current browser session. The {{#fas:calendar-days}} icon indicates whether or not you have the ability to modify availabilities, and the {{#far:calendar-check}} icon indicates the same for appointments.<br>
+[[File:4613107.png|400px]]
+</div>
+<hr>
+<!-------------------------------------------- Standard Availabilities -------------------------------------------->
+<div style="float: left; margin-top: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><big><b>Creating Availabilities</b> / 1-on-1, group, and drop-in</big></div><div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"><br><br>
+After selecting the consultant you want to create an availability for, click-and-drag to begin creating an availability block in an open space on their schedule. Before you let go of left-click, tapping the 'a' key on your keyboard will cycle through different options. Adhoc appointments (white), reserve blocks (red), and standard availabilities (green). Standard availability is what you'll want to select to create a new time slot on your consultant schedule.<br>
+[[File:Y43u5j3j425jh23h.png|400px]]<br><br>
+Once you release left-click, you will be brought to the availability entry window where you can configure the time slot.<br>
+[[File:6132639.png|600px]]<br><br>
+<b>Subject</b> and <b>Reason</b> allow you to restrict what this time slot can be utilized for. If left blank, which is a typical choice, the consultant and center course lists will be used. If you wanted to restrict the availability to a specific subject, you can select it from the search menu, or use a wildcard entry (such as "MATH*" for all sections that start with "MATH) or a course list if your preferences allow it.<br><br>
+The following option, <b>Meeting Type</b>, determines if this is a remote/online availability, in-person, or asynchronous. The latter option will be covered in the next portion of this wiki article. Depending on which option you choose, additional <b>Location</b> fields will be made available. In-person availabilities may be assigned to a specific room or building number, while online sessions will be assigned a specific online invite link. That link can be the consultant's specific invite link from their profile, a breakout room, or a new invite can be copy/pasted directly into the "Online URL" field. Students can join these online appointments from their dashboard, as TracCloud will provide a hyperlink to them at the appointment start time.<br><br>
+The <b>Max Students</b> option determines the availability type. <b>0</b> would be a drop-in event, <b>1</b> is a one-on-one meeting, and <b>2</b> or more would be a multi-person group.<br><br>
+The <b>date range</b> and <b>days of the week</b> fields allow you to determine how this availability will repeat going forward. By default, just the one day you created the block on will be active, however, you can push the “To” date farther out and deselect the days of the week that this availability shouldn’t be active for to create a schedule such as “Every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday until May 30th.”<br><br>
+<b>Increments</b> and <b>Breaks</b> control how the block is split into different times. If you create a 5-hour block on the schedule, setting the Increments to 60 minutes will split that into 5 1-hour blocks instead. Breaks allow you to schedule breaks for your consultants in-between appointments. For example, you could set Increments to 55 and Breaks to 5 to give your consultants 5-minute breaks in between their 55-minute appointments.<br><br>
+<b>Overrides</b> will show you gaps in the series. For example, if you have an availability that repeats for some time, but a block in that series is removed (maybe the consultant isn't available that week or their time changes on that one day), that will appear as an override date for the rest of the series.<br><br>
+<b>Documents</b> can be uploaded to the availability, which will automatically be carried through to booked appointments so that students can access them.<br><br>
+<b>Notes</b> is an internal notes field for staff to share information about this availability with each other. This field is not shown to students, and can be used for any purpose.
 <br><br>
-The schedule can be reached by clicking the “Schedule” button at the top of the dashboard. After reaching the schedule, along the top of the screen, you’ll see filtering options to control which availabilities you’re looking at.
+Click “Save” once you’re happy with the availability configuration.
-<br>
+</div>
-[[File:75k6l68k6l7k56k67.png|800px]]
+<hr>
-<br><br>
+<!-------------------------------------------- Asynchronous -------------------------------------------->
-The left-most option is your calendar, allowing you to select the current week on the schedule. Next is a “today” button that allows you to quickly jump to today’s date. The next option is Staff, where you can select the specific consultant’s schedule you want to manage, grouped by the center(s) they’re assigned to. “All of this center” will show you all of your consultants’ availabilities in that center on a particular day.
+<div style="float: left; margin-top: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><big><b>Asynchronous Availabilities</b> / Document sharing & asynchronous messaging <span style="color:green"><b><i>New!</i></b></span></big></div><div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"><br><br>
-<br>
+<b>Asynchronous</b> is an additional meeting type available for multi-person availabilities. These are created like normal availabilities, but appointments are held asynchronously. A text chat will be provided for a student and consultant to communicate with each other, and documents can be uploaded to the appointment for each user to download and review. This functionality must be enabled in your profile before it can be used, go to <i>Other > Other Options > Profiles > [Your Profile] > Prefs > Scheduling > Other Schedule Options > Allow multi person group availabilities to be asynchronous</i><br><br>
-[[File:65kl557k57j5.png|800px]]
-<br><br>
+Some concepts in availabilities are less important in the context of asynchronous sessions. For example, the time of day and max students, since there isn't a strict time limit for when each conversation is concluded, and the consultant can respond to multiple independent conversations from their dashboard. In the example below, I'm creating an availability at 5:00pm, after the rest of my standard availabilities (which gives students more time to book compared to the morning), and I've set the max student limit to 15.<br>
-Next up is your center choice, If the center has a color assigned to it, you will also see that displayed here. Lastly, you have your “Schedule Display Options”, which allows you to customize options such as hiding or displaying appointments, the week start day, and the time range on your calendar.
-<br>
+[[File:7515788.png|600px]]<br><br>
-[[File:57k54mny4n.png|800px]]
+Asynchronous availabilities are shown on the schedule view as a purple box with a {{#far:comments}} icon. Students will see the same color in their availability searches, and the availability time will be hidden as it's irrelevant for asynchronous sessions. Similar to drop-in sessions, asynchronous availabilities also ignore the "Schedule no later than" preference in your profile. Students can book these slots at any point up to the start time of the availability.
+[[File:2401863.png|400px]]<br>
+[[File:7491176.png|600px]]<br><br>
+After the appointment has been booked, you will notice a couple differences compared to standard appointments. The <b>Status</b> field now contains only "In Progress" and "Concluded", as standard synchronous statuses no longer apply, and an additional <b>Messages</b> tab has been added. This tab will contain all communications between the consultant and the student.<br>
+[[File:1127095.png|600px]]<br><br>
+Students and consultants will primarily be communicating and managing the session from the dashboard. This will display all "In Progress" asynchronous sessions that you (a consultant or student) are a part of. Clicking "Show Previous Concluded" will let you review past asynchronous sessions, download documents, or even re-open the session if needed.<br>
+[[File:6417001.png|400px]]<br><br>
+Clicking on one of these entries will open the appointment record with two tabs available. <b>Appointment Information</b> contains the current status of the appointment, any custom fields, as well as uploaded documents. <b>Messages</b> (pictured below) shows the current discussion between the student and their consultant, along with a log of document uploads/deletions. Either party can conclude or reopen the session at any time with the button in the lower-right corner.<br>
+[[File:7156891.png|600px]]<br><br>
+</div>
 <hr>
-==Creating Availabilities==
+<!-------------------------------------------- Reserve Blocks -------------------------------------------->
-[[File:Y43u5j3j425jh23h.png|400px]]<br>
+<div style="float: left; margin-top: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><big><b>Reserve Blocks</b> / Prevent booking and cancel appointments</big></div><div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"><br><br>
-[[File:Jtrg35j3j35j35.png|600px]]
+<b>Reserve Blocks</b> can be created over existing availabilities and appointments, to prevent booking and automatically cancel conflicting appointments. This is typically used for holiday breaks, sick days, or to block off specific times of the day when a consultant will not be available.<br><br>
-<br><br>
-Starting from the top, we can select our desired <b>Subject</b> and <b>Reason</b>. You can select a specific subject, use a * wildcard (such as “ACTG*” for all ‘Accounting’ courses), or leave the field(s) blank. The subjects the consultant is available for will be dependent on their assigned Course List.
+There are two ways to create a reserve block. You can click-and-drag an availability as usual, then tap the 'a' key to cycle to a reserve block, or create a normal availability then uncheck "is Availability" in the top-right corner.<br>
-<br><br>
-The following option, “<b>Is Online</b>,” determines if this is a remote appointment. When the student logs in to join an online appointment, they will see a button on their home screen allowing them to immediately join. This will also mark the appointment as attended and create a visit record.
+[[File:7288779.png|400px]] [[File:5861695.png|400px]]<br><br>
-<br><br>
-The “Is Online” setting also affects which <b>Location</b> options are available. If this is an in-person availability, the location options will be determined by your profile settings. If this availability is online, you will be given preset options for conference/breakout URLs (as determined by your System Preferences) in addition to your consultants’ specific static URL.
+Once you've started creating your reserve block, you will find a few options that don't exist in normal availabilities which have been detailed below.<br>
-<br>
-[[File:64755kjy575k5k57k5.png|800px]]
+[[File:9957871.png|600px]]<br><br>
-<br><br>
-The <b>Max Students</b> option determines the availability type. 0 would be a drop-in event, 1 is a one-on-one meeting, and 2 or more would be a multi-person class.
+* <b>All Staff this Center</b> is used to create a block for all consultants across your selected center, rather than exclusively for the consultant account that you had originally selected.
-<br><br>
-The <b>date</b> range and <b>days of the week</b> fields allow you to determine how this availability will repeat going forward. By default, just the one day you created the block on will be active, however, you can push the “To” date farther out and deselect the days of the week that this availability shouldn’t be active for to create a schedule such as “Every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday until 1/31/2022”.
+* <b>All Staff for All Centers</b> goes beyond what the "this center" option does, placing this block on all consultant schedules across all centers.
-<br><br>
-<b>Increments</b> and <b>Breaks</b> control how the block is split into different times. If you create a 5-hour block on the schedule, setting the Increments to 60 minutes will split that into 5 1-hour blocks instead. Breaks allow you to schedule breaks for your consultants in-between appointments. For example, you could set Increments to 55, and Breaks to 5 to give your consultants 5-minute breaks in between their 55-minute appointments.
+* <b>Description</b> can be used to record why this reserve block exits. For example, "Time off for holiday."
-<br><br>
-<b>Overrides</b> will show you breaks in this series. For example, if you have an availability that repeats for some time, but a block in that series is removed (maybe the consultant isn't available that week or their time changes on that one day), that will appear as an override date for the rest of the series.
+* <b>Status</b> will apply to all overlapping appointments. For example, "Canceled - Holiday" to differentiate these cancellations when running reports. If this field is left blank, a generic "Canceled" status will be used instead.<br><br>
-<br><br>
-Click “Save” once you’re happy with the configuration.
+The rest of the reserve block is created like a standard availability, set the time and days that should be blocked, then click "Save" to add it to the schedule.<br>
+[[File:3436868.png|800px]]
+</div>
 <hr>
-==Booking Appointments==
+<!-------------------------------------------- Booking Appointments -------------------------------------------->
+<div style="float: left; margin-top: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><big><b>Booking Appointments</b></big></div><div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"><br><br>
 The process for booking appointments is almost identical between the staff and student point of view. If your permission group allows you to schedule appointments, you will see the following box on your TracCloud dashboard.
 <br>
@@ Line 63: / Line 128: @@
 <br>
 [[File:4460435.png|800px]]
+</div>
+<hr>
+<!-------------------------------------------- Moving Appointments -------------------------------------------->
+<!--<div style="float: left; margin-top: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><big><b>Moving Appointments</b> / example {{#fas:circle-xmark}}</big></div><div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"><br><br>-->
+<!--</div>-->
+<!--<hr>-->
 |}
 [[Category:TracCloud]]

TracCloudGuideBasicsSchedule: Difference between revisions

From Redrock Wiki

Revision as of 16:14, 3 May 2023

Getting Started / Basics