| This is the third of three Newsletters all about Appointment Rules. Newsletter one and two can be found here and here respectively, or they can be reached via the sidebar on the left.
In this Newsletter, we’ll look into how we can restrict student appointment booking based on Subject, Reason, Consultant, Center, Location, Time and even Group Appointments. Additionally, we’ll demonstrate how to combine multiple rules to establish your custom scheduling restrictions.
With Max Appointment Rules, you can set restrictions based on multiple categories within a specific number of days or a date range. The rules also allow you to create multiple sets of restrictions, each having to be followed in order for the student to be able to book an appointment. You can have up to four appointment rules at once, these can be combined to create more custom and specific restrictions.
These preferences can be found in Trac Navigation > Search Glass > Center Profiles > [Your Center] > Prefs > Scheduling > Max Appointment Rules.
Max Appointment Rule 1 - Max Appointments for the Same Type
For the first rule, let's prevent students from scheduling more than two appointments with the same subject and the same consultant in the same day. This is a simple restriction, set up easily by entering the maximum allowed number of appointments, checking the consultant and subject boxes, and entering 1 for the number of days as seen in the screenshot below.
The student will be blocked from booking the appointment if they meet all the requirements that you’ve set. If the rules are set as above, a student would still be able to book more than two appointments with the same consultant, but each appointment must be for a different subject.
Max Appointment Rule 2 - Max Appointments in X Days
Now let’s set a second rule in addition to the first rule. Both will be enforced simultaneously. Let's restrict the maximum number of appointments a student can book within a number of days. In the screenshot below, we’re restricting students to a maximum of 5 appointments in any 5 day window.
Now the student can only schedule those two appointments a day from rule 1, but they also cannot book more than 5 appointments in 5 days, regardless of the subject or consultant.
Max Appointment Rule 3 - Max Appointments Since MM/DD/YYYY
For the third rule–in addition to rules 1 & 2–let's restrict the maximum number of appointments since a given date. By entering a maximum of 15 appointments since 01/01/2016, the number of appointments a student can book has been restricted further.
The restrictions are now:
- Students are unable to book more than 2 appointments of the same subject/consultant per day.
- Students are unable to book more than 5 appointments in any 5-day window.
- Students are unable to book more than 15 appointments since January 1st 2016.
Max Appointment Rules are a powerful tool to enforce rules and restrictions upon students booking appointments. Students may still be given the ability to book an appointment, but may not monopolize the consultant schedules.
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