How to Set Up Appointment Availability
Availability allows staff to indicate the days, times, locations, and services for which they are available to meet with students. Staff can choose whether the availability active duration is for a specific term, a specific set of dates, or forever. Staff can set availability for appointment scheduling, drop-in visits, and/or appointment campaign purposes. Follow these steps to get set up:
To begin, open the Actions menu on the My Availability tab and select Add Time. You can also run the Availabilities report and select New Availability from the Actions menu.
The Add Availability window will open. Select the days of week, time period, and duration of your availability.
Next, select your Availability type(s). You can choose more than one at a time, e.g. you can set availability for both Drop-In and Appointments at the same time.
Now select your Care Unit from the drop-down. This will determine which location and services the availability will be for. Most UCSC departments use the Advising Care Unit, so you can choose this if you're not sure, or contact slugsuccess-help@ucsc.edu for assistance.
After selecting the Care Unit, select a Location (your department) . Then select which student services you can provide to students during this availability. Students will only see the services included on this Google doc, so there's no need to include others in your availability. You must select a Care Unit, Location, and at least one Service.
If there is a phone number or a URL (for example a Zoom or GoToMeeting link) for the meeting, especially for remote meetings, enter it in the URL / Phone Number field. A clickable version of this link will appear for students who create an appointment during the availability.
You can now optionally enter special instructions for this availability and determine how many students can be in one appointment. If you do not select a Max Number of Students per Appointment, the number will be capped at 1.
Note: The special instructions will be included in the initial notification to the student regarding this scheduled appointment, in addition to subsequent appointment reminder emails. We recommend including general instructions, like your office location, how to check-in for the appointment upon arrival, or for remote appointments, how students should expect to connect with you for their appointment.
Click the Save button.
Repeat this process until all of your availabilities have been defined. You can have as many availabilities as needed.
There are two other options when adding Times Available.
Copy Time: To copy a time, select the time you would like to copy and then click the Copy Time button. The availabilities will be copied and a dialog will open allowing you to make edits or to save your newly created availability.
Delete Time: To delete your time, simply select the time and click the Delete Time button.
Creating General Events
General Events are a type of appointment that allow users to block their availability within Slug Success, much as a “Busy” time on your Google Calendar will. It can also be used to create a general event for multiple users at once that will put a Busy time on their calendar. This will likely be the most useful for staff who have not set up their Calendar Sync; however, General Events can be used for various types of events, such as:
- Blocking a staff calendar for internal team meetings
- Marking a staff member as out sick or on vacation
- Blocking workshops or information sessions
- Blocking appointments during university holidays, as adding a general event to their calendar allows you to block multiple workers at once, even if staff forget to update their availability
All Slug Success users with a staff role have the ability to add a general event to their calendar by clicking Schedule a General Event in your Quick Links menu.
The Schedule Appointment page will open.
The user must at least select a Care Unit and Location from the dropdown menus before adding an organizer and searching for users to add to the General Event. They may add a service or course but this is not necessary.
After selecting Care Unit, Location, organizer, and users, select a length for the General Event and then a date and time. You will probably need to select “Unlock Non-Available Times” from the Availabilities menu.
Once you have selected a date and time, make sure your Reminders are set correctly, check the Repeat option, and then click Save Appointment to create the General Event.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can students schedule with staff who have set up calendar sync, but have not yet set up their availability?
A: No, students cannot schedule with staff who have not configured their availability in the platform. Calendar sync allows the Slug Success platform to understand when staff are unavailable due to calendar conflicts, but does not indicate when, where, and for what services a staff member is available—all important components of appointment scheduling.
Q: What does it mean when availability is listed as “Inactive” and is highlighted in red?
A: Availability will show as inactive if the availability is set for a future or past time frame. For example, if you set your availability active duration for October 1st to October 15th, and the current date is September 30th or October 16th, then the availability will show as inactive. To activate availability, you can click the Edit option and update the active duration to a current time frame.
Q: How can I prevent availability from becoming inactive?
A: If you set the active duration to “Forever,” the availability will never expire.
Q: I have active availability, but students are still unable to schedule with me. Why?
A: Students may not be able to schedule with an active staff member for a variety of reasons.
Common scenarios include:
- The selected Location-Service may not be configured to allow for appointment scheduling
- The staff member may have a calendar conflict during the selected time
- The student may be prevented from scheduling due to a conflicting class schedule or category/major restrictions
- The availability type may be for drop-in visits, rather than appointment scheduling, staff availability is only set up with non-student facing services.
Q: Do I need to modify availability to account for calendar conflicts, such as meetings or other blocked time?
A: If you have set up the platform to sync with your Google calendar, then calendar conflicts will prevent students from scheduling during these times, even if it is during an active availability. If your calendar has not synced properly or recently, then calendar conflicts may not be up to date in Slug Success.
Q: Why do I need to indicate a Care Unit when setting up availability?
A: Selecting a Care Unit will narrow the availability options to only locations and services that are associated with that Care Unit. Staff will only be able to select Care Units for which they have availability permissions. Most departments at UCSC use the Advising Care Unit. If you are not sure which Care Unit to select, you can contact slugsuccess-help@ucsc.edu for assistance.
Q: Can a student schedule an appointment in Slug Success if an advisor has only set drop-in availability? Or do they need to create appointment availability too?
A: Staff must set up appointment availability for students to be able to schedule appointments with them.
Q: How do quarter start and end dates affect my availability?
A: It can affect your availability a lot! If your availability is set for the duration of the current quarter, students may not be able to schedule appointments with you after the last day of finals. During the gap between the end of the current quarter and the beginning of the next quarter, students will also not be able to schedule with you because your next quarter's availability will not be active until the start of the next quarter.
Q: Are there any other appointment settings that can be configured?
A: Yes! Self-scheduled student appointments, by default, are 30 minuntes long, can be scheduled 24 hours in advance, and up to 30 days into the future. However, each of these parameters can be configured for your location. If you would like to modify any of these parameters, please email slugsuccess-help@ucsc.edu for assistance.
Q: How can I get help if I have more questions?
A: Email slugsuccess-help@ucsc.edu to set up a one-on-one or group training session, which can be in person or via zoom, to ensure your availability is set up correctly to meet your needs and those of your students.
