Overview

With Element451 Appointments, you can easily schedule and handle one-on-one meetings with students, colleagues, and other important stakeholders like parents, alumni, and influencers. Key features include:

Scheduling autonomy allows your invitee to schedule, reschedule, and cancel their own appointment.
Custom availability allows you to set your availability by appointment type, ensuring flexibility in the meetings you offer.
Calendar linking allows you to add your public calendar (such as Gmail or Outlook) for Element451 to check availability in real-time, displaying only available meeting times to your invitee.
Automated reminders help to reduce no-show rates and manual processes.
Personalized booking link for each user to share or add to their e-mail signature

Overall, Appointments in Element451 offers a powerful and convenient tool to help manage your appointments. Let's get yours set up!

Glossary

Several key terms are helpful to understand before you start configuring Appointments. Use the collapsable sections below to read about each one:

Appointment

An Appointment is the base item within the Appointments Module.
An Appointment is created when someone books an appointment type with a specific staff member.
Appointments are connected to the Contact record.

Types

Appointment Types allow you to configure shared information when one or more users can host a specific appointment type. For example, you may have four academic advisors available for Office Hours. In this case, Office Hours become one of your Appointment Types.
Each Appointment Type is also tied to an Appointment Form, which students complete when booking. These forms are configured at the Type level.
Students can also filter appointments by Type to easily find specific offerings, such as Office Hours or Admission Interviews.

Availability

Each Availability is tied to a user and a Type. This means one staff member can offer different times for different appointment types. For example, you could conduct Office Hours each week on Mondays and Thursdays from 1 pm-5 pm and Admission Interviews on Mondays - Fridays 10 am-2 pm.
Staff can each set their own availability.
Admins can edit or delete any user's availability after creation.

Accessing Appointments

Click on Engagement in the top navigation bar.
Click on Appointments from the drop-down list.

Getting Started - Captains & Appointment Admin

Before using the Appointments module, Element Captains or Appointment Admins must complete a few minor configurations:

Configure your Booking Page
Add at least one Category and one Appointment Type
Set your availability and/or train your team on setting their availability

Video Guide

Configuring Your Appointments Site (Booking Page)

Similar to the Events module, we provide you with an Appointment Booking site where students, colleagues, and others can schedule an appointment with you. The site is designed to be implemented quickly and easily.

To configure your school's Appointment Booking site, click on the More menu in the Appointments header and select Page Settings. This will open a Page Settings sheet. You can configure all the settings needed to launch your booking site from here.

Domains
Primary Domain: Element451 automatically assigns your Appointments Site a primary domain and can not be edited. It will look something like this: fire.appointments451.sites.451.io.

External Domain: While the primary domain URL is functional, it doesn't share the same institutional brand identity and trust as a URL ending in .edu. To that end, you can configure an external domain to mask or hide the primary domain and use a URL ending in your school name or abbreviation. You'll likely need to work with your IT or website team for this process.

Explore More: Configuring External Domains
Branding
Your Appointments page will have pre-populated images using your branding content tokens. If you wish to edit those, hover over the image and click remove. You can then select an image from your media manager or upload a new one.

Example of Branded Site:
1 - Header Logo
2- Banner Background
3- Footer Logo
Element Messenger
If you utilize the live chat widget within Element451 and wish to enable it on your booking page, simply toggle on the Element Messenger option.

Footer
The footer information is pre-populated using your school's information. You can adjust this information to display differently on your Appointments page if needed.

Thank You Note
A custom thank you message is displayed on the confirmation page after an invitee schedules their appointment. You can customize this message by adding your own text to the title and description for the Thank You Note setting.

Configuring Categories and Appointment Types

❗Admins must configure at least one Category and Appointment type.

Types

Appointment Types can be thought of as templates for your users. When adding Types, think about those routine appointments offered by your team. They allow you to configure shared information when one or more users can host a specific appointment type. For example, you may have four academic advisors available for Office Hours. In this case, Office Hours become one of your Appointment Types.

Each Appointment Type has a Registration Form, which students complete when booking. These forms are configured at the Type level.
Students can filter appointments by Type to easily find specific offerings, such as Office Hours or Admission Interviews.

To add and manage your Types:

Click on the vertical ellipsis (⋮) in the Appointments header.
Select Types. Or, if you're already in Appointment Settings, you can click on Types from the left-hand menu.
- To get you started, Element451 provides 3 sample Types (Admissions Interview, Advising Office Hours, and FAFSA Help). They can be edited or deleted.
To add a new Type, click the "+ Add Type" button. Then, configure the settings for the type. We explain each one below.
To edit or delete an existing type, click the vertical ellipsis (⋮) at the end of that category's row and select the action you wish to perform.

Appointment Type Settings

Name: Give your appointment type a name
- Remember that appointment types are visible to the student for filtering purposes.
Category: Select the category associated with this type
Public: Toggle this setting on if you want the appointment privacy to be set to 'public,' meaning it will be listed on your Appointments Site.
- If disabled, you can share privately via URL. When an appointment is private, and the user accesses the appointment URL, they cannot navigate back to see public details of that appointment type.
Location Type: Select the appointment's location type - physical or virtual
Location: Provide the location of this appointment. If physical, provide the details like building, room number, etc. If virtual, you can provide how they will access the appointment.
Create Date of Inquiry Milestone: By default, appointment bookings will generate a Date of Inquiry Milestone using the term and major specified on the registration form. Disabling this setting will ensure that no Date of Inquiry Milestone is created when someone books this appointment.
Description: Provide a description of the appointment type

Registration Form

Currently, there is a known bug that prevents documents from being uploaded on appointment registration forms. We are actively working on a solution. In the meantime, it is recommended to remove the upload fields.

Use the Registration Form section to configure the appointment booking form that the student must complete when booking this appointment type.

Configuring + Editing Availability

Once Categories and Appointment Types have been configured, your users can set their availability. Only users can add their availability, while administrators can edit/delete availability for all users.

To view and edit a user's availability:

Navigate to Engagement > Appointments.
Click the more icon in the right corner of the header.
Select the Availability button from the menu.
Locate the availability you wish to manage and select the more icon at the end of the row.
Select the action you wish to take:
- Copy Link: Copy the URL for the booking page for that availability.
- Open: Open the booking page for that availability.
- Edit: For adjustments to existing availability, including changing the settings or modifying when the appointment can be booked, opt for the Edit mode. This feature allows you to modify any aspect of an availability, such as appointment type, scheduling conditions, weekly hours, and notifications. The only exception is the assignee, which remains fixed to ensure clarity on who the appointment is with. This approach ensures you can fine-tune the details of your availability without needing to remove the slot entirely.
- Delete: If you find that a certain availability slot is no longer necessary or you wish to completely remove the option, use the Delete option. This action permanently removes the availability from the booking page.