Student Meetings in Navigate Staff
One of the major benefits of using Navigate is to facilitate meeting with students. Many of the instructions below are applicable to staff with roles other than advisor who meet with students. In this article, we will cover syncing your Outlook calendar to Navigate Staff and creating availabilities so students can schedule appointments with you.
Calendar Sync
Syncing your Outlook calendar to Navigate Staff is recommended for professional staff. This allows blocks on your Outlook calendar to prevent students from making appointments at those times and also shows any appointments made with you in Navigate on your Outlook calendar.
To sync your calendar, start by logging in to Navigate Staff. Then select the calendar icon from the left side icon menu; you can hover over each icon with your cursor to see the icon's label.
The "My Calendar" page will then load. In the upper right corner, select the "Settings and Sync" button.
The "Calendar Settings" page will load. Click the blue "Setup sync" button.
You will next see a list of options for email clients to sync. Choose "Microsoft Office 365 (Latest Version)". You will then be prompted to sign into your Outlook account. Complete the login as you normally would to access your email.
After signing in to your Outlook, you will automatically return to the Calendar Settings page. It may say that the sync can take up to thirty minutes to complete. You can continue to work in Navigate while waiting for the sync to complete.
To check if your sync is complete, select the calendar icon from the left hand icon menu again. On the "My Calendar" page, you may see your appointments from Outlook now appear on your calendar. You can also check if the sync is complete by clicking on "Settings and Sync" again. The "Calendar Settings" page will load, and if your sync was successful, the page will now show when the most recent sync was completed.
Once your calendar is synced, it should continue to update automatically. Any blocks on your Outlook calendar marked as "Busy" will then not be available for students when they try to schedule appointments with you in Navigate. Note that students will not see any of the details of these Outlook appointments; the blocked times will just not show for students as appointment options.
Conversely, appointments made within Navigate should appear on your Outlook calendar, with the prefix "Nav:" and then the student's name and the type of appointment. Anyone with access to see your Outlook calendar details will be able to see these details.
Creating Availabilities
For students to be able to schedule meetings with you, either appointments or through appointment campaigns, you must have at least one availability created and active.
From your Staff Home page, choose the "My Availability" tab.
To create your first availability, select "Actions" under "Available Times". Then select "Add Time" from the list of actions.
The availability editor will pop up. Complete the form from top to bottom. Note that this workflow should be completed in one attempt; the system does not allow for saving an incomplete or draft of an availability.
Days of the week can be duplicated if all the relevant details for those days are the same; e.g., if you want to be available 9 am to 3 pm on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and provide the same services on these days, select all three of these dates. Then set the times you want to be available for meetings on these days.
For "How long is this availability active?", choose from three options.
- Forever: This will keep this availability active until you delete it or deactivate it. Many advisor choose this option to prevent having to edit or activate availabilities each semester. Note that dates like holidays or breaks between semesters will need to be blocked by your Outlook calendar to not show as available to students.
- A Range of Dates: This option allows you choose a specific date range. Most advisors use this option for advising campaigns. These availabilities will become inactive once the end date passes and will need to be updated to become active again.
- Terms: Choose the current (default) term to offer availability during the dates of the current term. This includes finals week. These availabilities will become inactive once the current term ends and will need to be updated to become active again.
"Add to your personal availability link?" Each staff user has a Personal Availability Link (PAL) that will take students directly to any availabilities that have been added to their PAL. One suggested use for this PAL is to include it in your email signature. It is generally recommended to add general appointment availabilities to your PAL, but not campaign availabilities.
"What type of availability is this?" Availabilities can be any of three types.
- Appointments refers to when a student can choose to schedule a meeting with you. Restrictions on which students can make appointments with you are based on your role and department on campus.
- Campaigns are when you proactively reach out to a specific group of students to ask them to schedule a meeting with you for a specific purpose during a date range. The most common use of campaigns is appointment campaigns. More information about campaigns will be available elsewhere.
- Drop-ins allow for students to see availability but does not require them to make an appointment. We do not use this setting often, but please reach out to stars@uwplatt.edu if you are interested in setting up drop-in availability for you or your program. Note that having drop-in selected for an availability will override certain limits set on how students can schedule appointments, so it is recommended not to select drop-ins for availabilities without consulting with STARS.
For "Meeting Type," you can choose for an availability to offer in-person, phone, and/or virtual meetings. Multiple meeting types can be offered for a single availability, but note that this will provide students with details related to all the meeting types selected.
"Care Unit", "Location," and "Services" are largely determined by the nature of your role(s) on campus. If you are not sure which care unit, location, or services to select, contact your supervisor. Please note that "Location" does not provide students with specific information about where to meet your for in-person appointments.
"URL/Phone Number" If you selected Virtual or Phone for the meeting type, whatever is included in this space will be shared with the student in their appointment confirmation email. For this reason, it is not recommended to offer virtual and phone for a single availability, as there is only one space to include a Zoom link or phone number.
"Special Instructions for Student" allows you to provide any specific instructions you want to share with your students ahead of their meeting. You must include specific information about where to meet for in-person meetings, including building and office/suite number, as that information is not included anywhere else in the availability.
We do not recommend meeting with multiple students per appointment; leave this setting at the default of 1.
Don't forget to hit save!
You have now created your first availability. The good news is that you will really never need to create one from scratch again.
To create another availability, select the check box next to the existing availability, and the select "Copy Time" from the "Actions" menu.
Now, make any changes you want to make to this new availability. Work from top to bottom again, as changing earlier options may affect what is available for later choices. Most elements will persist when you copy an availability, but note that if you choose "A Range of Dates", the dates will revert back to today's date, and you will need to reset the dates to your desired range.
Continue to copy availabilities until you have set up all the availabilities you want to provide for students. You can check if your availabilities are active by reviewing the right-most column of the "Available Times" section. Current and active availabilities will just say "Edit"; availabilities that will become active upon a certain date will say "Upcoming/Edit"; expired availabilities will be pink and will say "Inactive/Edit".
Creating appointments for students
Navigate allows for staff with the correct permissions to schedule appointments on behalf of students. For instance, if a student calls you to discuss setting up an appointment with you, you can schedule for them within the platform. This can also be used to encourage students who are not responding to other forms of outreach to meet with you.
Search for the student by using the search bar at the top or selecting them from your list of students on your home page. Look to the "Options" menu to the right of their profile. Select "Schedule an Appointment" and then complete the appointment scheduling workflow.
Need help?
If you have questions, please contact Student Advising and Academic Resources at 608.342.1081 or stars@uwplatt.edu.