Overview
New configuration options for Watermark Student Success & Engagement will be released to Advisors on June 14. The new scheduler will go live for all institutions on July 12 (Go Live date).
If steps are not taken prior to July 12 by the campus calendar administrator, the SS&E administrator, and individual advisors, staff/advisor meeting slots will not generate for students in the new scheduler.
This article contains instructions for the SS&E Administrator.
- Instructions for the Institution Calendar Administrator can be found here
- Instructions for individual advisors will be available here after June 14
- An overview of the entire Meeting Scheduler project, including features lists and timelines may be found here
- The new scheduler will be available as a feature flag. Instructions for enabling the new scheduler before July 12 will be available here after June 14
- Some institutions will want to update their titles for services, offices, and campuses. A guide to new best practices for naming convention may be found here
Required actions for SS&E Administrator
Because the new meeting scheduler requires action from various parties at each campus, the SS&E admin should ensure these broad actions are complete.
-
Verify that your campus calendar administrator has enabled the new integration. 🚨NOW
- Perform these steps to prepare your SS&E instance for the new scheduler. 🚨NOW
- Enable modality
- Update Services
- Remove online/in-person information from titles
- Verify naming convention
- Provide duration and description
- Update Offices (renamed from Service Delivery Location)
- Remove online/in-person information from titles
- Verify naming convention
- Verify that Offices are linked to correct services and campus
- 🚧After the June 14 Advisor release send Watermark-provided instructions to all advisors who expect to use the new scheduler and verify they have synced their individual calendar and added modality onto their availability slots
Context within new scheduler
As guiding context to the updates we are suggesting, consider that main booking page for the students will now include modality and will look as follows:
Students start by selecting a Service, but additional filters may be applied to generate the best slot:
- Staff/advisor
- Campus
- Modality (online, in-person, or phone)
- Office (Financial Aid or Advising Center, etc)
Because the new meeting scheduler is highly dynamic and includes modality, institutions will need to verify that the values within the scheduler make sense to the student. The biggest thing is removing modality from Service Offerings and Office (Service delivery location). Please follow the instructions below to guide the process.
1. Enable meeting modality
New meeting scheduler finally offers the institution a way to properly designate meetings as online, in-person, or phone call. Modalities are not available to the legacy scheduler, but when activated, they will appear throughout the new scheduler.
- All meetings after changing to the new scheduler will include modality
- In-person meeting modality is by-default enabled
- To enable online or phone call modality, Admins must activate those modalities from Admin>Meetings>Meeting Modalities
- After the June 14 Advisor Release, advisors will add modality onto their availability windows to indicate whether they want students to book a meeting within that window in-person, online, or phone.
- After the June 14 Advisor Release, advisors will also add their personal online link into their individual settings
- All online meetings will include the advisor's personal online link within the meeting invitation
- Students can easily follow the online link from Watermark mobile, Watermark desktop, or their own personal calendar
- Advisors will admit students to online meetings from their personal waiting room
- Within the new scheduler, students can easily filter on slots to find in-person, online, or phone meeting
- With the creation of modality as a distinct field and meeting length now being specified on the service, meeting types are irrelevant
- Meeting types will be deprecated and will not appear within the new scheduler
- Do not continue to edit meeting types
✅Modalities checklist
☐ From Admin>Meetings>Meeting Modalities, ensure the correct modalities are activated
2. Update Services configuration
Remove online/in-person from Service names
With the creation of modality (online or in-person) as a distinct field, service offerings SHOULD NOT CONTAIN in-person, face-to-face, or other modality-related indicators. Advisors will add modality onto their availability slots within their individual settings.
Modality information should be removed from Service offering titles. Either edit existing services, or bulk-deactivate all and create new ones.
Verify naming convention is appropriate
This is the suggested naming convention for services:
- Academic Pathway Advising
- Access Services
- Career Exploration or Development
- Disability Services
- Financial Aid Advising
- Financial Aid award letter followup
- Loan Questions
- Transfer student guidance
- Tutoring: Accounting
- Tutoring: Multmedia design
Give relevant services a duration and description
Service offerings must now have a set duration
Specifying meeting duration for a given service prevents students from selecting inconsistent and arbitrary lengths
- A single duration is required for a service to appear in the new scheduler
- If you find that a service requires different lengths, those are actually different but related services
- Create a distinct service for services requiring different lengths
- An example could be:
- Advising: Incoming Freshman (duration = 30 minutes)
- Advising: Graduating Senior (duration = 20 minutes)
- Advisors may select whichever service they wish to offer
Give relevant services a description
The description will appear to students within the new scheduler and will assist students with selecting the correct service
✅Service Offerings checklist
From Admin>Meetings, select Service Offerings. Each service may be edited and activated.
- ☐ Verify that only relevant services are Active
- ☐ Verify that relevant services do not contain modality (online or in-person) information
- ☐ Bulk deactivate or create new services (as needed)
- ☐ Add duration to all relevant services
- ☐ Add a description to services (optional)
3. Update Office listings
After May 31, 2024, the Location field is renamed as Campus, and Service Delivery Location is renamed as Office
- The rename aligns with how most institutions are already using these terms
- The rename allows institutions to be more specific and descriptive with these terms, in accordance with Watermark best practice
- The rename allows students to easily filter on the fields within the new scheduler
Offices may be updated from Admin>Meetings>Offices.
Remove online/in-person from Office names
With the creation of modality (online or in-person) as a distinct field, Offices SHOULD NOT CONTAIN in-person, face-to-face, or other modality-related indicators. Advisors will add modality onto their availability slots within their individual settings.
Modality information should be removed from Office titles. Either edit existing offices, or bulk-deactivate all and create new ones.
Verify naming convention
Your Offices list will appear within a filter for students and will be most descriptive by following this naming convention:
- Academic Success Center
- Center for Leadership & Service
- Disability Services Office
- Financial Aid Office: Alumni Hall 3rd floor
- International Student Programs
- Tutoring Center
- Writing Center: Main Library
Many institutions have extraneous Offices that may not be appropriate within the context of new scheduler.
- New offices may be created
- Offices may be bulk activated/deactivated
- Only active offices will appear within the new scheduler
Verify that Offices are linked to the correct services and campus
Office is the crucial step binding campus to service offering, indicating to students which activities will be offered where.
- Locations generate for advisor availability windows based on which campuses are linked to offices and services
- If an appropriate Campus does not appear, simply add a new one from the campus screen
The Admin must verify that the correct services are offered at each Office and that the correct physical campus is also linked.
Campus
This field is imported on the "Locations" datafeed and was previously called Locations within the product
Campus values should make sense to the student within the clarified context of a physical campus. Avoid linking offices to an Online Campus as virtual meetings will be designated via modality. Naming convention should conform to the following:
- Main Campus
- Albany Campus
- Medical Campus (Smithville)
Avoid editing Campuses from the UI as these are linked to other datafeeds and changes will likely be overwritten |
If the campus name you need doesn't exist, simply create a new one |
New campuses may be created from Admin>Campuses and Buildings>Campuses
Visibility
To smooth the summer transition into the new scheduler, administrators can mark whether individual offices will appear in the old (legacy) scheduler and/or the new scheduler
To read more on other configurations for Offices, click here
✅Offices Checklist
Work from Admin>Meetings>Offices to prepare for new meeting scheduler
- ☐ Verify that only relevant Offices are Active
- ☐ Remove online/in-person indicators from Office names
- ☐ Bulk deactivate or create new Offices (as needed)
- ☐ Verify naming convention is appropriate to new scheduler
- ☐ Verify that Offices are linked to the correct services and campus
- Campus should be a physical campus like "Main Campus"
- Create new campus values instead of editing existing ones