Admins: Understanding the Provider Appointment Flow

This article is specifically School Admins.

Key Takeaways: Understand how providers use Penji for appointments.

Penji Recommendation: We recommend practicing the appointment mode as a provider within your community, with someone else as the student, before moving on. If you book an appointment with yourself, the platform will not work as well when you try to submit feedback. 

Overview

This article explains how providers (tutors, advisors, coaches, etc.) manage appointments in Penji. This is typically used to help admins understand how providers set availability, host sessions, and submit feedback.

Important

⚠️ Important: Admins should test the provider experience using a separate student account. Booking a session with yourself may prevent proper feedback submission.

When to Use This

Use this if:

• You are setting up Appointments mode
• You want to understand the provider experience
• You need to troubleshoot availability or session logging issues

Steps to Set Up

Provider Availability

1. Go to Student/Provider Portal > web.penjiapp.com or open the mobile app
2. Switch to the Provider view/tab
3. Click Edit Appointment Availability
4. Select a time block on the calendar
5. Configure the following:
   • Appointment Type: Choose “Any” or “Specific” types (if enabled)
   • Location Type: Choose “Any” or specific locations
   • Days/Times: Set recurring availability
6. Click Save

To edit availability:

• Click an existing time block and update the settings

How It Works

• Availability drives booking:
  • Students can only book time slots that providers have made available
  • Once booked, that time slot is no longer visible to other students
• Appointment Type Preferences (Optional Feature):
  • Admins can enable this in Admin Panel > Settings > Sessions
  • When enabled, providers can specify which appointment types they support during certain times
  • “Any” means available for all appointment types
  • “Specific” restricts availability to selected appointment types
• Location Preferences:
  • Providers can choose to be available at any location or only specific ones
  • This affects what students see during booking
• Session Flow:
  • Providers receive booked appointments on their schedule
  • They meet with the student at the scheduled time
  • After the session, they submit a session log
• Session Logs:
  • Include attendance, duration, and optional feedback
  • Can be customized by admins

Best Practices

• Encourage providers to regularly review and update their availability
• Test booking with real scenarios to ensure availability appears correctly
• Enable appointment type preferences only if needed for your setup
• Ensure providers understand how to submit session logs properly

Limitations

• Providers must manually manage availability unless controlled by admins
• Appointment type preference feature is disabled by default
• Booking with the same account (student = provider) may affect feedback submission