Introduction to Penji

What is Penji?

At Penji, we provide students with an easy way to access the different resources on campus as well as help streamline administrative efforts. Students can login to Penji through our mobile and webapp, where we offer modern, mobile-first scheduling. This includes direct booking from calendars, drop-in checkins, group sessions, in-app chat, session reminders, user feedback, and more.

Our platform can support advising, tutoring, coaching programs, and other resource centers on campus. Each center can be segmented into separate communities, allowing for customization between centers, all within a unified front to students. 

From our team to yours, Welcome to Penji! 

Penji Architecture

Penji has two levels to its structure, School and Community:

• School
  This is the overarching unit within Penji. There will always be one school, but each school can have multiple communities. Users will login to Penji using the school's Single Signon system, and once authenticated, will be let into the school's Penji environment, where they will see all of the available communities. 
• Community
  Within a school, users will see one or more "Communities". These generally correspond to distinct support centers at the school, eg. the Learning Center, the Engineering Advising Center, the Peer Mentoring Program, etc. In essence, a community is a distinct, fully customizable instance of Penji, each managed by one or more admins. Many schools have multiple communities, and some have 10 or more.

Penji Roles

We organize Penji Users into four categories: School-Level Admins, Community-Level Admins, Providers, and Students. Every Penji user has the same account/credentials but is given different "roles". What a user can see and where they can log in will be dependent on their role, meaning the level of access they have. 

• School-Level Admin
  School-level admins are users who can review ALL community data and update school-level settings. A school-level admin is considered to be anyone added as an Admin User through the admin website > school view. School-level admins have the highest level of access and can log in to the admin website (community admin can as well). Note, that a school-level admin also needs community-level admin access to see specific communities' data and adjust their settings. 
• Community-Level Admin
  Community-level admins are users who can only see community-specific data and update community-level settings. A community-level admin is considered to be anyone added as an Admin User through the admin website > community view. Community-level admins can log in to the admin website (school admin can as well). 
  • Community-level admin can either have Full Admin Access or Limited Admin Access. Limited Admin Access is described here. 
• Providers
  Provider is the general term for users whose role it is to help students with the resources in that community. A user is considered a Provider if listed within the Provider CSV file (see the article Admins: Providers Setup (Tutors, Advisors, Coaches, etc.).  Providers are able to access all parts of the Penji Website and the mobile app ("Learn" and "Teach" screens). Providers do not have access to the admin website unless added as an admin. 
  • Note, that the word "Provider" can be renamed, throughout your entire Penji Community, to something like Tutor, Mentor, Advisor, Staff, etc. This change would only affect your community, not the full school.  
• Students
  Students are users seeking community resources. They have the lowest level of access and are only able to access the "Learn" screen on web.penjiapp.com and the mobile app.

Accessing Penji

• Admin Website: http://admin.penjiapp.com
  This is where all of the data is stored, and where admin can customize their Penji Community 
  • Access: Admins
• Penji: http://web.penjiapp.com or the Penji mobile app
  This is where students will seek help and where providers will see their upcoming sessions and manage their hours
  • Access: Admins, Providers, and Students 

Modes of Support in Penji

Penji has three modes of support: Appointments, Drop-In, and Sections (groups). Each of these three modes can coordinate in-person support, online support, or a hybrid of the two. Each mode also has different ways it can be used, creating a large combination of possibilities!

• Appointments - Appointments Flow Article
  Appointments in Penji allow students to book times directly with providers. Providers will set their appointment calendars via the "Teach" screen in their app, and students can book times from their calendars. These are usually one-on-one but can also be small group. Students usually request an appointment which is then confirmed by the provider, but "auto-accept" can be turned on. Admins can also create sessions for students (Sessions > Create Session, in your admin panel).  
  
• Drop-In - Drop-In Flow Article
  Admins configure a unique set of drop-in locations, providers set their hours for each drop-in location, and students can browse the opportunities for drop-in support for a given class using Penji. Drop-In has two modes, Log and Queue mode. "Log Mode" has a Kiosk that can be loaded onto any device via a browser to collect check-ins to a physical location. "Queue Mode" also has a kiosk, but students are placed in a queue after check-in and given a wait time; providers work through students in the queue one by one. 
• Events (aka. groups) - Admins: Setting up an Event
  The basic flow for events mode is that admins will create events, and your providers will host these events. Events can be used for single occurrences or recurring weekly instances. Common use cases include SI, PAL, workshops, trainings, etc. We've created this mode so that there is a lot of flexibility to handle various group events.  
• Sections - Sections Flow Article (Admin-Managed Sections)
  Sections can be admin-managed or provider-managed group sessions. Through Penji, students can register for a section and providers can log attendance for that section. Sections have some overlap with Appointments, for example, a student's registration for either mode is called a "Session" and has similar data attributes.
  • NOTE: Sections is an outdated Penji Mode. We recommend new programs use the Events mode, described above.