Admins: Appointments Settings

Some settings will be controlled by Penji and some will be controlled through the Admin Panel. If you would like to change/update a Penji-controlled setting, please email [e-mail] to update the setting. Please include what school and community you would like this to apply to.  Some settings will relate to all sessions, just appointments, and just sections. Section settings are described in the article, Admins: Sections Settings.

All Sessions

Student Session Booking Lead Time Rules (Admin Panel)

How many minutes in advance must a student book? This setting is often used when combining drop-in and appointment availability that overlaps. For example, if there is a 720-minute (12-hour) lead time, no student can book an appointment within 12 hours.

Appointment scheduled weeks ahead (Penji Controlled)

This allows you to adjust how many weeks in advance students are able to book an appointment. For example, this could be 2 weeks - from a given date, students can only book an appointment two weeks out. 

Calendar Allowed Minutes (Penji Controlled)

On what parts of the hour would you like students to be allowed to book an appointment. For example, if this is :00 and :30, students would only be able to schedule an appointment that starts on the hour or half-hour. 

Auto-confirm sessions for Providers (Admin Panel)

More information about the different statuses for sessions can be found here: Admins: Appointments Introduction. If you would like providers to be able to decline a session, this should be off. When students book an appointment, and this feature is off, the appointment will be shown as Pending until the provider accepts the appointment. Otherwise, if this is on, once a student requests a session it is immediately confirmed.

Student session usage limit (Admin Panel)

Use the student session usage limits if you would like to add restrictions on the number of minutes per week or per day students are allowed to book. See the below example: Students are not allowed to book more than 120 minutes per week and are not allowed to book more than 90 minutes per day for sessions. Session usage limit violations are shown from the student perspective within the Student FAQ.

This session usage limit includes the time spent in a session that is part of a section. Both appointments and sections are counted in this limit. 

Provider max booked hours limit (Admin Panel)

This is the maximum amount of time a provider can be booked for a session or leading a section. Both appointments and sections are counted in this limit. 

For example, if a Tutor has availability on Thursday and Friday from 12 pm to 5 pm, they would have 10 hours of availability. If you set the max booked hours to 2 hours (120 minutes) a week, once the two hours have been booked, the Tutor’s remaining times would be unavailable and not shown to students. Hours would count as "booked" when a student books an appointment or if the student is leading a section that week. 

Note, the weekly limit is set in minutes. 

Provider Session Feedback (Admin Panel)

The feedback questions can be formatted as a short answer, long answer, drop-down, or a link to a URL. You can add, edit, make required or rearrange these questions from the admin panel. The image below shows from the provider view a short answer, link to a URL, drop-down, and long answer custom feedback question. The video below shows these custom questions in the admin panel, walking through how to set this up. 

There must be at least one provider feedback question. If you do not want to add a custom feedback question, the default question must be enabled. The default question is shown to providers as an open-ended long answer box, see the below image.

The overall prompt of "Add feedback or comments about the session for your program coordinator" will always be shown, regardless of if the default question is enabled or custom questions are used. If you enabled the setting to share provider feedback in session receipts, the overall prompt would instead read, "Add feedback or comments about the session for your student and program coordinator" instead. The overall prompt is used to notify providers that the program coordinator, and sometimes their students, will see this feedback. 

Note, that the provider will always be asked to submit how long the session was unless you have this question turned off. See the feature "Provider Request Session Length Feedback (Penji Controlled)" below. 

If turned on for Sections, these same provider feedback questions will be asked after each session. See more in Admins: Sections Settings, under the header, "Enable Section Provider feedback (Penji Controlled)". 

Provider Request Session Length Feedback (Penji Controlled)

This setting determines whether or not you would like providers to submit the session length. The default is that this feature is enabled, and providers adjust the session time accordingly when they submit feedback. If you disable this feature, all session lengths will be recorded as the requested length. 

Appointments (1:1, Group, Weekly)

Appointment Formats (Admin Panel)

This setting allows you to completely edit the appointment flow. Changes made within here will directly impact the student learn screen and the appointment options available to students. Once saved, these changes will be live and available. Within this setting you can:

• Edit the appointment button copy
• Rearrange the appointment buttons 
• Duplicate appointment buttons and their settings
• Delete appointment buttons
• Add brand new appointments 
  • Determine the kind (one-on-one or group)
  • Set the recurrence (single or weekly)
  • Set the length of time for the appointment
  • Edit the topic screen questions shown to students 
    • Determine the text for the long answer
      • Make the long answer required or optional
    • Determine what the checkbox question is
      • Determine what the checkbox options are
      • Make the checkbox question required or optional
    •  NOTE: You must have either both the long answer and checkbox questions enabled, or just the long answer question. As of right now, the checkbox question cannot stand on its own.  

Q&A

Q1: If the weekly appointment format is removed, so students can no longer book weekly appointments, will this also stop creating weekly appointments for students who have already used this option before it was removed, and have weekly appointments scheduled?

A1: Removing the option for students to book a weekly appointment will not affect already scheduled weekly appointments. The next weekly appointment will continue to be scheduled after the provider completes the current week's session log, regardless of if that appointment flow is available to students. The weekly appointments will continue to be created until they are canceled.

Max group session size (Admin Panel)

Set the maximum amount of students that can join a group appointment (session). 

Allow Providers to Set Session location preferences (Penji Controlled)

Allow providers to determine where they would like to have their sessions held (what location). You can enable or disable this setting.

Allow providers editing appointment availability (Admin Panel)

Set whether or not providers are allowed to edit their appointment availability on their own. Your choices are allowed or not allowed. Set to not allowed if you would like to 100% control your providers' schedules for them. 

Student Session Feedback (Admin Panel) 

The feedback questions can be formatted as a short answer, long answer, drop-down, or a link to a URL. You can add, edit, make required or rearrange these questions from the admin panel. This setting operates the same as, "Provider Session Feedback (Admin Panel)". The only difference is students will not be asked to submit a session length.

For a video example, explaining how to use this setting, please see the "Provider Session Feedback (Admin Panel)" feature above. Instead of navigating to Settings > Sessions > Provider feedback questions, you will select Settings > Sessions > Student feedback questions. 

There must be at least one student feedback question. If you do not want to add a custom feedback question, the default question must be enabled. Below is a screenshot of the default question.

Require Student Feedback (Penji Controlled)

There are three add-ons to require student feedback.

1. Set specific feedback questions to required - this is available on the admin website, see the setting, "Student Session Feedback (Admin Panel)". Students will be able to navigate around Penji, but will not be able to submit their feedback until they have filled in the required feedback - least intrusive. 
2. Set it so that once a student opens Penji, they will be prompted to submit feedback from their session. However, they can exit the feedback request at any point and get navigate back to it later. 
3. Do not allow students to continue using Penji until they have submitted their session feedback -most intrusive to the student experience.

Require Provider Feedback (Penji Controlled)

For after the session, you can require that the provider fill out session feedback prior to being able to use other Penji functions. You can also set each custom feedback question as required or optional. There is a different setting to require provider feedback for sections, "Enable Section Provider feedback (Penji Controlled)".

Student & Provider Email Receipts - Sessions (Admin Panel)

You have the ability to send students and providers a "receipt" of their Penji 1:1 session interaction. Once the provider completes their feedback, the email receipt will be sent out to whoever the setting is enabled for. This will be sent to students (if enabled) regardless if the student was absent or present. 

Default settings are shown above. 

The receipt will contain information about the:

• Date & Time of session
• Course (Subject)
• Location
• Attendance
• Duration (based on provider submitted feedback)
• What was entered in for the “topic” from the student (the long answer text box when a student books an appointment)
• If turned on, the provider feedback and the questions asked will be included

When providers submit their feedback, if "Share provider feedback in session email receipts" is enabled, providers will be notified when completing their session feedback. It is encouraged to communicate with providers to let them know that their feedback will be shared with students if you turn this feature on. 

Student Receipt with share feedback from Provider enabled:

Provider Receipt with share feedback from Provider enabled:

Student session no-show rules (Admin Panel)

Set rules for students when missing appointments. A suspended student will not be able to request new sessions. In the example below, here is how to read the no-show policy: If a student has 3 absences (no-shows) within a 7-day period, suspend that student for 7 days. Once you set the no-show rules, you will have the option to send emails after each no-show before the rule is enforced. These emails will be set up within the admin panel and sent automatically. If you do not want to send emails, keep the fields blank. 

Here is an example of a no-show email:

• Hello,

  You are receiving this email because you recently missed a scheduled appointment with the [COMMUNITY NAME].

  While this [FIRST] instance is considered a warning, please know that, in the future, your ability to schedule appointments with [COMMUNITY NAME] may be affected. The community rules are as follows: [INSERT NO SHOW RULES HERE].

  If you need to cancel an appointment, you can do so in the Penji app before your scheduled session.

  Best,
  [COMMUNITY NAME]

Missed sessions that are part of a section are not included in this no-show policy. There is a separate no-show rule for sections. 

Resetting the no-show policy

In the Admin Panel, you have the ability to reset students' no-show status:

When the no-show policy kicks in, upcoming weekly sessions within the session "lockout" period are canceled, which in turn cancels all future recurring sessions in that series. The session before the next weekly recurring session has to happen in order for the next one in the series to be created. Since the initial session was canceled and did not happen, none of the future sessions were created.

Resetting the no-show status will not resume weekly recurring sessions.  

To reset the no-show status for a student, you will navigate to the admin website > students tab > view the student > edit > select "Reset No-Show Status".