Admins: Sections Waitlist (Admin-managed Only)

Introduction: What is the Sections Waitlist feature?

Admins can add a waitlist to each individual section. Once a Section's waitlist has been enabled, students who want to join a Section at full capacity have the option to join its waitlist instead. This feature allows students to see all potential Sections within a community, regardless of current capacity.  

Admins can view which students have joined a section's waitlist in real time via the Waitlist tab (Sections > Waitlist) in the admin panel. This allows admins to see which Sections are the most in-demand and could use a larger capacity size in the future. Admins will be emailed when a student joins a waitlist and when a seat opens up in a Section with a waitlist. Likewise, students will be emailed confirmation details once they are added to a section. 

The Sections Waitlist will operate the same for required or optional Sections with or without student invites. Currently, this is only available for admin-managed (not provider-managed) sections.

Sections Waitlist Set-Up

1. From the Admin Panel, go to "Sections" in the left-hand menu and select "Manage".  
2. Download the Sections CSV template under "Import Sections". The CSV template should look like this: Figure 1: Sections CSV with Waitlist column added (indicated with the red arrow). The example Section has the waitlist enabled. 
3. Identify which Sections you would like a waitlist for and enter "Enabled" for each one in column I. Any other Sections that you do not want a waitlist for should have "Disabled" entered instead. Fill out the rest of the columns as usual.  
   • If this is the first time you are uploading a Sections CSV, follow the steps under the heading "Admin Managed Sections - Step by Step" in this article: Admins: Set-Up Sections (Groups) Mode.
   • If you want to enable waitlists for existing Sections, copy column I from the template and paste it between column H, "Tutor SSO", and column J, "Location" in your most recently imported Sections CSV. 
4.  Once you've enabled and disabled the waitlists for all of your Sections, save and import the Sections CSV. The Waitlist tab will contain all of the students currently on a waitlist. Figure 2: Waitlist tab, circled in red, appears within Sections.
5. The Sections Waitlist feature is now enabled in your community. To see how this feature is used, proceed to the steps under "Using the Sections Waitlist (Admins)".

Using the Sections Waitlist (Admins)

Types of Admin Email Notifications

Admins will be notified when a student joins the waitlist and when a seat in the waitlist opens up, as shown below. 

Email #1:  A student has joined the waitlist

This email contains the Section name, the student's name, and a notification that the seats for the Section have been filled. This email is sent every time a student joins the waitlist for a specific Section -- the one below is for the Section "Working through our First Year":

Email #2: A seat has opened up in a Section with an existing waitlist

This email notifies the admin that a seat has opened up in a certain Section and contains a link to the Admin Panel's Waitlist tab. The Admin Panel's Waitlist tab is shown below in Step 1 of, "Adding Students to Sections".

Are there times when admins will not be emailed?

Yes, admins will not receive emails during the following situations:

1. When students choose to leave the waitlist, admins will not be emailed. However, they will be removed from the Waitlist Tab. 
2. When an admin manually adds a student, waitlisted or not, to a Section, admins will not be emailed. The student will receive confirmation that they have been registered for the section. 
3. If there's nobody on the waitlist, admins will not be emailed when a seat opens up.

Adding Students to Sections

When a waitlist is enabled, admins have the option to add students to a Section. Admins can add any student they would like to a section, regardless of if the section is full or if the student was on the waitlist. Meaning, there are no "restrictions" applied when an admin adds a student to a section.

Below walks through how to add a student from the Waitlist to the Section. Note, that when a seat opens up for a section where a student is on the waitlist, a link to the Admin Panel Waitlist Tab is included. 

1. First, check the Waitlist tab to see which Section has students on the waitlist. Here, a student named Victoria is waitlisted for the Section "Working through our First Year": Figure 1: The student Victoria appears in the Waitlist tab. 
2. Go to the Search tab and click the pencil button for the correct Section. You can tell which is the right Section by the Section Name: Figure 2: The correct Section to edit has been identified in the Search tab. 
3. Once you select the pencil button, click "Edit" at the top > "Add student". A pop-up called "Add student to section" will appear: Figure 3: "Add student to section" pop-up window. 
4.  Add students to the Section by selecting their name in the search field or dropdown menu and click "Add Student":
   • When an admin adds a waitlisted student to the Section they requested, the student will disappear from the Waitlist tab. 
   • When an admin adds non-waitlisted students to a Section, there is no change to the Waitlist tab. 

For more information on admin-managed Sections in general, go to Admins: Set-Up Sections (Groups) Mode and Admins: Sections Flow - Admin Managed.

Waitlist Tab - when will a student be removed?

There are four instances when a student will be removed from the Waitlist tab:

1. The student joins the section (the student could join the section themself or be added by an admin)
2. The student leaves the waitlist
3. The section is no longer an available section (deleted from the CSV file or if the section is renamed)
4. An admin disables the waitlist for the specific section on the section.csv

To note, when a student signs up for the waitlist for an optional section, the student will continue to be on the waitlist tab week to week, until one of the 4 actions described above happens. The student is in essence signing up for the full series of the section.

Sections Waitlist - Students and Providers 

Student Flow: 

1. Students will go through the Section booking flow as usual to book a session. If they've selected a course/topic that currently has a Section with a waitlist, they will see it under "Sections with a Waitlist". See the below example from our Financial Aid Demo Community: Figure 1: For the topic, there are two Sections to choose from. "First Year Seminar Series" has open seats, but "Working through our First Year" is full and thus has a waitlist enabled. 
2. From the Sections with a waitlist, students can select their desired Section and click "Join Waitlist".Figure 2: The "Join Waitlist" button appears when the desired Section with a waitlist is selected. 
3.  Once "Join Waitlist" is selected, the student is automatically taken back to their Learn Screen. From here, there is no action to take on the student's end -- the admin will be in charge of monitoring the Section's remaining capacity (to check this, go to Sections > Search tab > "Remaining Capacity" is on the far right. 
   • For optional Sections, students who join a waitlist will be joining the current week's Section -- they cannot join a waitlist for a future Section. 
4. NOTE: Currently, students are not notified via email or push notifications when they join a waitlist. A session placeholder card is not added to their learn screen for the waitlisted section they joined.  

When a Student is Added to a Section 

When an admin adds a student to the section from the waitlist, they will receive an email confirming their Section registration; this is the same email sent in the normal Section booking flow (see emails under "Student Experience" in Admins: Sections Flow - Admin Managed):

Note, this email is sent to any student added to a section - regardless of if they were on the waitlist or not. 

Provider Flow: 

This is the same as any other section. Providers cannot see who is on the waitlist. More information on the Provider perspective can be found in the article, Providers: Sections (Groups) Training.