Set Up Front-Desk Appointment Scheduling

Learn About Front-Desk Appointment Scheduling

Support staff aren't the only ones who schedule support appointments. Administrative assistants, front desk coordinators, part-time student employees—a whole host of people help support staff in creating appointments. Is a student standing at the front desk, foot tapping, ready to schedule? No worries. Front-desk staff can click a button to quickly create appointments for support staff and students using a dedicated form that helps them easily find the best day, time, and location to meet.

Front-desk staff can schedule individual appointments between a student and a support staff member or a member of a Support Pool. They can't schedule group or walk-in appointments.

After an appointment is scheduled, support staff members can use the Appointment Manager to reschedule or cancel it, and students can reschedule or cancel it from the portal. Front-desk staff can't reschedule or cancel the appointments they create for others.

Front-desk appointment scheduling uses a custom Lightning component to access a New Appointment form that accommodates front-desk staff scheduling needs.

Front-Desk Appointment Scheduling Release Information

Front-desk appointment scheduling was released with Student Success Hub 2.53 (Summer '21).

To get front-desk appointment scheduling up and running in your org, complete the tasks in this article.

Unless otherwise noted at the beginning of the task, all setup tasks are required regardless of the version of Student Success Hub that you originally installed. If you don't know which version you started with, see Check Your Student Success Hub Version History.

Set Object and Field Permissions for Front-Desk Appointment Scheduling

Front-desk staff who schedule appointments for support staff need permissions to access the objects and fields used for appointments and availability. These permissions are different from the permissions that support staff need to create and manage their own appointments, however, so create a profile for your front-desk staff and assign it these minimum object and field permissions.

Note Don't create the front-desk staff profile based on the support staff profile you're using. Instead, create it based on a Standard User profile. It's safer to start with a basic profile and add permissions than to start from a profile that has permissions you need to remove.

If you create a permission set instead of a profile, the same principle applies: Don't clone the support staff permission set that's included with Student Success Hub. Instead, create a new permission set and assign the minimal permissions that front-desk staff need to do their jobs.

Finally, we recommend that you assign the Student Success Hub app to the front-desk profile or permission set.

Set Apex Class Access for Front-Desk Appointment Scheduling

The component that front-desk staff use to schedule appointments relies on three Apex classes.

Student Success Hub includes access to these Apex classes on the support staff profile. Here's how to add them to a front-desk staff profile—and to your System Administrator profile.

Note If you're using a permission set instead of a profile, complete this task but search for and select Permission Sets, then click the Permission Set Label for your front-desk staff.

1. From Setup, search for and then select Profiles.

2. Click the Profile Name for your front-desk staff and then click Apex Class Access.

3. Click Edit and drag these classes to the Enabled Apex Classes list.

   • sfal.AppointmentSchedulerController

   • sfal.AppointmentSchedulerLookupResult

   • sfal.AppointmentSchedulerViewModel

   • sfal.FeatureGateController

4. Save your changes and repeat for the System Administrator profile.

Configure Sharing Settings for Front-Desk Appointment Scheduling

Verify your default organization-wide sharing settings for the objects used by front-desk appointment scheduling: Appointment, Appointment Attendee, Appointment Location, Availability, Availability Location, Availability Topic, Case, Support Pool, and Topic.

See Student Success Hub Sharing Settings.

Add the Appointment Scheduler Highlights Panel to Lightning Page Layouts

Front-desk staff access their New Appointment form from a custom Lightning component built just for them. Add the component to any Lightning page where it will be useful. For example, add it to a custom Student Success Hub Home page created especially for front-desk staff. Or, add it to the student Contact record detail page, to the Appointments tab on Student Record Case pages, or to all three locations—whatever makes sense for your institution.

1. In the Student Success Hub app, go to the page where you want to add the component. For example, click the app navigation menu and select Home to go to the Student Success Hub Home page.

2. From the page header, click the gear icon and select Edit Page.

3. In the Lightning App Builder, from the Components pane, drag the SSH Appointment Scheduler Highlights Panel to the page canvas.

4. Save your changes and exit Lightning App Builder.

Note Make sure to assign the page layout with the SSH Appointment Scheduler Highlights Panel to your front-desk staff profile so that front-desk staff can access it.

Understand How Front-Desk Appointment Scheduling Works

Front-desk staff creates appointments on the SSH Appointment Scheduler Highlights Panel to schedule appointments between a student and a support staff member, including members of a Support Pool. Although the form looks similar to the form that support staff use to schedule their own appointments, there are some differences.

• Front-desk staff can select individual staff members or Support Pools with predefined case teams as attendees. When scheduling for an individual staff member, they create appointments regardless of the staff member's case team role on the student's success team. Front-desk staff can schedule a student to meet with any staff member who has defined availability to meet about any Topic or Subtopic. This gives front-desk staff more flexibility, especially when they need to schedule urgent appointments for students.

• Front-desk staff can search for and select student attendees by any searchable Contact field, including Name, Phone, Email, and Student ID (if configured).

• After selecting attendees and a Topic and Subtopic, front-desk staff can choose from dates, times, and locations that the selected staff member or Support Pool members have defined in their Availability Settings. The Date and Time selectors show only staff members' recurring Scheduled availability. They don't show Walk-In or Group availability, and front-desk staff can't create walk-in or group appointments.

• Front-desk staff can't create one-off appointments of a custom length like support staff members can using the New Appointment form that opens from the Appointment Manager. However, the New Appointment form that front-desk staff use recognizes and respects custom appointment lengths that the support staff member has defined in their Availability Settings.

• There's no Appointment Subject field on the New Appointment form for front-desk staff, but there is an optional Description field.

• When scheduling for a Support Pool, the Available Times panel shows all members of the Pool with availability for the selected Topic and Subtopic. When multiple members have availability, they're sorted alphabetically by last name: Adam Aaronson is always at the top of the list and Zelda Ziegler is always at the bottom. Remind staff to scroll the list so they don't overload Adam's schedule just because he's at the top of the list.

• The form only shows availability for staff members who have migrated their Availability Settings to use location-based availability.

• The staff member and student who are invited to the appointment both receive email notifications, just like they do when support staff and students schedule appointments themselves. They can reschedule or cancel the appointment, and change its location, but they can't change the Topic or Subtopic on the agenda.