Adding Meetings - Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations)

This article is the third in our series on Setting up Guardian Consultations (Parents' Evenings). This guide covers adding meetings to your consultation so that the right parents can be booked in with the right teachers.

The guides in this series are:

1. Introduction - Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations)
2. Creating a Consultation - Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations)
3. Adding Meetings - Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations)
4. Availability and Breaks - Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations)
5. Meeting Management - Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations)
6. Specific Setups and FAQs - Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations)

The second section of the consultation overview page shows you a Scheduling Status overview.

This section outlines:

• The number of meetings that have been planned
• If all time slots have been set up and linked to relevant Staff members
• How many guardian meetings have been booked

The section just below that is the Meetings section. Before you plan meetings, this section will be empty.

Planning a meeting does not assign a time to the meeting, but rather it's a way of indicating that you would like a meeting between parent A and teacher B to be bookable and to specify details such as the meeting location and duration.

All staff assigned to a meeting need to be available at the time of the meeting for the meeting to be bookable later on, so you might find you need to manually make adjustments to your meetings and participants after you have added them during this stage (see Meeting Management - Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations)).

Planning Meetings

Meeting types

To start planning new meetings:

• Click +Add in the Meetings section

• Click on the meeting type you want to add

• Complete meeting details on the pop-up

• Click the green Setup button to create the meetings

You are provided the following type options:

• Plan meetings with registration form tutors: This type allows you to create meetings between parents and their child's Registration Form Tutor. You plan these meetings for an entire form at once, and the Form Tutor is automatically added to the meeting.
• Plan meetings with non-registration form tutors: This type allows you to schedule meetings between parents and any staff member. You plan these meetings for the entire form at once, but you get to choose which staff member(s) the whole form is expected to meet with.
• Plan meetings with course leads: This type allows you to create meetings between parents and the teachers of a course/class. You plan these meetings for a whole course at once, and the course's academic lead is added automatically.
• Plan custom meetings: This type allows you to plan bespoke meetings between any student's parents and staff members. You plan these meetings on a per-student basis (though you can select multiple students at once), and you specify the attending staff members.

Choosing your settings

After selecting your meeting type, you can edit the following options (depending on the meeting type, this may vary slightly):

• The student group (Registration Forms/Course/Students): Use this dropdown to select the students with whom you want to plan meetings. Add and remove options using the dropdown as needed. All students within a group will be included in your planning; however, meetings can be removed and attendees changed later if required.

  Note: When using the Plan meetings with registration form tutors meeting type, if you have already planned meetings with the Form tutor(s) of a student using this type, planning another set of meetings or the student's Form will not cause duplication; Arbor will, however, add any missing meetings for students within the same form.

• Staff - You only see this option for the non-registration form tutor and custom meeting types. This allows you to specify which staff member(s) will be present at the meeting.
• Suggested Duration - This indicates the recommended length of time for each meeting. By clicking the clock icon, you can select the length of each meeting. Duration is set in the format HH:MM.
• The location can be selected from the drop-down box. You can only choose one room here. The rooms you can select depend on the ones set up under your Sites and Rooms.

• Allow separate meetings - This setting allows you to control whether each guardian assigned to a student can schedule their own meeting. Allow separate meetings is automatically selected, but can be deselected. 

  When this is ticked, it means that one guardian can book a separate meeting when another guardian has already booked their own, due to time discrepancies, family issues, court orders, etc. You might use this setting to manage meetings and bookings for separated parents or split families.

  • This setting is not editable once the guardian consultation has been set up. You won't be able to see which option was chosen (but you can check this from a student's profile).
  • This field is called 'Independent bookings' when selecting the 'Plan custom meetings' option, and 'Allow duplicate scheduling' when viewing Guardian Consultations on the student's profile.
    
     

  
   

• For the Custom Meeting type, you see an additional setting for Separate student meetings. If you untick this, all students will be added to a single meeting.

Once you have added your meetings after selecting your settings and clicking the green 'Setup Meetings' button, you will see that the 'Meetings Planned' section is now marked with a green tick.

The Meetings section below will now display a list of staff or forms, along with the number of meetings booked for each.

FAQs

Can I set up meetings with external speakers, counsellors, tutors or staff who do not have profiles on Arbor?

No, it is not possible to set up meetings between guardians and people who do not have a staff profile. To plan a guardian consultation meeting, at least one staff member needs to be designated to attend. To work around this requirement, you can:

• (Recommended) Assign a staff member who does have a profile to the meeting instead, and clearly communicate to parents and guardians that this staff member is a placeholder. To help communicate this, you can:
   
  • Include this in the consultation's title (more consultation titles here)
  • Add a shared note to the consultation meetings 
  • Send parents a message via the consultation (see Sending communications and reminders about guardian consultations)
• (Not recommended) Use a temporary profile (one that you delete once you no longer need it) or a dummy profile (a placeholder staff profile that is not actually associated with a person) to create the meetings, so that parents do not think the meeting is with a different staff member. 
   

Can I arrange meetings where parents can choose the staff member who attends?

No, this is not possible. Parents do not have the option to select a specific staff member to meet with, even if multiple staff members are set to attend the meeting. Furthermore, if you have numerous staff assigned, they all need to be available at the same time for the meeting to be bookable, as Arbor expects them all to attend.

If you have multiple meetings set up, each with a different staff member, the parent can choose which of those meetings to book (and thus the teacher). However, there is nothing stopping them from booking duplicate meetings if they do this (one for each staff member).

Best practices for managing meetings for classes with shared teaching or multiple teachers can be found here: Remove multiple teachers or staff from Guardian Consultations meetings and troubleshooting shared teaching meetings.
 

Can I use custom groups to plan meetings?

It's not possible to add consultation meetings based on custom groups, no. You can plan meetings with a whole form, course or select individual students when adding meetings, though.

We have a class with two teachers. If I make them both available for my parents' evening, will my parents be able to book two meetings?

If the teachers are both assigned to the same meeting, parents will not be able to book two meetings or select which staff member they want to meet with. Arbor expects both teachers to attend in this situation.

This also means that both teachers need to be available for the meeting to be bookable. If you have two teachers assigned to a single meeting and only one teacher has availability set, the meeting cannot be booked. To help you choose the most appropriate setup for this scenario, please refer to our guidance on classes with multiple teachers or tutors: Best practices and troubleshooting for job share consultation meetings or meetings with multiple staff
 

This concludes the third guide in our Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations) series. The next guide in our series is Availability and Breaks - Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations).