Why can't a slot be booked for a Guardian Consultation?

To allow guardians to book a slot through the Parent Portal or Parent App, you will need to set a self-scheduling period for guardian consultation. Your self-scheduling period is the dates and times between which you allow parents and guardians to sign up for a meeting via the Parent Portal or App Guardians will not be able to book a slot until the self-scheduling period is open.

Outside of the self-scheduling period, school admins will still be able to book and amend meetings via Students > Parents & Guardians > Guardian Consultations > All Guardian Consultations.

To edit or add a self-scheduling period, click into the guardian consultation and click the Self-scheduling period field.

Check if a meeting has been scheduled

To allow parents to book meetings, a meeting with them needs to be planned first.

If a parent or guardian does not see a meeting on the Portal or App, please check if a meeting has been scheduled with the parent set as an attendee by going to your consultation on the Students > Parents & Guardians > Guardian Consultations > All Guardian Consultations page and clicking All Meetings on the left-hand side. In the Guardians Attending column of the Meetings with Staff Members table, you can check if a parent has been planned to attend a meeting.

If a parent has not been planned to attend a meeting, you can either add them to an existing meeting by changing the guardian attendees or you can book an additional meeting.

Parents and Admins can't select a timeslot for a meeting

For meetings to be bookable, all staff members attending must be available; otherwise, any dropdowns you see when booking timeslots will be empty. 

This means that if you have multiple staff members set as attendees, all of those staff members must be available at the same time.

This is because Arbor expects every staff member assigned to a meeting to be present during the meeting, and if they are not, the meeting cannot be booked.

A staff member is available if their availability has been set in the Staff Availability section and if they have no other events in their calendar (such as meetings, absences, lessons, or placeholder events) that block out the consultation periods set in the Staff Availability section.

You'll need to add the availability of staff to attend guardian consultation meetings, enabling parents to book a slot through the Parent Portal or Parent App. Add this from the Staff Availability section.

Note: Arbor expects all staff assigned to a meeting to attend and be available. If you have meetings with multiple staff assigned, ensure they are all available at the same time to change the staff attending. For more details on this, check out ur dedicated guide: Best practices and troubleshooting for job share consultation meetings or meetings with multiple staff

Check that the right staff members are assigned to the right meetings

If meetings are linked to two or more staff members (for example, if teachers have a job share or a Teaching Assistant is also assigned as an academic lead), Arbor expects all of them to be available and present for timeslots to be booked. 

To double-check that the right staff are assigned to meetings: 

• Head to your consultation's overview (Students > Parents & Guardians > Guardian Consultations > All Guardian Consultations > [click on your parent's evening])
• Click on All Meetings on the left-hand side 
• Check the Staff column 

If you want all staff assigned to the meeting to attend, please ensure that none of them have another event in their calendar, such as an absence, event, or lesson (more on this in the 'Check the staff member's profile' section above). And ensure they are all available for the meetings in the Availability Section of your consultation setup, and that their availability overlaps.

With multiple staff assigned to a meeting, all staff need to be available at the same time. If they are not all available at the same time, Arbor won't allow you to book a slot because not all attendees will be able to attend, and only meetings where all attendees can be present are bookable.

If you do not need or want all staff assigned to a meeting to attend, please refer to this guidance to help you decide on how to manage this: Best practices and troubleshooting for job share consultation meetings or meetings with multiple staff 

Check if the staff member has an absence or an event scheduled at the same time as their parents' evening meeting times.

To check for events, navigate to the staff member's profile page and click on Calendar on the left side. Select Day view on the top right to be able to see all events or lessons that have been set for the exact same times.

Please note that if the event is a trip, you won't be able to remove staff participation in the trip. To remove staff from the trip, please contact the Arbor Support Team and provide code 1015 if supported by Arbor, or your Support Partner if not supported by Arbor.

Events are shown in orange. If the staff member has an event scheduled, then this would need to be deleted to restore available bookable slots. For more guidance on events, please check out our guide on Creating and Managing Events.

If a placeholder event has been added to block out the parents' evening on a staff calendar, so staff have an idea of when they are expected to attend a consultation before you start setting it up, ensure you remove the event to make the staff member available to be booked.

Placeholder events might have been given the same name as your guardian consultation, so if you are not sure if an event is a meeting scheduled via a guardian consultation or a placeholder for that consultation, click on the event and check if this takes you through to a separate event page with the words School Event in the top left corner.

If this takes you to a new page and does not open a slide over with details of a guardian consultation, this is a placeholder and not the consultation itself.

To check for absences, navigate to the staff member's profile page and click on Absences on the left side. Click into the absence to amend the date range so it doesn't overlap with your Guardian Consultation.

For staff members who have an absence that spans the entire availability period set for them in the Staff Availability section of your consultation, you will need to split their absence into parts so that the absence ends when their consultation availability starts, and a new absence starts when their availability ends, to allow them to be bookable. You can read more about adding and editing staff absence here.

Check you have enough availability for the number of meetings

The available timeslots depend on staff availability and the duration of meetings. To determine if your consultation and staff availability allow for enough slots, divide the total time a staff member is available by the duration of your meetings. If this number matches the number of meetings already booked, you will need to either extend your consultation or add additional staff availability.