Creating custom or longer time slots for Guardian Consultation meetings

This article provides instructions for booking custom time slots for guardian consultations, for example, when the standard 10-minute slots are insufficient. It outlines the necessary permissions and steps to schedule a meeting with a duration that is either longer or shorter than usual.

If guardian consultation meetings have been scheduled for 10 minutes each, but some parents require longer slots, follow the instructions below.

Permissions

You'll need the Guardian Consultations: Administer permission to perform the steps below - if you don't have this permission, you can ask your team to assign it to you using these instructions.

If a Guardian needs a longer or shorter time slot than the time period chosen, you will need to book a custom time slot. It is not possible for guardians to do this. 

1. Go to Students > Parents & Guardians > Guardian Consultations and select the consultation.
2. Click on the staff member the meeting will be with under Meetings.
3. Find the Student and click their name.
4. This will bring up the Schedule meeting slide-over; click to Book a Custom Time Slot.

Fill in the details for the meeting, including the start date/time and end date/time, then click 'Book Meeting'.

Once the custom meeting has been created, it will appear in the Parent Portal or Parent App identically to any other scheduled meeting.

What is the difference between a custom time slot and a custom meeting?

Although often used interchangeably, "Custom Time Slot" and "Custom Meeting" refer to the action and the outcome when staff schedule an appointment with a non-standard duration. The main functional difference is:

A Custom Time Slot refers to the specific administrative action taken by a staff member to override the default length of an appointment manually. 

This is necessary when a guardian requires a consultation that is longer or shorter than the standard time set up for the Guardian Consultation. When you are on the scheduling slide-over, this action is clicking 'Book Custom Time Slot'. Please note that guardians cannot book a Custom Time Slot independently.

A Custom Meeting refers to the appointment record that is created in Arbor as a result of a custom time slot being assigned. This is a meeting type with a non-standard duration or other custom features. 

It appears to both the staff member and the guardian just like any other scheduled meeting in the Parent Portal or Parent App. New custom meetings can also be created by using the +Add button in the Meetings section of your consultation's overview page. These are particularly useful when adding an additional meeting for families with split parents, for example.