The response to Custom Automation for creating appointments has been excellent.  We knew schools would appreciate the value of this feature, but we had no idea just how creative they would be in applying it!

To help you get your mind around what's possible, we are going to create a series of articles based on questions and requests we receive.  So if you share a question, it could end up in this series of articles!  (Of course, we will respect anonymity.)

With that in mind, please start a conversation with us; others are sure to benefit from your ideas.

It's A Journey

We recently received this question:

Can we start with a single graduation year and build upon that later?

Quick answer: yes!

This is a great question as it acknowledges that implementing Custom Automation for your school can be a journey.  You may start off with an idea that works for a while and then your needs will change.  Or you'll see an opportunity to expand your approach into other areas.  The point is, we know this may not be a "one and done" process.  We're looking to partner with you and create solutions as your needs change.

Of course, while we remain responsive to requests, we also promote reasonable expectations.  In most instances, if you come to us on Monday at 9 and ask for a new approach, it's unlikely to be ready by 10! However, we are confident that we can meet your school's automation needs in a timely manner.

Custom for Your School

Here's a question related to a district using Enriching Students:

We have multiple schools in our district using Enriching Students.  Can each school have their own Custom Automation?

Quick answer: yes!

A simple question, but it gets to the real value of the automation in Enriching Students - full customization.

It could be that all the schools in your district want the same automation, but, they don't have to!

It could be that the middle schools using Enriching Students have wildly different needs than the high schools, in fact, needs may differ from high school to high school.

That's ok!  It's why we created the custom approach to begin with; you tell us what your school needs and we'll make it happen.

Complexity

This question highlights just how finely tuned automation can be:

Just how complicated can we get?  If a student is not passing multiple courses (Math, Science, and English), can the process try to create an appointment for Math first; and if that's full, try Science and if that's full try English?  And if none of those worked, can the student be assigned to their advisory?

*Quick answer: yes (& wow!!) (Hopefully, you're starting to see a pattern with these quick answers!)

All kidding aside, when we committed to this process, we recognized that some solutions would be more complex than others.  For some schools, it's as simple as placing a student into their first period course if they're unscheduled.  For others, the requirements are much more sophisticated. 

What it comes down to is this: If you can describe the process and it's driven by data we have in our system, you can assume that the automation is possible.

Honor Some Existing Appointments

This question deals with students that have existing appointments:

If a teacher has already scheduled a student, can we prevent the automation from modifying that appointment?

On the other hand, if a student has created an appointment, can the process be set up to overwrite that appointment?

Quick answer: yes!

We appreciate this question, because it harkens back to something that was mentioned in our introduction to Custom Automation: "automation requires standardization".  Which simply means, we need a consistent set of rules to work with in order to create automation.

What's described above is consistent; existing appointments created by staff cannot be modified, appointments created by students can be modified.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this article is getting your creative juices flowing when it comes to creating appointments with Custom Automation.  We are excited about the feature, and it's great to see the excitement it has already generated within schools.  Please feel free to share your questions and requests and who knows, they might end up in an article just like this!