[Scheduler] - Edit Appointments / Sign ups

[gladysie]

Our instructors would like to be able to edit appointments in the scheduler instead of having to delete and recreate them.  If a student has already signed up for an appointment and it has been modified, it should notify the student and request an approval for the new time.

Instructors would also like to edit the sign up list.  They want to be able to add or remove course participants from the appointment.

There are a number of situations in which this capability would be useful.

- An instructor that has accidentally created a number of appointments and needs to change them.

- A group reschedules with the instructor, it would be easier to just modify the appointment than create a new one and have them sign up again.

- A student cancels an appointment but doesn't remove themselves from the calendar.

- The instructor needs to assign students to an appointment block. (Maybe they didn't sign up yet, but the instructor wants to lock them in)

[asiard]

This term I have tried to work with the calendar and scheduler feature in Canvas to as part of a retention program I was doing with students. It worked great (I had over 20 students to meet with each week) in that students could independently set an appointment time that worked for them and even cancel that appointment independently when something came up for them. However, not all of my students have access to a computer or to WiFi when they are off campus. Many of them had busy schedules and were only on campus a few days a week and worked the other days. I had students who called, emailed or messaged me trying to set up an appointment time (many were able to messages me using the mobile Canvas app. but were not able to utilize that feature on their phones.) It was frustrating that I could not make or change an appointment for them. 

[strusse]

I need to be able to schedule students for office hour visits in class.  As the scheduler does not work on the mobile app, and as I cannot sign students up for slots, what is currently happening is, I have to sign out of Canvas.  A student who needs a slot, signs in on my computer and then gets a slot.  I have to repeat this for 3 or 4 students per class.  This is not a time efficient process.  It is especially tricky because the students who need the most help in office hours are the low performers.  When I ask these students to sign up they say they'll do it later and never do.  I need to be able to sign them up for slots right there in class in my account.  I totally concur with what Ryan has proposed.  I came on this forum to propose a similar idea myself.  Like Asia, I have students emailing me to ask for an open appointment, and I have to ask them to then get into Canvas and sign up; they get frustrated and give up.

[strusse]

What about now?  A year has gone by.  Could you all prioritize this now?

[arvalent]

Can I add to this: I would like the ability in the app to see who is signed up for which appointments. Also, I would like the ability to print out a paper list of who is signed up so I can post it on the door, or use it to refer to as students role through. I had a student who's computer would not let him sign up for a spot, and since I could not sign him up for the spot either, my only recourse was to DELETE the appointment slot before another student snagged it and just tell him that he had that spot. Terribly frustrating and inconvenient for all parties involved. 

[RobDitto]

 @arvalent , I appreciate your sharing this story. There was a great discussion of needs related to mobile appointment scheduling here:

• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/2155 

Since our business school uses Scheduler heavily, I plan to work with the Canvas Mobile Users‌ group to establish new feature ideas for voting related to Priority: Canvas Teacher App‌ and the eventual redesign of the Canvas app for students.

If your institution can enable the new Scheduler Workflow, that will give you a summary of appointments either on your Agenda, or on appointment Group Details, which prints satisfactorily. I will be talking about my university's experience with new Scheduler Workflow on CanvasLIVE soon:

• Appointment Signups with New Scheduler Workflow 

[njp]

I agree. It is very common to have to adjust the time frames and very frustrating to be reduced to workarounds of additional messages. At least make it possible for the scheduling instructor to indicate something is filled. We should have such override authority.

[jherring]

I had to create a Scheduler event with 132 appointment slots and found out that I had 45 of them wrong. I wasn't able to change them or get the fixes to show up in Scheduler. I wound up having to delete the whole thing and lost half a day's worth of work. 

[canvas13]

Reflected from our institute users, it will be great if adding the option for setting a available time range to do the sign-up will be very useful in the Scheduler too.  That is to set a time range to limit students for doing the sign-up process.

Actually this is also very useful to be applied to the Groups sign-up in People too.

As if there is no deadline set, students can keep on switching appointment groups and same applied to the Groups sign-up in People which may create chaos in big classes.

[voravit]

I also think that it is important to be able to edit the schedule.

Currently, I cannot modify the date&time, calendar, nor the group/individual fields of the schedule I created (the fields grayed out) despite the fact that it has never been published neither has anyone signed up. So, the only option I have is to delete the schedule and create a new one, which is, in my opinion, not user-friendly.

[RobDitto]

 @thompsli ‌ just shared a terrific workaround which works with both Scheduler and New Scheduler Workflow‌ (How do I add a Scheduler appointment group in a course calendar?‌):

• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1224-scheduler-recurring-events#comment-101279 

Use the Test Student to reserve an appointment arbitrarily. You can use the Comments block to leave a note about the purpose of the reservation (e.g., holding the reservation for another student who can't/won't be signing up on their own).