Calendar Appointments

[hupp_34]

I'm considering making several 15-minute calendar appointments in Canvas for my students (to sign up for Office Hours).  So, I have 3 questions. 

1) I signed up for immediate notification when someone signs up, but on a trial run with a colleague, I have not yet received a notification.  I'm worried that I won't be notified if someone signs up and wants an appointment immediately.  So, any idea of how long "immediate" notifications actually take?

2) I would like to have the appointments the same from week to week.  Is there any way to make recurring appointments or somehow duplicate them easily?  I could find how to make other types of events recurring, but it didn't seem to work for appointments.

3) I would like to have my scheduled appointments show up on the side bar of my dashboard (where it shows my upcoming events).  Is this possible?

Thanks!

Julie

[paula_setserkis]

Julie, did you ever find anything out about this? I'd like to know as well.

[RobDitto · Accepted solution]

@hupp_34 and @paula_setserkis, I'll try answering these:

1. Appointment-related notification categories are separate for teachers and students, and the name of the one for teachers implies the opposite - a longstanding pain point. As a teacher, try choosing ASAP for the Student Appointment Signups category.  *If you had that category previously set to weekly, the ASAP will activate the next week, usually by Monday.)

2. There's no recurring event capability for appointment groups currently, although it doesn't take long to schedule a series of events in a new appointment group (or to add more to an existing appointment group, accessed by Group Details on any previously created appointment.)  Consider voting or commenting on this idea conversation:
Scheduler recurring events 

3. At this time reserved appointments don't appear in a teacher's To Do list. I don't think there's a idea conversation for this currently. Message or @ me if you'd like to collaborate on a conversation!  

[susanrebecca]

Would Canvas please invent a convenient Office Hours section of Canvas, so that we can have students schedule themselves within a given time period?  The section ought to be open to all students within our institution (not just course members), allow the faculty member to set the intervals - every 15, 20 minutes - or whatever - and be able to access a list of reserved appointments at any time.  Doesn't seem that tough.  Why doesn't Canvas have this?  I like using Canvas for my classes and would be happy to see this feature added. Thanks!

[Chris_Hofer]

@susanrebecca ...

If you would like to see an "office hours" feature in Canvas, I would encourage you to participate in the linked Feature Idea that @RobDitto has provided above.  This way, you can provide your own feedback as to why this kind of feature would be important to you in Canvas.  And, you can give that Feature Idea a star rating.  More info about that here:

How do idea conversations work in the Instructure Community?

Hope this will help a bit!

[paula_setserkis]

Thank you!

[bb_]

At the university helpdesk where I work, some instructors had this same question.  I gave yours a kudos, so maybe the Canvas gods will see it, lol.  Good luck this fall, everyone 🙂