Manage Drop-In Appointments, the Check-In Kiosk, and the Waiting Room

There are two components to managing drop-in appointments in Handshake: Appointment Types and Appointment Blocks.

Appointment Types

Students will only be able to drop into appointments that have the Drop-In Enabled? option marked as "yes" on the Appointment Type.

When creating a new appointment type, or editing an existing one, check the box next to the Drop-In Enabled? This enables students who are checking into your career office to select that appointment type without having requested it ahead of time.

To learn more about Appointment Types and how to create and edit them, refer to School Settings: Appointment Types.

Appointment Blocks

Students will only be able to drop into appointments with career services users that have indicated they're available for drop-ins in their Appointment Block settings.

After the Appointment Types have been created, each career advisor will need to mark their availability by creating appointment blocks and checking the box next to the Drop-in? setting in the center of the page.

To learn more about Appointment Blocks, and setting them up, refer to Configure Your Personal Appointment Availability (Appointment Blocks & Types).

Note: If your career advisors want to be available for both drop-ins and scheduled appointments during the same block of availability, they'll need to create two separate appointment blocks.

If your school has a kiosk for students to check-in, they'll be prompted to enter their email address or username at the time of check-in. To learn more about launching a Kiosk, refer to Launch a Check-in Kiosk.

Once the student has entered their login information, they'll choose an Appointment Category from the list of available appointments. Once the category is selected, they'll choose a corresponding Appointment Type, and then check-in!

Note: for a category to be available for students, it must contain Appointment Types with Drop-In Enabled? checked/marked as yes. 

The waiting room is a way to keep track of the students that check in for drop-ins and scheduled appointments. When a student checks in for an appointment, they'll be added to the waiting room in the order that they check in, separated by scheduled, and drop-in appointments. 

Handshake recommends that you keep the waiting room open in a separate tab when you are taking drop-in appointments. If you have a place to have the waiting room visible in the lobby of the career center, it's a great way to let students know where they are in line for appointments.

To access the waiting room, click Appointment on the left navigation bar, then click ... and select Launch waiting room from the menu located in the upper-right corner of the page. 

The default filters for the waiting room are set to show Pending and In Progress appointments. Note that the status filter will only display drop-in appointments that meet the filter criteria, this is not a list of all appointments in Handshake.

You can disable the chime sound for check-ins by selecting the checkbox at the upper-center of the page next to Enable chime for new check-ins. Otherwise, chimes will sound off whenever a student checks-in.

Select Cancel past drop-ins to remove all check-ins that took place prior to today's date. You will not be asked to confirm cancellation of all the past drop-in appointments, they will automatically be canceled. 

The list of appointments includes the Student names, Check-in time, Office, Appointment Type, and actions to Start or Cancel the appointment.

If you select Start, you will be directed to the Appointment Request Details page to confirm creation of the appointment. Make any adjustments you'd like and select Create to finalize creation of this appointment.

If you didn't finalize creating the appointment, the waiting room will have a new option to Finish setup. This will again take you to the Appointment Request Details page.

If you select Cancel, you'll be asked to confirm cancelation before proceeding

The waiting room will refresh every 10 seconds to help make sure that you know when your next appointment has arrived!