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Best Practices: Managing Virtual Drop-In Appointments

Tawnya
  • Updated

We have a couple different workflows to help you manage drop-in appointments remotely via Handshake, as well as tips for using a waiting room and processing check-ins. 

Possible workflows include: using the standard appointments flow with integrated video on Handshake,  external virtual links, and setting up an appointment as an event. 

This article provides details on each to help you choose the best option for your institution and students! 

 

Using appointments for drop-ins

Begin by ensuring that staff have set up drop-in appointment blocks in their user settings.

If you plan to use integrated video on Handshake, add the "Virtual on Handshake" Appointment Medium to your block. Check out Virtual Appointments on Handshake for more information. 

If you plan to use an external video link, you will need to create or update the office locations of each staff member hosting appointments with a video meeting link. The links are clickable in the appointment. You will also need to create or update the Appointment Mediums to add a video or phone call and update appointment blocks to only support virtual options.

Note: if you update the office location and medium, you should not need to update any of your appointment types. 

 

Setting up an event for drop-ins

When managing virtual drop-in appointments via Handshake, we recommend creating an event. The event could be titled something like "Office Hours", and you can include in the event description that you'll be hosting drop-ins during this time. Students can register for the event and show up on a first come, first serve basis. You can market this to students via Emails in Handshake, or pin the event for students as well. 
For more information, refer to Creating an Event, Creating and Sending Targeted Emails or School Settings: Pin an Item.

Using a waiting room 

One thing we've seen other schools have success with is utilizing the waiting room feature of your video meeting platform. For example, here at Handshake we use Zoom's waiting room. For more information, check out Zoom's article: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115000332726-Waiting-Room.
WebEx may also have a similar feature as this. 
This allows you to create a meeting and send the link to students, who can then join the meeting anytime and will be placed into the waiting room. Once it's time for the session to start, you can pull students out of the waiting room one at a time into a meeting. 

Processing check-ins

If you'd like to check students into the drop-in appointment event, you could have another tab/window open with a check-in kiosk launched (with "keep me logged in" enabled). When you pull students from the waiting room, ask the students for their emails, then input their email into the check-in kiosk. This would also let you record the appointment like you would normally do in person, and complete it later.
This will then place the student in the waiting room where you can then assign who is taking the drop-in appointment.
Note: this is the only way to mark a student as checked in to an appointment if you are not using integrated video on Handshake. 
For more information on engaging with students remotely, check out Maximizing Digital Engagement via Handshake!

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