Setting Availability as an Advisor: Tips & Tricks

Managing your availability on Upswing is essential for providing flexible and efficient advising appointments. However, due to the way that setting availability currently works in the Upswing platform, there are some occasional issues you might encounter as an advisor on Upswing. This guide outlines strategies for setting up your availability to allow for a more dynamic weekly schedule.

Background Information about Availability Setting

Before diving in, ensure you're familiar with the following availability features:

• Setting Availability as an Advisor on Upswing: A Quick Guide
• Advisors: How to Set Weekly Recurring Availability
• Advisors: How to Add an Availability Exception

This article will cover two common scenarios advisors may encounter and how they can build their availability in Upswing to support those scenarios:

• How to add your availability in Upswing to avoid back-to-back appointments
• How to add your availability to support drop-in advising appointments

How to Add Your Availability to Avoid Back-to-Back Appointments

Upswing's availability settings allow for advisors to easily schedule large blocks of time they're available. However, this doesn't allow for scheduled breaks. To give yourself breaks between appointments, you'll want to follow the steps below:

Example Scenario:

An advisor would like to be available for appointments Monday - Friday from 12:30 PM - 4:00 PM with 15-minute breaks every 45 minutes.

1. Add a recurring availability time-block from 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM.
   
   
   
2. Add another recurring availability 15 minutes after the last time-block ends.
   
   
   
3. Continue this pattern, adding time blocks of availability 15 minutes after the previous block ends. The advisor's scheduled availability would be the time-blocks listed below:
   • 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
   • 1:45 PM - 2:45 PM
   • 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
     
     

This schedule set-up will allow you to prevent back-to-back appointments during the time you are available, while still maintaining a predictable schedule.

How to Add Your Availability to Support Drop-In Advising Appointments

If you are an advisor who frequently meets with students for drop-in advising, you can add your availability in Upswing to prevent students from requesting an appointment while you're currently meeting with a student for drop-in advising. The approach is similar to the steps above, with a few differences, explained below.

Example Scenario:

An advisor would like to be available Monday - Friday from 8:00 AM - 11:00 AM. They often meet with students on campus for 30-minute drop-in advising appointments. The advisor wants to build their availability to allow them to block their schedule when a student comes in for drop-in advising so other students don't request an appointment at that time. The advisor also wants to be able to add that appointment to Upswing as a past session after the session is finished.

Part 1: Adding Your Availability

1. Add a 30-minute recurring availability time-block from 8:00 AM - 8:30 AM.
   
   
   
2. Add another 30-minute recurring availability time-block after the last one ends.
   
   
   
3. Continue adding 30-minute time-blocks until you reach the end of your availability.
   
   
   

Part 2: Adding a One-Time Availability Exception and Scheduling a Past Session for Drop-In Tutoring

One-Time Availability Exceptions allow advisors to make an adjustment to their recurring availability to prevent students from being able to schedule appointments during a specified time-period. To learn more about One-Time Availability Exceptions, please read this article: Advisors: How to Add an Availability Exception

Something tricky about availability exceptions is that there isn't a way to add an availability exception for a fraction of a time-block of recurring availability. Because of this, advisors will want to build their recurring availability using short blocks of time, as done in part 1 above. 

Continuing with the example scenario, a student arrives to the office for drop-in advising at 9:55 AM and would like to meet with their advisor for a 30-minute session from 10:00 AM - 10:30 AM. The advisor is available during that time, but wants to make sure other students aren't able to request to schedule appointments during that time. To prevent this, the advisor will add an availability exception.

1. Add an availability exception by selecting the 30-minute block of time when the drop-in tutoring session would take place.
   
   
   
2. Once the drop-in session is finished, schedule a past session with the student during that block of time. For step-by-step instructions on how to schedule a past-session with a student, read this article: Advisors: How do I schedule a past advising session on Upswing?
   
   

One-Time Availability Exceptions allow for advisors to easily block off small chunks of time from their recurring availability in Upswing in the event of drop-in advising sessions. Please note: Adding a vacation time does not function the same way. If you add a vacation for this period of time instead of a one-time availability exception, you will not be able to schedule a past session during that time.

Related to

• Information for Campus Advisors