You can allow students to schedule appointments with you online through Starfish by setting up your appointment preferences and office hours. Follow these steps only if you wish to enable this feature.
1. Set up your Appointment Preferences
Through Appointment Preferences, you can specify the default location and duration of your available appointment times. In addition, you can set a scheduling deadline and grant access to others to manage your calendar.
- Open the Starfish menu by clicking on the three lines in the top left corner of the page.
- Click on your name to expand the menu.
- Click on Appointment Preferences.
- Select your Minimum Appointment length.
- Select your Scheduling deadline, if applicable (i.e., appointments must be made by 5 p.m. the day before).
- Establish My Locations so students know where they can meet with you. You can add Zoom/Teams link here as well as your office number. You will be able to choose your location when you set up your hours.
- Designate Calendar Managers, if desired. Calendar managers will be able to see and edit your office hours and appointments.
- Click the Submit button to save your changes.
2. Set up your Office Hours block
The first time you log in, Starfish will provide a ‘wizard’ to walk you through setting up your office hours, which enables students to schedule time with you online and will send you both a reminder message the day of the appointment. If you do not wish to complete the wizard, uncheck the box labeled “Show me this Office Hours Setup Page again next time I login if I don’t have any Office Hours” and click the Close button. You can set up your office hours without the wizard at any time.
- From the Appointments page, click on the Office Hours button.
- Give your block a title such as ‘Office Hours’ and indicate on which day(s) of the week this block occurs. Note that you can set up multiple blocks with different names and settings, if desired.
- Specify the start and end time for each appointment block.
- Set the location. Locations set up through Appointment Preferences will show automatically.
- Select your Office hours Type. If you are using a kiosk, use ‘Scheduled and Walk-ins.’
- Specify the minimum and maximum appointment length.
- Enter any special instructions. You can also specify a Start/End Date which allows you to set a date for your block to end. Use this feature if your schedule will change after a certain date.
- Click the Submit button.
To edit/cancel a series of office hours, click on the Agenda view of your calendar. Hover over the clock icon to edit the frequency, time of day, locations, office hour types, minimum and maximum duration of appointments, appointment types, instructions, or start/end date of the series.
To edit/cancel individual occurrences, click on the Day view of your calendar. Hover over the clock icon to display a pop up card from which you can take additional actions.
Important Note: Once an office hour block is saved, you will not be able to edit weekdays on which it occurs or type of frequency (e.g. weekly).
Starfish Video: Setting up Office Hours
Starfish Video: Email Notification for Appointments & Tracking