Faculty Office Hours

Faculty are now able to add course-specific office hours (in addition to more general advising times) to Navigate to show students their drop-in or scheduled appointment availability for office hours. Adding course-specific office hours to Navigate gives students one central place they can go to see office hours for multiple different faculty. These office hours can be added by faculty or by certain administrative/dean’s office staff members.

Adding Office Hours

After logging into Navigate, follow these instructions to add office hours to your Availability. All faculty/staff should automatically have the ability to add Availability.

In order to add office hours on behalf of a faculty/staff member, search for that faculty/staff member within Navigate, visit their profile, and follow the instructions below.


  1. If your default home screen is Professor Home, click this heading to switch to Staff Home

  2. From your Staff Home screen, select the My Availability tab

  3. Underneath Available Times, select the Actions menu and click Add time.

  4. Select the day or days of the week for this block of office hours, then the start and end time

  • Days: Select the days you will be available.

  • Times: Set the times you you will be available. If you set your end time to 5pm, students will not be able to schedule 30 minute appointments after 4:30pm.

  • Note: These days and times must be empty or Free on your Google Calendar if you are using calendar sync; otherwise, the times will appear as Busy and students will be unable to schedule.

  1. Select your duration – generally the current term.

  • How long is this availability active? Set how long this Availability will work. This can be bound to an academic term, a range of dates, or set to be available permanently (a simple option for individuals who may be available to meet with students 12 months/year).

  1. By adding time to your Personal Availability Link, Navigate will generate a unique link to your availability, similar to how applications like YouCanBookMe function, that will allow students to click directly into your availability. If you do not use a Personal Availability Link, students will still be able to locate your availability through the student scheduler.

  • Add to your personal availability link? The Personal Availability Link (PAL) is a unique URL that brings students to your specific scheduling options quickly. Only leave this box unchecked if you do not want students who click that link to see this option when using the student scheduler.

TIP: Add your PAL to your email signature, to your profile on the Bradley University website, and/or to your syllabus to make finding your Availability quick and easy for students!

  1. Indicate whether you are allowing appointments to be scheduled in this time or if it’s open to drop-in visits (or both)

  • Enabling Appointments means students will see this Availability in the Student Scheduler.

  • Enabling Drop-ins means students will see this time as available for drop-ins, but individual appointments are not able to be scheduled (Note: if you select both Appointments and Drop-ins, students will see the time as available for drop-ins, but they will also be able to schedule individual appointments during that same time).

  • Enabling Campaigns means this time will be available for anyone you invite to schedule with you through Appointment Campaigns

  1. Under Meeting Type, the format for your availability – in person, virtual, or by telephone

  2. Under Care Unit, select Faculty Office Hours

  3. Under Location, select your department

  4. Under Services, select Faculty Office Hours

  5. Enter your courses in the Courses field. Courses are formatted in Navigate with a dash between the course prefix and the course number. If spaces exist in the prefix, use an underscore in Navigate (e.g., PSY-101, I_S-100)

  6. URL / Phone Number: If you are adding Virtual or Telephone Availability, you should add your meeting link (see resources for Google Meet and Zoom) or phone number to this field. This will automatically be sent to students in the confirmation and reminder emails they receive if appointment scheduling is enabled; otherwise, it will display with your drop-in availability in Navigate

  7. Special Instructions for Student: Add any additional info, including how/where to check-in upon arrival, expectations for the meeting, items students should bring/prepare, etc. This will automatically be sent to students in the confirmation and reminder emails they receive (see examples below)

  8. Max Number of Students per Appointment: Use this option to enable group appointments during office hours. If you exclusively provide individual appointments, leave this number at "1." If you only have drop-in availability, this number does not matter

  9. Click Save


Keep In Mind: Availability

When adding and using Availability, there are several things everyone should keep in mind:

  1. Availability can overlap. You can add multiple different blocks of availability that occur at the same time, making yourself available to different students, for different reasons, or over different formats at the same time. Availability will always look at other appointments scheduled in Navigate before allowing another to be scheduled. Only Special Instructions for Students and URL / Phone Number associated with the specific availability used to schedule an appointment will be sent to the student upon booking.

  2. If you are creating an Appointment Campaign, you will be given the option to pull your Appointment availability into the campaign instead of having to create separate Campaign availability. See What type of availability is this? in STEP TWO above for more information.


SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS EXAMPLES


IN-PERSON AVAILABILITY INSTRUCTIONS


You have selected to meet in-person.


Office Location: YOUR OFFICE LOCATION

You should arrive a few minutes early for your appointment.

Please check-in at OFFICE LOCATION upon arrival.

You are expected to follow university guidelines and expectations when visiting our office. Those who are not in compliance will not be permitted into the Academic Success Center and will be required to reschedule their appointment.


VIRTUAL AVAILABILITY INSTRUCTIONS


You have selected to meet virtually.

Please use the Zoom link included in this confirmation to sign in to your appointment.

We prefer to meet with video enabled. We also realize this is not always possible. If you are unable to access the meeting via Zoom, a phone number is available after clicking the Zoom link.

Please do your best to ensure you are in a private space with minimal distractions for your meeting.