Calendars, Scheduling, and Appointments
The RecoveryLink appointments feature allows staff to schedule, reschedule, and cancel appointments with any active participant. Staff can schedule one-time appointments or recurring appointments with participants. Staff are also able to schedule appointments in the same manner for other staff members using the staff calendars feature.
Appointments can be scheduled by navigating to the Calendar Icon on the top navigation bar, or if scheduling with a specific participant from the participant profile > appointments option. Once the calendar interface has loaded on screen, staff may review their past and upcoming appointments, schedule new appointments that occur one time or multiple times (i.e., recurring appointments), and reschedule or cancel existing appointments (note: past appointments may not be cancelled or rescheduled). Staff may also schedule for and view all past, future, and recurring appointments for other staff by switching to the staff calendar option and selecting the applicable staff member they want to review.
New appointments can be scheduled by clicking on the calendar interface and selecting the "Schedule New Appointment" button. On the scheduling modal pop-up, staff can select the date (if a recurring appointment, a start date and an end date), appointment start time (in 15 minute increments), the engagement type (defined by the customized engagement session templates set by the enterprise administrator in the customization engine), the appointment timezone (defaults to the local time zone of the logged in user), the engagement duration (in 15 minute increments, up to 8 hours in length), the engagement channel and subchannel, and the participant.
Note: appointments cannot span from one day to the next when scheduling or rescheduling. If a recurring appointment is selected, staff must also provide the frequency period for the recurring appointment at the daily, weekly, monthly, or annual level. Each period has additional suboptions to specify how the recurring appointment should be scheduled. Time zones selected will be the time zone used for all notifications and alerts to any user involved with the appointment. The display of any scheduled appointment on the calendar or list views will convert to the local timezone of the logged in user, with the conversion start point being the time zone selected when the appointment was created or revised.
Once scheduled, appointments appear on both the calendar on the date and time scheduled. Appointments can also be viewed in a list format by changing from calendar view to list view via the appropriate button. This calendar and list view are unique to the staff member logged in, and will only show the logged in staff member's appointments. To view all appointment information, you may select the appointment, which will bring up the appointment information modal. Upcoming appointments synchronize with the view of the calendar and will only show those appointments currently on the dates of the calendar view.
Editing or cancelling an appointment can only be done from the calendar icon in the top navigation bar, not from the participant profile. This may be accomplished by either selecting an existing appointment from the list of upcoming appointments. All appointment information may be edited except for the participant. Staff are not able to edit scheduled appointments for other staff at this time.
Editing or cancelling a recurring appointment is specific to the type of editing being done. To edit or cancel a single instance of a recurring appointment, the same procedure for editing upcoming appointments is used as each instance of a recurring is in principle a single upcoming appointment. Editing a single instance of a recurring appointment that is more than 24 hours in the future will immediately hard schedule this single recurring appointment instance, thus making it unmodifiable by editing the recurring appointment controller it belonged to. Editing or cancelling a single instance of a recurring appointment will not impact other recurring appointments associated with the same recurring appointment controller.
To edit or cancel all instances of a recurring appointment, staff should use the recurring controllers section of the calendar. Clicking on single appointments will only edit single instance appointments and not modify the recurring controller. Note: any single instance of a recurring appointment that is within 24 hours OR has been edited elsewhere and thus hard scheduled, will not be impacted by modification of the recurring appointment controller it belongs to. Cancelling a recurring appointments controller will cancel all associated recurring appointments except for those that are within 24 hours or have otherwise been "hard scheduled".
By default, all appointments send reminders to participants (as long as a valid email is saved as the primary email on the participant profile) and to staff (to the email attached to their staff user account), as well as via the notification hub. These reminders include: new appointment scheduled; existing appointment rescheduled; appointment cancelled; appointment reminder (sent 24 hours before the upcoming appointment). Note: the scheduling, modification, and cancelling of a recurring appointment controller has unique notification copy. If your organization subscribes to the telerecovery module, participants are also sent the same 4 reminders as above via text message (as long as a valid cell phone number is saved as the primary phone number on the participant's profile). This SMS text is sent from the organization's telerecovery number, not the staff's telerecovery assigned number. Emails and SMS reminders may take up to 15 minutes to be received.
Staff may also turn off appointment notifications when creating or editing a single instance appointment or a recurring appointment controller. Notifications can be turned off and on an unlimited number of times for an appointment. Turning off email notifications will turn off notifications to both participants and staff. SMS and email notifications can be turned on and off independent of each other as well.
Participants' next engagement date will automatically be updated by the system, using the soonest in the future appointment date and time from any staff member with a given participant. If a participant has multiple upcoming appointments with one or many staff, the system will automatically input the next upcoming appointment within 15 minutes of the most recent appointment end time, not when the current appointment is finished. If no appointment is scheduled in the future, the next engagement date will default to a blank/null value.
Double bookings for participants are not permitted in the calendar module - attempting to do so will produce an error. Double bookings for staff are permitted in the instance that an organization wishes to schedule multiple appointments for group sessions as an example.
Staff may also set their availability in the Calendar service, which is used to ensure that appointments are not scheduled during unavailable times by themselves or other staff members. This availability is also used to prevent participants from requesting appointments during an unavailable time. Staff may set single or recurring availability following recurring controller rules. Staff can set their availability from the Staff Calendars section of the Calendar service or from the My Account drop down > My Availability.
My Calendar View
Staff Calendars View
Staff members may also create Organizational Appointments via the Calendar service by switching to the Organizational Calendar View. Organizational appointments may be set in the same manner as staff appointments, with one exception: a staff member is not assigned to the appointment at the time of creation. Following creation, organizational appointments are available to be claimed by any staff member up to the time the appointment is set to occur. If available appointments are not claimed by the start time, they become unclaimed appointments which cannot be modified. At the time of claiming, the available appointment becomes an appointment of the staff member who initiated the claim action, meaning the appointment will not longer be claimable on the organizational calendar and will be listed on the upcoming appointments list for the claiming staff member.
Organizational Calendar View
