Appointment Manager (AM) is an outstanding scheduling software solution for connecting students to academic advisors. As a former Associate Dean with academic advising in my portfolio, I researched many products for an online scheduling solution before I identified AM as an option. After a successful pilot program for one center with 25 advising schedules, AM was expanded campus-wide. Students, academic advisors, and administrators express satisfaction with the convenience of the AM as well as the ability to collect appointment data for future decisions.

Appointment Manager has changed the way we do business. Students can now access advisor schedules anywhere, any time. Gone are the days of exchanging multiple emails trying to find a meeting time. Appointment Manager gives our advisors the information they need to easily prepare for meetings with students, giving them the student demographic information as well as the history of the appointment. Our entire advising system is using Appointment Manager and it is working its way in to tutoring services.

Appointment Manager (AM) has transformed how our students are able to book advising appointments and the way our office is able to provide support to the students. The software allows students to book an appointment at their convenience and choose the appropriate advisor they need to meet with. The advisors and administrative staff have found it very easy to learn and appreciate the functionality and tools that are offered. It allows us to collect data and look for patterns that assist with our operational planning. The support that has been offered during and after implementation has been outstanding and if we have had any questions the response has been exceptionally quick.

We started using Appointment Manager in March 2014. We launched it on the Friday of Spring Break via an email to students and by Monday morning, we had more than 400 appointments on the books. We were flabbergasted. This was a major improvement for students who previously had to stop by our office or call during business hours to schedule an appointment. The response by students has been overwhelming. They can make appointments with their assigned advisor at 2:00 a.m. when they’re thinking about it, when it’s convenient to them, not just when our office is open. Appointment Manager significantly reduced our phone and office foot traffic for appointments. On some level it also reduced our no-shows because the system sends an appointment confirmation email and a reminder email. We currently have 18 departments across campus using Appointment Manager, which is driving the demand by students for its use by other departments. We’re adding on the texting feature for Fall 2016 and are excited about how this will further reduce student no-shows for appointments.

From an administrator’s perspective, Appointment Manager automatically collects an insane amount of data that can be sliced into many different ways and can be downloaded easily into Excel spreadsheets. I am able to run numerous reports on walk-in statistics, reasons students come in for appointments, reservation statistics and the list goes on. As a department, we are able to collect data via Appointment Manager by creating customizable advisor-reported student information. This has been extremely helpful in our assessment efforts as we work to identify how advising impacts students.

Boby Joseph, the company owner and software developer, has been open to our ideas and suggestions from day one. He is constantly seeking ways to improve the product overall and we communicate regularly our ideas, which he often incorporates into future updates of the product. It has been a fun relationship to develop because our ideas help us, help him and help other colleges.

I cannot speak more highly about Appointment Manager. It has revolutionized how our office makes appointments and collects data. It is bringing our campus a much needed 21st century enterprise solution that benefits today’s tech-savvy students.