Services and Locations
User Roles other than ‘Faculty’ may be granted the Manage Services Configuration permission.
What are Services? — To support the varied ways that advising and other student success teams meet with students and organize their offices, Civitas Advising has you define your own services.
A service defines a group of advisors that can meet with students based on:
- Location
- Type of service (such as first-year advising)
- Location + type
Services control how walk-in queues appear on the kiosk. When launching a kiosk, the Queue Manager selects which Location that kiosk is being launched for. When signing into a kiosk, students first select which service they’re there for, and then they join an available queue.
Services (along with Locations) are managed as tabs of the Configurations (wrench icon) page.
Services are always specific to an SSU:
- By default, each SSU already has a service enabled with all of the staff members assigned to that service, assigned to a default service location.
- Each SSU can have as many services enabled as necessary, with any combination of Locations.
- You can assign any number of the SSU’s staff members for a service.
Best practice
Set up your Locations first, so you can select the Service Locations when you create a Service!
Services Configuration
If you have the Manage Services permission, you can see the Configurations (wrench 🔧 icon) menu, which lets you access the Services and Locations tabs:
The Services configuration tab lists all of the services configured, grouped by SSU. Details include their location, the number of staff members assigned to the service, and whether the service is enabled. From this list, you can enable and disable specific services.
Add a new Service one of two ways:
- Create — Use the “+ Add Service” button.
- Copy — Select the “Copy” icon to duplicate an existing service.
Creating a New Service
Important
When you create a new service, it’s disabled until you select ENABLE for it on the main tab.
When creating a new service, whether from scratch or by copying, these are your options:
- Service Title — This is how the service will appear to both advisors and students. Make sure you pick a name that’s unique (not shared with another service) and clearly indicates what the service is for. (See “Example Setups” below.)
- Service Description — Describe for other users the purpose or limits of the service.
- Service Locations — Select which locations the service is available for. When launching the Kiosk, the user selects the location they’re launching it for. All services with that location assigned are available on the kiosk. Once locations are selected, the configured address will display next to it. (See “Location Configuration” below.)
- Service Offerings — (optional) Assign specific offerings to this service. See below.
- Service Members — Choose staff members to assign to the service from a list of staff members assigned to the SSU the service is in. Select one or more SSU members and “Assign” them to the service (on the right), or use “Select All” and “Assign” them all to the service, and then Remove those who won’t participate:
- Queue Manager — By default, the Queue Manager is enabled for a new service. This allows one or more Queue Managers to be selected for the service.
- Select Queue Manager(s) — Choose one or more Queue Managers for the service from a list of users with the Queue Management permission (which can be added in User Management). The Queue Manager for a service will be able to manage that service on the Queue Management page.
- Student Self-service (Kiosk Visibility) —
Creating Service Offerings
“Service Offerings” are an optional, additional layer of service types to guide students to the help they need. When scheduling appointment blocks, advisors can set which particular offerings they’re available for under each individual service.
For example, to offer a language tutoring service, create an offering for each supported language so that appointment blocks for a given staff member can be set to the one or two languages they can help with. This way, students who select “Russian” will only see appointment slots for those who can help with Russian.
How it works — As with most Advising features, you configure this by granting permissions and completing some setup:
- Directors grant the Manage Services Configuration permission to those who will be managing services and offerings. (Faculty users cannot hold this permission.)
- Those granted this permission add or update specific Service Offerings as needed.
- Users creating appointment blocks select from those Services and any optional Offerings.
- Students can filter on the Services and Offerings to find the slots they need.
How to add them — Service Offerings are disabled by default:
- From the bottom of the left menu, select the Configurations (wrench 🔧 icon) button. (If you don’t see it, you need additional permissions.)
- While editing a Service, slide the Service Offerings toggle to enable it.
- Offerings are not predefined lookups: just type the name you want for the offering and select Enter.
- Continue typing and entering to add the remaining offerings.
- To remove an offering, select the ✕ to the right of the text.
- If an appointment exists that is using this offering, the system will warn you and ask you if you want to continue.
Locations Configuration
Users with the Services Configuration permission have access to the Locations configuration tab. When launching a kiosk, the user selects the location they’re launching it for. All services with that location assigned are available on the kiosk. You can set up as many locations as you need, and can make them as general or specific as you need.
Tip: This is not where the College or Program Offices tab of the Directory is defined; if you see an error in that information, contact Support to update it.
The Locations configuration tab lists all the advising locations that have been configured and details about each location. Note that a default location is automatically created for each SSU, which you can change.
You can edit or delete an existing location, or create a new one using the “+ Add Location” button.
Creating a New Location
Create your locations first so that they are available for selection when services are created. Selecting the “+ Add Location” button allows you to create a new location.
- Location Title — Choose a descriptive name for the location. You’ll see this name when configuring locations for a service and when choosing a location to launch the Kiosk for.
- Location Address — Indicate the address of the location. This is not limited to postal addresses: it can be as specific or general as you need. This displays alongside the location.
Example Setups
Locations and services are designed to be flexible so that you can make the best use of queuing and the Kiosk at your institution. Here are two examples for how you might set up services.
One Location, Two Services
Let’s say that you have an SSU for Academic Advising, and that the staff members in that SSU are split between advising first year students and general academic advising. All of your advisors work out of the Advising Center with a shared waiting area for walk-in appointments.
- Create a location called “Advising Center”.
- Create a service, “First Year Advising”, at the Advising Center location.
- Create a service, “General Advising”, at the Advising Center location.
When scheduling their walk in hours, the first year advisors will select the “First Year Advising” service. The remaining advisors would select “General Advising”.
When the kiosk is launched for the Advising Center, students will see two options when they log into the Kiosk: First Year Advising and General Advising.
Two Locations, Same Service
Let’s say that you have a single SSU for academic advising, and all of your advisors meet with a mix of students. However, you have a couple of different office locations where students can meet with advisors for walk-in appointments: Building One and Building Two.
- Create two locations: “Building One” and “Building Two”.
- Create a service: “Building One Advising”, located at Building One.
- Create a service: “Building Two Advising”, located at Building Two.
When scheduling their walk-in hours, advisors will select a service depending on where they’ll be working that day: if at Building One, they’ll select Building One Advising.
When students sign into the kiosk for Building One, they’ll only see the advisors with walk-in hours assigned to the Building One Advising.
Troubleshooting Services
Why isn’t this service showing up?
The most likely problem is one of these:
- No one selected ENABLE (in the main view) to enable the service.
- No one selected the ASSIGN command (in the Edit view) to assign the selected staff.
Look at these columns to determine if either of these problems are the case for your service: