NEW: Tracking for Conferences!

We are delighted to announce a new system for tracking conference attendance: Conference Tracker. This easy-to-use system will report on the attendance to your conference sessions and will even generate and distribute customized attendance certificates.

The Conference Tracker software is web-based, so there is nothing to install. All you need is a web browser. You can access the system to set up your conference and retrieve your attendance reports from anywhere and at any time.

To record attendance, simply use a barcode scanner with an Apple device: iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. The attendance data is automatically sent to the Conference Tracker software hosted on the Amazon cloud. Simply login using a web browser to view your reports!

If you only have one or few conferences a year, you can lease the tracking equipment for a turn-key solution. If you have the equipment, you can subscribe to the Conference Tracker software.

For more information about this new system, please visit its website at http://www.conference-tracker.com/

Request a free system tour now!

Quick Start Guides for Students

We have found that several of our customers take the times to build their own guides on how to do the common tasks. This time, we have built some “manuals” that might help centers guide their students to the use of Accudemia.

We have built 2 guides. You can use the first one if you want students to use the Wizard method to create appointments. Otherwise, you can publish the second guide if you think the New Appointment method fits better your needs. I’m publishing both guides in PDF format and in Word format, use the latter if you want to customize it before publishing it. If you share the PDF version, it will get automatically updated when we release a new version of Accudemia, so you decide.

Guides:

Full Guide PDF (Using Wizard for Appointments)

Full Guide PDF (Using New Appointments method)

Template guides can be downloaded here.

How-to: Scheduling Appointments

Accudemia has always offered different ways to create an appointment. Each method is intended for users trying to find appointments using different criterias. For example, if you want to list all tutors available for a certain course you might want to use the New Appointment method. The Wizard lets you find the perfect appointment for you in a simple 5 step procedure instead, where you are prompted to select the dates, services, the course and tutor you want. The 3rd way is using the Manual method, which is enabled only to administrators and it allows them to select exactly what they want and bypass several validations the system might enforce using the Wizard or the New Appointment methods.

Here’s a quick description on how to use each one of these features.

New Appointment

You can find it under Center Attendance > Appointments > New Appointment.

The page displays a filter with the next options:

Use From/To filters to view only availability in that period of time. The center can be used to filter the place where the appointment is going to be scheduled, might be useful if you don’t want to travel to a center far away from you. The tutor and subject area also let you filter the results based on your preferences.

After you select the options click on “Search” to display the tutor schedules.

Then Select the time slots and complete with the rest of the appointment's as prompted in the popup, as shown below:

Finally, click on “Accept” to schedule your appointment and you’re done!.

 

Wizard

You can find it under Center Attendance > Appointments > Wizard.

If you are an administrator, you will be first prompted to select the students to create a group appointment. You can select up to 5 students.

Next, select the day of the appointment, click next to select the subject area. Then select the service or services. Click over next to display the available tutors. Select the tutor or tutors, click over next the page will display the tutor's schedule. You will find these steps very easy to follow, you just need to select the option you want and click “Next” on the toolbar. If in any step you don’t find what you want you should contact the center administrator for help.

Now, select the time and the duration of the appointment you want. If you want to change a default value you can click the “reservation” and change the time or duration to the one you want. Click next to validate the appointments.

That last step will show a description of the appointments you are trying to schedule. You might find that some of them are valid and some of them are not. You can go back and select another date or just click Finish to schedule the the valid appointments. Please take into account that the invalid appointment will never be scheduled so you might want to pick another time or tutor.

Manual Appointment

If you are an administrator, you can find it under Center Attendance > Appointments > Manual.

This method is pretty straightforward, you just select all the details you want (student, tutor, center, subject area, services and dates) and click on Schedule Appointment. You can also add comments if you want to.

After selecting the options click on “Schedule Appointment” and wait while Accudemia validates the reservations.

If the entered data is valid, it will tell you that the appointment has passed all the validations. To schedule the appointment you have to click on “Save changes”.

It might also happen that Accudemia finds that the selection is not valid, maybe because there are some restrictions on the student or the tutor, or because the tutor is not available or any other reason. Either way, you will only be warned. You can still click on “continue anyway” to accept the warning and schedule the appointment no matter what.

To sum up…

As you might have seen, it’s not one option or the other. Each way to create appointments has advantages and disadvantages. You might want to use the Wizard if you want to schedule several appointments at once. The New Appointment is faster however since it’s only one quick step. Finally the manual option lets you enter the data and bypass some validations, it might be helpful if you are sure about what you’re doing and Accudemia can’t find an open slot using the other methods.

What’s new in appointments?

One of the oldest and most used features is what we call the Appointments Wizard. Now we have completely redesigned it to make it faster, simpler and more powerful.

Some of the new enhancements include:

- Group Appointments: As an administrator, you can select many students and create appointments for all of them together at the same time. You don’t need to do anything to enable this feature, just access the appointment wizard and multiple students can be selected without further work.

- Search Many Tutors: One common issue is, students don’t know all the tutors schedules, so which one should the pick? Well, in Accudemia 4.5 users can select many tutors and search across all their schedules for an open slot. It’s still clear which tutor you’re viewing, so students still can decide which tutor they prefer.

- Plan Ahead: In the last step of the wizard, now it’s possible to select multiple dates and even tutors to create multiple appointments. Once the options have been chosen, just click all the dates where an appointment is needed. After picking all the appointment times, by clicking on “Next” the appointments are verified and then saved.

- Manually Create New Appointments: It’s actually not a new feature, but it was also redesigned and improved. It’s intended for administrators ‘in hurry’ that want to create a new appointment no matter what the settings in Accudemia are. Also, some might find this method to be the faster since it only requires the user to type in the important data.

Get alerts in your phone!

We have switched to a new text messaging service to allow users receive alerts in their cellphones. It has an incredible lower texting rate of the one we had been using previously.

This makes it affordable to use SMS (text messages) for appointment reminders and confirmations.  Also you can text students and staff directly from Accudemia.

New and existent customers can get complimentary 500 text messages for free upon request. After those 500 messages, it’s only 2 cents per message!

To get your 500 free messages, please can contact us here (account admins only).