Engagement database and appointment booking system

What our client needed

The university’s Student Health and Wellbeing Service needed a system to allow their staff to track engagement with students, schedule appointments, and record outcomes. This had to be integrated with the SAP student records system, so all relevant student data would be accessible to Wellbeing staff. The various teams within the service (Counselling, Wellbeing Consultancy, Disability Support, Student Finance, School based Wellbeing Advisers, Chaplaincy and Faith) all had their own very specific needs which were not met by any available off the shelf system. Staff needed to be able to add alerts to students, upload documents, record scores from standard and bespoke counselling questionnaires, collect and track risk factor data and more.

After initial go live in Sept 2021 further developments were needed in 2024 including a facility for Disability practitioners to efficiently build digital Student Support Plans, to be shared with relevant staff in Schools and in the Exams Office. Students should be able to comment on and confirm their acceptance of the SSP online, reducing the need for return appointments and email communications.

Challenges

Data from the previous seven years needed to be imported from each of two systems the service previously used to allow continuity of records.

Each team within the service has very specific processes and the system needed to handle a wide range of interaction types to deliver suitable workflows for every aspect of student wellbeing support from hardship loan applications to hospital admissions.

We have worked with the university IT service and stakeholders to ensure suitable business continuity and disaster recovery plans are in place and tested to ensure that any downtime is brief.

How we were able to deliver it

Each team has a way of recording their complex interactions with students with workflow functionality where appropriate. Dashboards highlight outstanding actions to individual advisers, team managers and the senior management and operations team.

The system includes a room booking module that integrates with room calendars in Outlook, and advisers can also see their appointments in Outlook calendars. We have used Power BI to deliver a sophisticated reporting dashboard so the Operations team can keep track of a range of metrics / KPIs such as adviser time spent and length of time students are waiting for appointments.

Students are sent email and SMS confirmations and reminders of appointments which has reduced the number of DNAs. Student Support Plans for each student are available to relevant staff in their school and the Exams team – as well as visible to the student via the University Portal.