Adding buffer time into schedules

Problem:

We have had some issues with off-campus interviews that are scheduled through the system.  When there are on and off campus interviews in the same day, that we schedule, the system doesn't know that students need extra time to get to the interview location. Is there a way to add time to the schedules? 

Likely Cause(s):

n/a

Resolution:

There is a setting in GradLeaders Career Center called “Batch Signup Slack Time”.  Most schools use 5 minutes. What this does is pad the time at the start and end of each OCR interview schedule, thus expanding the length of the interview in terms of determining conflicts.  Example, interview from 1pm to 1:30, the setting above is 15 minutes,  thus the interview will try to avoid conflicts from 12:45pm to 1:45.  

This is not a cure-all, but it should help with the issue, because as the system tries to avoid conflicts it would hopefully spread these  interviews out for the students.  However, if a lot of students are having multiple interviews the same day, this increased slack time will markedly increase the number of conflicts.  As you know, the system tries 5 times to schedule a job conflict-free, then it takes the schedule with the fewest conflicts and books it, so to some extent, conflicts are unavoidable.    

Also keep in mind that expanding the slack time will impact all OCR interviews, so even on days where everything is on-campus, the extra buffer will be calculating conflicts where maybe none exists, so once you get past the point where the off campus interviews are done, you might want to ratchet this back down to a more favorable time.  

Program Setting:

Configuration> Settings> OCR> Batch Signup Slack Time