Scheduling On-site or Virtual Meetings With Study Participants
TrialKit allows sites to directly coordinate calendar events with study Participants who also use TrialKit. It allows sites and Participants to have a shared calendar system, where either the Participant or the site can schedule a physical visit on site, a phone call, or a video meeting.
Table of Contents:
Scheduling an event for a Participant
Study Administrators - Setting up the calendar and permissions
Accessing the Study Schedule
Prerequisites:
- Study is enabled for scheduling by the Administrator
- User has Access To Participant Scheduling and Create New Events
Access the scheduler via the button at the top of the Subject Manager.
Web Browser:
Mobile App:
Once open, swipe left or right to navigate months. Tap a day to put it into focus and then tap it again to open the day view.
Last, tap an existing event to open up the details, or anywhere outside the event to create one in that same hour.
Scheduling a Visit for a Participant
Prerequisite: User has access to Create Calendar Events
In the day view, tap on any hour block to create an event within that hour, or tap on an existing event to view/update the details for that event. The ability to create, modify or delete events are permissions that must be granted by a Study Administrator.
An event in the calendar could be a physical visit on site, a phone call, or a video meeting. For the first two, add any necessary notes in the event description. The Participant will have access to those details and also receive them via email if there is a known email address and if the invite is sent, as shown below.
It's helpful to Participants if there are directions about the visit or what to do if they encounter technical problems.
It's also possible to create an event without assigning it to a specific site or subject. Think of this as a time-slot that might be filled later on.
In this example, a visit is being scheduled as a video meeting. Checking that box is not necessary for physical on-site visits.
If the meeting is a video meeting like the example above. Once saved, there are additional options - one of which is to send the event details to the Participant, which will allow the Participant to accept it in their own personal calendar outside of TrialKit.
Once an event is scheduled, the title at the top will display which subject the event was saved for. This is helpful in case the Participant ID on the form gets toggled mistakenly.
Joining a Scheduled Virtual Video Visit/Meeting
If a calendar event was setup as a video meeting, the meeting can be started from the event itself.
For added convenience on the mobile app, if a Participant has something scheduled anytime for the current day, an icon will display in the Subject Manager screen:
The Participant will also have access to their calendar and video meetings. Instructions for Participants can be found here.
Read more about Video Meetings here.
Calendar Report
A report is available to display a table listing of all calendar events and details. The report can be accessed on the iOS app under the Reports menu, based on permission being granted by a Study Administrator.
From there it can also be exported as an Excel file for any further reporting or to import events into an external calendar.
On the web, this report is exportable by a link at the right side of the calendar.
Study Administrators - Setting up the Calendar and Permissions
Setting a study up with an implemented calendar is as simple as assigning users with the necessary permissions to access it.
Here is a common configuration for a site-level role:
This of course depends on the use-case. For example, if events (or 'time slots') can only be created by an Administrator, it would be necessary to only allow site users to Modify events rather than Create them.
Importing An External Calendar
Sometimes it may be necessary to import events from another calendar. For example, a study Administrator may want to create ‘placeholder' events for sites to later go in and assign to a specific site and subject, rather than the sites freely creating events at any time.
The ability to import is based on permission granted by a study Administrator. With that permission, an option will appear on the main calendar screen.
Web browser:
On the app:
This will open an option to select a file for importing.
Imports are accomplished by a standard calendar ICS file format, which most calendar platforms export. This file can then be imported into TrialKit’s calendar. When this is done, the following attributes are imported:
- Event name
- Description
- Date/Time
- Duration
A few important notes:
- Multi-day events will only import the first day
- Recurring events are not supported. Only the first event will be imported
- Site and subject information cannot be imported from an ICS file. Those will need to be manually set within the TrialKit calendar after importing