The office

What the office does

The office looks after counselling in person. You create cases, keep the names and contact details of the people involved up to date, and add or cancel appointments for the responsible counsellor.

You never see what is discussed in the counselling. Only the counsellors see case notes, messages and whiteboards. Online rooms that people seeking support have booked themselves do not appear in the office at all.

The office needs no licence and no photo. It has no public page.

How to get in

The centre lead invites you with the “Office” role. You get an email, choose your password via “Set password” and set up two-factor sign-in. How this works is explained in First steps as a counsellor.

If you only work in the office, you go straight there after signing in. If your centre is not yet approved, you first see a note there. As soon as the platform operator approves it, you see cases and appointments.

Creating an in-person case

When someone gets in touch by phone or at the door, click “New case”.

1. The case: Enter a short “Case title” that helps you recognise the case. Choose the “Responsible counsellor” and, if you already know it, the “Counselling field”.
2. First person: name, role, phone, email and address. Everything is optional.
3. For the statistics: year of birth, gender and place of residence. These details go into the centre's statistics without names.
4. First appointment: Tick “Add an appointment now” if you are arranging an appointment straight away. You then choose the date, time, duration and type. For “In person”, your centre's address is already filled in as the place.
5. Click “Create case”.

If the appointment does not work, for example because the counsellor already has one at that time, the case is not created either. You then see a note and can choose another time.

Name and contact details are stored encrypted. The counsellor then sees the case in their case notes. If nobody is counselling at your centre right now, you cannot create a case yet. How counsellors continue working with in-person cases is explained in In-person cases.

Keeping contact details up to date

In the case you find the “Case and people involved” card. Via “Edit” you change the title, counselling field and the details of the people. With “Another person” you add, for example, a partner or a child, and with “Remove person” you take someone out. Do not forget to save.

Adding and cancelling appointments

In the “Appointments” card, click “Add”. The appointment then appears in the responsible counsellor's calendar. A counsellor cannot have two appointments at the same time.

• For a case that is in person only, choose “In person” or “Phone” as the type. The counsellor adds a video appointment for it themselves.
• You can record a session that has already taken place, going back a limited time.
• “Cancel” cancels an upcoming appointment. The counsellor sees this in their upcoming appointments.
• Once a case is closed, you no longer add appointments. If the counsellor reopens the case, it continues.

If a case shows “now also online”, the counsellor has given the person their own room. The counsellor always creates this room. The person then also sees the appointments you add in their room. Anyone who has turned on email notifications gets an email for new and cancelled appointments.

The overview

In the office you see all in-person cases at your centre, including those that counsellors created themselves. Via “Search” you find cases by title, name or counsellor. Under “Status” you choose “open”, “closed” or “all”.

On the right, “Next appointments” lists the appointments for the next two weeks.

If you work for several centres, you switch to the other centre's office at the top. You also see invitations from other centres here and accept them with “Accept”.