What is Starfish?
Starfish is UW–Madison’s primary tool for scheduling student appointments! This tool allows for scheduling individual and group student appointments for those supporting students in academic advising, career services, learning support, and other student services.
What are the benefits of using Starfish?
- Simplified scheduling with seamless Outlook integration
- Improved communication with easy referrals and email or text reminders
- Supporting student success by helping students build a network of resources and people who can support their academic and career success
If your unit or department is not currently using Starfish but would like to, please email us at starfish.oacs@wisc.edu.
Using Starfish
This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.
How do I get access to Starfish?
Starfish is currently available for use by academic advisors, career services staff, learning support staff, peer advising/mentoring professionals, student affairs staff, and some student services staff. Starfish is not currently available for use in the instructional (course-related) context.
Eligible staff can gain access to Starfish in one of two ways:
- Having at least one assigned advisee in SIS. This will automatically provision you with a user account in Starfish, and you will be given both the Assigned Advisor and General Advisor roles.
- Manual provisioning. If you don’t have assigned advisees in SIS but still need to use Starfish, please fill out this form. If it is determined that you have a viable use case, we will work with you to manually provision a Starfish role and user account. This may require discussion with others in your unit if your unit is not currently set up with a service (unit entity) or services in Starfish.
How do I allow students to schedule appointments with me in Starfish?
For students to schedule with you, you must have a Starfish account, be provisioned with a staff role, and be associated with a service profile. A service profile is a landing page for your unit that contains a list of members, a general overview, and other information like location and hours. You can be a member of as many service profiles as needed.
Tip: You can see which service profiles you’re associated with by pulling up your individual profile (Open the Navigation Menu, select Services or My Success Network, and search your name). If you don’t come up, that probably means you’re not part of a service profile yet.
Service profiles are assigned when you request a new Starfish account through the New User Form and specify the service profiles you need to be a part of. If you did not specify any service profile, you may not currently be assigned to any. Only Starfish administrators can edit the content and the members on a service profile, so please fill out the Update Starfish Service Profile form if you need to be added to a service profile.
It’s not necessary to be a member of a service profile unless you personally meet with students. Administrative staff who manage other’s calendars don’t have to be student-facing, and therefore are not usually included in service profiles.
Once you’re part of a service profile you can create office hour availability, which will allow students to schedule appointments with you!
Read to dive into Starfish Training and Frequently Asked Questions?
Find Staff Training and Resources here!
Student Starfish Information
See step-by-step instructions and screenshots on how to use Starfish, UW–Madison's official appointment scheduling tool.
