Using REQUIRED under SELECT BY FOCUS allows students to select a focus as they look for available appointments and also requires focus selection as part of making an appointment. If you have selected REQUIRED, your appointment form now includes a required question asking, for example, "Appointment Focus," with options taken directly from the staff or resource's list of focuses. ("Appointment Focus" would have different wording if you used Language Options in Global System Settings to change the "focus" label.) Since this question is added based the schedule option, it is not part of your Form Setup: Appointments. But, it works like an appointment form question, since it requires an answer and data is included in your reports.
WCONLINE allows staff and resources' focus lists to be anything that you enter. For example, you might have a staff member with "Senior level English," "Graduate level English," "All English Seminars," and "Individual Study English Work" as their focuses, or you might have a staff member with "BIOL 101," "CHEM 101," "PHYS 101," "MATH 101," and "MATH 206" as their focuses.
One of the sample questions on the appointment form is "Course," and most centers keep that question or some variation of it, asking students to select from a drop-down of all possible courses or fill in a course.
If you are concerned that the REQUIRED focus does not seem to be working, because students are selecting or entering a course that is different from the focus, or students seem to not be bound by each staff or resource's focuses, you most likely have a "Course" question on your appointment form. From a student's perspective, they simply answer your appointment form questions, with (probably) "Course" and "Appointment Focus" being required. They are allowed to select or fill in any course under "Course" and select from a shorter list of specific focuses; they likely do not know exactly why.
A "Course" question would make sense combined with the first example--a staff member listing "Senior Level English" could easily allow a student to request help with English 401, English 405, English 416, and so on. But, a "Course" question would not make sense with focus lists that are courses. In the second example, a student making an appointment with Tutor A might be able to select "BIOL 207" or type in "bio 207" to answer a "Course" question and answer "BIOL 101" under the focus selection. This is not a problem with the focus selection or schedule or staff or resource settings, but, instead, is only because you do not need a separate "Course" question.
Go to Form Setup: Appointments and look through your questions. If your schedules do not need a "Course" question (because focuses are course names or codes), simply delete the word "Course" or your own "course" question. If some schedules need a "Course" question, select those schedules in the SCHEDULE RESTRICTION list, and save the changes to the form. Now, students will select only a focus, without thinking that they can choose a different course to answer another appointment form question.
SECTION 1: Creating a First or New Schedule
SECTION 2: Addressing Emails Not Being Received (or Emails Sent to Spam)
SECTION 3: Adding Images to Announcements, Bios, and Mass Emails
SECTION 4: Multiple Centers Sharing a Subscription
SECTION 5: Adding New Administrators
SECTION 6: Accessing and Changing Your WCONLINE URL
SECTION 7: Drop-Ins and Walk-Ins
SECTION 8: Different "Finals Week" Schedules
SECTION 9: Individual Not Recognized as an Administrator
SECTION 10: Using Group Appointments with Focuses
SECTION 11: Students Select a Different Course and Focus