Follow-up on Comments

Similar to marking a Comment on a student's record as "Critical", you can now mark a Comment on a student's record for "Follow-up". Advisors experience great demands on their time and attention, and it can be difficult to keep track of the various students who require follow-up. With the new Follow-up feature for Comments in the Advisement Database, you can set a reminder in the student's record and the system will remind you on the date you specify.

To set a follow-up reminder, just enter a Comment onto the student's record, check the "follow-up" box towards the bottom of the Comment screen and enter the date you would like to receive the follow-up reminder. Once the Comment is saved, the Follow-up Flag icon will be turned on in the student's record.

You will be able to search the Student List for all students with a pending Follow-up Flag set by you. On the date you have specified for follow-up, you will receive a system email including the student information and the text of the previously saved Comment. Once the date of follow-up have passed, the Follow-up Flag will be turned off for that student.

Email Signature Line

Advisement Database users now have the option of setting an email signature line for all individual and group emails sent through the system. This signature can be multiple lines, just like your email signature in Outlook and other email programs. No more copy and paste or typos!

To set your email signature, just click on your name in the top right of the system navigation to access your user settings. Once you have typed in the text for your email signature, click save at the bottom of the page. The text you've entered will now appear at the end of each system email sent by you.

Announcement Email Tab

Emails categorized as "Announcement" will now be separated from other advising content in a separate "Announcement" tab. This will help advisors see the more critical items in a student's advising history without having to sift through numerous announcement emails.

All emails labeled as "Announcement" and group emails sent before the email categories were implemented in July 2009 will be listed under the Announcement tab.

Student Profile updates

The Advisement Database committee is pleased to announce some exciting updates to the Student Profile. These changes will allow greater flexibility for advisors to customize the Student Profile according to the information most useful to them, along with additional important information for each student.

Customized Student Profile
The Student Profile is now split into two pages. You are able to determine which information blocks will appear on each page. Just click on your name in the top right of the system navigation to access your user settings. There are 12 different information blocks (6 on each page). The student's USCard photo will always appear on both pages.

You can decide which information you would like to have most accessible on Page 1 with the remaining information on Page 2. You must assign all available information blocks to a page, and the system will alert you if you have missed or duplicated any of the information blocks when you save your changes. You can also select to restore the preset default settings for Page 1 and Page 2.

Preferred Name
We all know students whose preferred name is not the name on their official records. You have probably tried various ways to keep track of the name a particular student goes by including notes in the student's record or a department custom field. Addressing a student by his/her preferred name is one simple way to build rapport in the advisor-student relationship. The student's preferred name is now a field in the Student Profile which can be updated and shared with all Advisement Database users.

Preferred names that had been collected in department custom fields have been imported into this new field. When the preferred name is the student's first name, the new Preferred Name field can be left blank.

The Preferred Name field can also be used in the Mail Merge feature for Group Emails. When Preferred Name is used in a Mail Merge email, the First Name will be inserted when the Preferred Name is blank.

Assigned Advisor
Many departments assign specific advisors to students and this information is tracked with the department or sometimes with a department custom field. Now, each program on a student's record will have the option of naming the assigned advisor or contact person for that program. This information will be shared across users, but can only be updated by those users in the department of the program.

Information for assigned advisors that had been collected in department custom fields or otherwise published by the department or school have been imported into this new field for each program. If your department does not assign advisors to students, the new Assigned Advisor field can be left blank for any program.

You are also able to search the Student List by assigned advisor to locate your students more quickly.

Enrollment Status
In the updated Student Profile layout, there is a new information block for "Enrollment Status". This information block will show you a student's status for each semester, including "Enrolled Full-Time", "Overseas Studies", "Leave of Absence", etc. Whenever possible, this information will be automatically input based on information in the student's record. However, the advisor will also have the option of inputting the student's Enrollment Status for a given term.

This information will give a quick enrollment history for an individual student, but will also be searchable in the Student List to identify specific groups of students.

Meeting Minutes June 2, 2011

1. PENDING PROJECTS – all have been approved based on remaining funds for Fiscal Year




• Student Profile Updates




• User-defined block placement on two pages:




• Must use all 12 information blocks


• No repeated blocks in the page placement


• Plan to add a “Return to Default” Option




• New Enrollment Status Block




• Will note: Full-time and Part-time Status


• Other statuses:




• Overseas Studies


• Transferred-out


• Deceased


• Other, see notes




• Will have the ability to search for status


• Training options discussion:




• In-person Training Session, or


• Green Question Mark – with hover over instructions




• New Preferred Name field




• One time import of existing info from Department Tabs


• Will be editable on the Profile page, below SIS Name


• Heather will check to see if this will merge with emails and searches




• New Assigned Advisor field




• One time import of existing info from Department, import will include:




• Specific Advisor Assignments: Marshall, Annenberg, Psychology, Architecture, Leventhal


• Alpha-splits


• Program-splits


• WILL NOT include assignment by class standing




• Will be editable and also on Profile page








• Follow-up feature added to Comments




• User will be allowed to tag advising comments with a calendar date


• System will send user an email based on date selected as a reminder




• Announcement emails moved to separate tab




• System will sort out all announcement emails to separate tab


• Allows for faster loading and less clutter in Advising Tab


• Mass emails sent pre-2009 will also be filtered to new Announcement Tab


• Emails forwarded to the Database from outside system (i.e. Outlook) will still be labeled as Advising




• User-defined email signature line




• Will be added to emails sent out through the system – no more copy paste and misspellings






2. SURVEY




• Wait to release, until we add most recent system updates




• Will allow for some time for users to learn and possibly give early feedback


• Also can be used as an educational tool to inform/instruct new users




• Distribute in early July




3. BUDGET




• ~ 33 hours remaining for June




• Estimate 22 hours for items b-d above


• Estimate 2-3 hours for system maintenance


• Approx. 8-9 hours to fill




• programmer will be leaving for vacation June 17, but will still count for previous fiscal year if we get requests in now




• New six-month contract begins in July.






4. NEXT ITEMS:




• More Search Filters (i.e. Placement results, enrollment term, #enrolled units) – will have programmer work on these with remaining June budget




• Ability to check based on Grad Date (5/2011) would be the format used


• Will inquire into how a ‘W’ will be noted in Enrollment units search




• Department Settings and Templates (more options)


• Reports ( i.e., filter by specific program in reports)


• New Poll of priorities – tbd after we receive survey results




5. NEXT MEETING:




• Will be early July, request to be sent later this week.

Advising Database Meeting Notes – March 10, 2011

1. User Defined Preference for information blocks are possible




• Customizing the default screen to have the information you use the most, appear on the first screen


• Information would be in blocks on two pages (Left, Right, Top, Middle, and Bottom)




2. Estimates from Urban Insight (15-17hrs) --- RE: Shared information screen for all departments




• Preferred Name – 3hrs


• Assigned Advisor/Department Contact – 4 hrs


• Enrollment Status – 6.5 hrs (+2 for admin input list)




• Would display drop down menu selection with pre-approved notation and semester applicable for all to see


• Example: 20093: Study Abroad, 20101: LOA




• Proposed Follow-up tag – 1.5 hrs




• A tag that each user could place on students for follow-up


• Discussion resulted with the idea of marking comments under Advising tab, for the system to email user on calendar selected date for follow-up.


• Unsure whether the notification could be for individual user, or would be seen system-wide


• HMJ will connect with programmer for estimate and possibilities




• Made decisions to also request additional quotes for long-discussed features
  
  
  
  • Separating all 'Announcement' emails to another tab
  
  
  • Adding email signature to user settings
  
  
  
  


3. Budget




• January = 19.75


• February = 3.25


• 57 hours available for March/April




4. Survey – designed to collect information on usage and user knowledge to help define next updates and also to collect feedback on recent updates as well as need for additional user training.




• Chris Noll made rough draft and we discussed format


• Agreed to make edits and distribute survey before next meeting


• Combine items in How often do you use this function? with How familiar are you with each function (radial button scale)


• Does this function need updates? (check box)


• Will you attend a training session on a specific function? (check box)


• Discussed the idea of creating training videos for tips or having live sessions.




5. Next Meeting – TBD




• Topics




• Continued Discussion on Survey


• Programming Estimates


• Results on splitting Student Profile into two pages

Meeting Minutes - January 27, 2011

Updates:

• Comments now have line breaks. These were retroactively added to previous comments, if line breaks were used.


• Entry Terms – Can now be searched using <, >, = qualifiers


• Can now find students who have graduated from a special program, such as SCP


• SAP/AcRev status are now in reverse chronological order (most recent status up top)


• Custom Reports – Programmer has worked on removing duplicate records

Next Items

• Multiple Tabs – to reduce database load time and scrolling. Primarily Student Profile Changes (i.e. Demographics, Scholarships, and Contacts on different tabs)




• Brief discussion on having customizable Profiles similar to default List View (may be complicated by mix of STATIC information from SIS and Dynamic info added by us)




• Student Profile Changes - Discussion




• Heather composed most common Custom/Department Fields utilized, which included: Advisor, Graduation Date, LOA, Preferred Name, Office of Overseas Studies. Noted that 450 items created, were unused.


• We discussed which items make the most sense to be included in a common tab that all departments can view, and which also may be useful for NREG tracking.


• We’ve agreed upon the following, with logistics pending:




1. Preferred Name


2. Department Contact (Academic Advisor – or other contact for more complicated advising arrangements. This item can also be left blank)


3. Enrollment Status with semester noted (LOA, Abroad (w/location), Transferred Out, etc.). I envision this similar to AcRev or FinAid status.






• Survey for future action




• We will plan to continue with our survey to advisors regarding Database changes, updates, training preferences.


• Chris Noll has started process, and we will continue to work




• Next meeting likely early March, pre-Spring Break --- Meeting Request to follow