Application & Enrollment updates

We have several new updates to Application & Enrollment. View the new features live in A&E by clicking Home>Admissions>Application/Enrollment>Inquiry>New Inquiry Review.

Streamline communication with prospective families with improved reporting features:

  • View, sort, and filter data to focus on what’s important.
  • Customize report columns.
  • Save templates for commonly used reports.
  • Send an email communication to multiple families by selecting a group of records.
  • Link inquiry students automatically to an applicant if they have matching information.

Engage inquiring families with our new events feature:

  • Create an event and define the available dates and time.
  • Add an event question to your inquiry form to allow parents to register.
  • Send reminder notifications automatically to the hosts and attendees.
  • Track your upcoming events and registration details with the event schedule.

Harness the power of email with our easy-to-use email management features:

  • Create and send one-off emails quickly to individual families.
  • Add an “Apply Now” link to emails, directing prospective parents to the school’s application site.
  • Send common messages quickly with email templates.
  • View emails sent to a family with email history.

Simplify your enrollment management process with our new, easy-to-use inquiry experience. Be sure to opt-in by clicking the checkbox next to “New Inquiry Review.” Here are a few powerful updates we’ve made:

  • Spot the current status and crucial campus visit date quickly in inquiry status.
  • Manage your checklist items as you do today, but now with a sleek, friendly interface.
  • Track one-off tasks specific to certain students’ inquiries with our new task feature.
  • Find contacts’ phone, email, and addresses at your fingertips.
  • Display and edit notes with more room in the notes field.
  • Drill into additional information you’ve collected from the family with the forms card.

End of year progression

The End of Year Progression utility allows you to progress all students simultaneously. Grade progression is the process of changing a student’s status and grade level at the end of the school year. This process can only be run once every nine months, so before running it, you’ll want to follow these steps to ensure you are prepared: End of Year Duties Training Outline.

Considerations before progressing

Administration typically must complete all current school year activities before progressing students since these items are tied to students’ current grade levels.

  1. Make sure all grades are loaded to report cards.
  2. Run class rank and honor rolls. It’s not possible to run these for the current year after progression.
  3. Archive report cards and transcripts. It’s important to archive these to ensure the information is correct and they are preserved in the student’s portfolio.
  4. Manually configure the next status for students who are repeating a grade. Or, if they are not re-enrolling, set their next status to withdrawn.
  5. Confirm the default year prior to running progression. It is important to confirm the school year from which you wish to progress is selected as the default year. In other words, if you are progressing from 2019-2020, that is your default year. Do not change the default year until after progressing.

How to run the progression

After performing these tasks you are ready to start the progression process. Go to System>Database Tasks>End of Year Progression.

  • Step 1 — Run “Progression Error Check”
    • The progression error check provides two types of information: errors and warnings. First, errors are items that must be fixed before progression. Warnings point out items you may want to fix before progression but are not required. If your database is clean, you will see no errors or warnings. The error check can be run multiple times in case you make changes to the database and want to check it again.
  • Step 2 — Save “Day Attendance”
    • This step is optional and saves attendance information to the student transcript.
  • Step 3 — Progress students to the next grade level.
    • This step moves students from their current status to the next.

FACTS SIS training outlines

We hope this extensive list of tips and tutorials helps you feel ready to take on the next school year. We’re here to help your school operate more efficiently so you can better serve your families.

If you have additional questions, training outlines are available for a helpful step-by-step approach to current features of the FACTS SIS system.