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RTS Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

User Guide

Guide Created By Mike Copening

Created On 6/9/2011

Guide Revised By Mike Copening

Last Revised On 6/20/2011

Software Developed by TradeWeb, Inc. and RTS

June 20, 2011 EGEN CRM User Guide, Version 1.0 P a g e | 2

Table of Contents

Introduction ................................................................................................................ 6

What Is EGEN? ............................................................................................................................... 6

Sites .............................................................................................................................................. 6

Terminology .................................................................................................................................. 6

Logging In .................................................................................................................... 8

Login Failure .................................................................................................................................. 8

Forgot Password ............................................................................................................................ 8

Change Password (logged in) ......................................................................................................... 9

Renewing a Login Session .............................................................................................................. 9

User Preferences ........................................................................................................ 10

The Menu ................................................................................................................... 12

The Home Screen ........................................................................................................ 13

Recent Members ......................................................................................................................... 13

Recent Members Grid Functions ........................................................................................................... 14

Current Alerts .............................................................................................................................. 14

Other Home Page Features .......................................................................................................... 15

The Member Dashboard ............................................................................................. 16

Demographics Panel .................................................................................................................... 16

Top of the Panel ................................................................................................................................... 16

Stop List Indicator ................................................................................................................................. 17

Quick Search Links ................................................................................................................................ 17

Name and Demographics Column ......................................................................................................... 17

Address Info ......................................................................................................................................... 18

Work, Church, and Education ................................................................................................................ 18

Member Account Information ............................................................................................................... 18

Stages and Courses Panel............................................................................................................. 19

Recruiting Panel .......................................................................................................................... 19

Recruiting Stages Overview ................................................................................................................... 20

Recruiting Stage Operations .................................................................................................................. 20

Adding a New Stage ...................................................................................................................................................... 20

Updating a Stage’s Status ............................................................................................................................................. 21


Manage Existing Stages and Statuses ........................................................................................................................... 21

Recruiting Tracking Bar ......................................................................................................................... 23

Enrollment and Last Year/Term .................................................................................................................................... 23

Recruiting Sliders .................................................................................................................................. 23

Recruiting Trip Quick Actions ................................................................................................................ 23

Alerts Panel ................................................................................................................................. 24

Alert Operations ................................................................................................................................... 24

Adding an Alert ............................................................................................................................................................. 25

Editing/Deleting an Alert .............................................................................................................................................. 26

All Alerts View ...................................................................................................................................... 26

Notes Panel ................................................................................................................................. 27

Status and Action ................................................................................................................................. 28

The Notes Grid ..................................................................................................................................... 28

Creating a Note ............................................................................................................................................................. 28

Note Privacy .................................................................................................................................................................. 29

Editing a Note ............................................................................................................................................................... 30

Automated Notes ......................................................................................................................................................... 30

Adding a Member ....................................................................................................... 32

Editing a Member ....................................................................................................... 34

Tabs of Edit Member Screen ........................................................................................................ 34

General Information ............................................................................................................................. 34

Relationship Management ........................................................................................................................................... 35

Mailing Information .............................................................................................................................. 36

Zip Code Verification .................................................................................................................................................... 37

Non-US Addresses ........................................................................................................................................................ 37

Adding a New Primary or Alternate Address ................................................................................................................ 37

Editing/Deleting an Alternate Address ......................................................................................................................... 38

Demographic Information ..................................................................................................................... 39

Employment / Education ...................................................................................................................... 40

Primary Degree(s) ......................................................................................................................................................... 40

Scholarship ................................................................................................................................................................... 41

College(s) (Previous Education) .................................................................................................................................... 41

Other Information ................................................................................................................................ 42

Finish Editing a Contact ................................................................................................................ 44


Searching for Members ............................................................................................... 45

Basic Search ................................................................................................................................ 45

Advanced Search ......................................................................................................................... 45

Search Results ............................................................................................................................. 46

Checklist ..................................................................................................................... 48

Understanding the Checklist Interface ......................................................................................... 48

All Incomplete Tab ................................................................................................................................ 48

Upcoming Tab ...................................................................................................................................... 48

Expired Tab .......................................................................................................................................... 48

Completed Tab ..................................................................................................................................... 48

All Tab .................................................................................................................................................. 48

Filter Options ....................................................................................................................................... 48

Understanding the Grid Columns ................................................................................................. 49

Incomplete Alerts Columns ................................................................................................................... 49

Completed Alerts Columns .................................................................................................................... 49

Managing Checklist Alerts ............................................................................................................ 50

Action Series Item................................................................................................................................. 50

Normal Alerts ....................................................................................................................................... 51

Actions and Action Series ........................................................................................... 52

Action Series to Alert Conversion Nightly Process ........................................................................ 52

Action Management .................................................................................................................... 52

Adding/Editing an Action ...................................................................................................................... 53

Phone Fields .................................................................................................................................................................. 53

Letter Fields .................................................................................................................................................................. 53

Edit Mode ..................................................................................................................................................................... 53

Action Series Management .......................................................................................................... 53

Creating a Series ................................................................................................................................... 55

Creating Series Steps ............................................................................................................................ 55

Editing a Series ..................................................................................................................................... 56

Editing a Series Step ............................................................................................................................. 57

Phone Scripts............................................................................................................................... 57

Creating a Phone Script ......................................................................................................................... 57

Editing a Phone Script ........................................................................................................................... 58


Important Dates .......................................................................................................................... 58

Creating an Important Date .................................................................................................................. 59

Editing an Important Date ..................................................................................................................... 59

Action Series Dashboard .............................................................................................................. 59

Letters ........................................................................................................................ 61

Managing Letters ......................................................................................................................... 61

Adding / Editing Letters ............................................................................................................... 61

WYSIWYG Interface .............................................................................................................................. 62

Field Replacements ....................................................................................................................................................... 62

HTML or Design Mode .................................................................................................................................................. 63

Pasting from MS Word ................................................................................................................................................. 64

Previewing Letter ................................................................................................................................. 64

Saving Letters ....................................................................................................................................... 64

Themes ....................................................................................................................................... 64

Signatures ................................................................................................................................... 65

Uploading a Signature Image ................................................................................................................ 65

Adding / Editing a Signature .................................................................................................................. 68

Mail Merge ................................................................................................................. 70

Single Mail Merge ........................................................................................................................ 70

Email Recommendations ...................................................................................................................... 72

Final Results of Single Merge ................................................................................................................ 73

Mass Mail Merge ......................................................................................................................... 73

The Campaign Screen ............................................................................................................................ 75

Reporting .................................................................................................................... 76

Further Reporting Training ........................................................................................................... 78

Duplicate Detection and Merging ............................................................................... 79

Guided Search ............................................................................................................................. 79

Search by ID ................................................................................................................................ 80

Finalize Merge Confirmation Screen ............................................................................................. 82

Restore Function ......................................................................................................................... 83

Merging Warnings and Practices .................................................................................................. 83


Introduction The EGEN Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System is a powerful web-based tool built on the .NET

Framework. The primary goal for the CRM is to help RTS manage contacts, prospects, students, and other

constituents. The Virtual Campus has an additional subset of tools which has replaced its long used Virtual

Management System (VMS) for students. Admissions will heavily use CRM to manage recruits and prospective

students. The system effectively replaces the VMS and most of the PowerCAMPUS features for admissions,

though, some PowerCAMPUS features will have to be used to transition prospects into students.

What Is EGEN? EGEN is a brand developed by TradeWeb, Inc. When one refers to EGEN, they are actually talking about the

brand and not a particular product under that umbrella brand of components. RTS currently uses the EGEN

ListServe (mass mailings), EGEN CMS (content management system for website), and now EGEN CRM. Other

systems use the EGEN platform for security, such as: online application, alumni portal, iTunes U, Course

Notebooks, etc. This is moving RTS closer to a single-sign-on (SSO) platform for all developed tools. This means,

the same login is shared between systems.

Sites The CRM has two current site locations.

Live Database https://crm.rts.edu

Dev Database http://crmdev.rts.edu

Use the Dev database (short for development) to test features or ideas before doing them on the live site if you

are afraid it may negatively impact the live data if done incorrectly.

Terminology The following terminology or concepts may be discussed multiple times throughout this guide, review them here

to get a basic understanding.

Term(s) Picture and/or Description

Member / Record / Person Member, Record, Person, etc. will refer to a record in the system. The technical name for a record and all associated data is a Member. The system also has an organization mode that is similar but different than a member.

User / Admin User or Admin refers to the person using the CRM, aka, staff and student worker. It does not refer to the record in the database they are looking up.

Growl

A growl is usually a delayed-fading notification that appears on the top right of the screen after an operation. It can be a success or error. Clicking the “X” in the top left of a growl will make it disappear.

Dev Dev typically stands for Development and is a test site or environment. Do not save critical things to a dev

https://crm.rts.edu/

http://crmdev.rts.edu/


site or database, as it can be overwritten at any time with a copy of live or otherwise.

Context Menu A context menu is a term that refers to a menu specific to some context. In the CRM, it refers to the context of right clicking on a row and getting a series of options. This is most usually seen on member records, where right clicking or mousing over a column will display additional information or options within the context of that member. Right Click Context Menu Example:

Mouse-Over Context Menu Example:

System Administrator The ultimate person of technical responsibility and

knowledge about the system, who typically has full rights to the entire software.


Logging In The CRM uses the EGEN database for the login credentials. If you already have an EGEN login elsewhere, it will

be the same here (see above section “What Is EGEN” for more details). When you arrive at the website, you will

be presented with a login screen.

Supply your email and password and choose a session length. The session length is a period of x hours (default

is 3 hours) in which your login will be valid at the current computer. If you are on a private or office computer

that only you use, a longer session is appropriate. If you are at a public computer, you should pick a short

session and always be sure to logout before stepping away.

Login Failure If you type your password incorrectly, or forget your login, you will receive a message on screen in red indicating

the username / password combination is incorrect. After five unsuccessful login attempts your account will be

locked and you will be unable to login until the lock is cleared. If the account is locked, you will need to contact

the system administrator to unlock it.

Incorrect Password Locked Account Incorrect Email

Forgot Password If you forget your password, you can click the forgot password link. This will email your login a new, randomly

generated one. You will first be prompted to input your email. If the email exists in the system, you get

redirected to a page asking for the old password (which is the one emailed to you) and two boxes to

create/confirm a new password.


Step 1 Step 2

If you do not use the “Reset Password” form in step 2 for some reason, you will simply need to login at the main

screen with the temporary password and then manually change it.

Change Password (logged in) If you need to change your password for any reason after you have logged in you can go to the top right of the

screen and hover over the “My Account” link. This will display a drop down of options, one of which is change

password. A pop up window appears and asks you for your old (current) password as well as a pair of new and

confirm boxes to input a new password. If the operation is successful, you will see a “growl” message appear on

the top right of the screen that indicates the password was changed.

Step 1 Step 2

Step 3

Renewing a Login Session If you do not log out of the system, or have been logged in a long while, your screen will pop up with a renew

login session message as your login is near expiration.

Clicking OK will renew the session if it hasn’t already expired. If you do not click OK in time, you will possibly

receive additional pop ups or growls and then get bounced to the login screen on your next action.


User Preferences One of the most important things to do when you first log into the system the very first time is to set your

preferences. At the top right of the screen, there is a “My Account” link. Hovering over the link will display a

drop down menu of options. The “Preferences” option is the one to pick.

Step 1 Step 2

A pop up window appears when you choose preferences. From here, you can setup a lot of default options.

Below we will cover each option. Some options save upon change, others require you to click a specific “Save”

button.

Default Campus The default campus is the campus that will be automatically selected in various areas (privacy, letters, filters, etc.). You can only choose from the campuses in which you have rights to manage.

Initials Initials are what shows up on Notes and other areas to reference who created the record.

System View System view allows the user to change from Member to Organization mode. RTS is not currently using Organization mode, so everyone should remain on Member for the system view.

Dashboard Settings The “dashboard” refers to the screen when viewing a member’s information (Member Dashboard). It is broken down into a series of panels. You have three options for each panel: hide, remove, or show. Hide will simply collapse the panel so it isn’t immediately visible, but the information can be expanded to be viewed. Remove will remove the panel and all that information will not be visible at all. Not checking either box means it will show the panel and all information by default. See the section entitled “Member Dashboard” for more details.


Email Settings The email settings simply allow you to have a CC or BCC email address(es) on all emails sent from the system. This can be changed for individual letters as well, but this setting always defaults some value into those fields. For more information, see section entitled “Single Mail Merge”.


The Menu The menu on the CRM is tailored to your login, campus association, and other factors. One person’s menu may

be different looking than another’s.

As you mouse-over the menu, a drop down will appear if one exists. It will present you with specific options

under that menu category.

In the top right of the menu, you will find a welcome message that displays your name. You will also see the

“My Account” link that allows you to change preferences, logout, or change password. If you hover your mouse

over your name, you will see when your login session is set to expire. Hovering over “My Account” will bring up

the drop down for your account options.

Session Expire Time My Account Options Menu

The search box below the “My Account” section is a predictive text mechanism. This means, as you type it will

try to guess who you are looking for and give you options. Search is performed by typing a last name, comma +

space, and first name. You can click a result to view that person’s information page, or, hit enter. If only one

name exists based on your search, you will automatically go to that page. If multiple results exist, it will take you

to the advanced search page. Inactive records are not returned or visible in this search. See the section

“Searching for Members” for more information.


The Home Screen After you have logged into the CRM, you will encounter the home screen. This is a special page that acts as a

dashboard. It shows members recently viewed, modified, or all people you have been assigned, as well as the

10 upcoming / expired alerts that have been assigned to you. Some quick links and important dates are also

present.

Recent Members The recent members area on the home screen breaks down into three tabs: Recently Viewed, Recently

Modified, and View All. The two recent views will refresh and display the appropriate people on your screen,

whereas clicking View All will display all contacts who are assigned to you as counselees. The View All tab takes

you to another page away from the home screen.

Recently Viewed shows the last 10 records you viewed.


Recently Modified shows the last 10 records you changed.

Recent Members Grid Functions

The pencil icon to the right of each record is a quick button to take you into edit mode on that persons

account.

Clicking the email address in the email column will open Outlook or similar email client software on your

machine, placing that email into the TO line of the email.

Clicking the name of the person (or the icon left of the name) will take you to their profile page.

If you hover over the name of a person, it will pop up the contact information of that person. Simply

move the mouse out of the blue box of contact information to make the pop up disappear.*

If you right click on a row a context menu will pop up that will allow you to perform certain actions. The

row will highlight in orange.*

*Note: Most grids listing people across the system have advanced features like the two mentioned here.

Current Alerts The current alerts area lists the 10 most upcoming / expired alerts assigned to you that are not yet completed.

Nothing can really be done from this preview screen; it simply serves as a quick reminder of what needs to be

done. The “View More” link is the gateway into the powerful checklist area of the software.


Other Home Page Features Two other home page features exist: Quicklinks and Important Dates. The Quicklinks area has some common

tasks that jump you into the page to accomplish what is needed. Important dates merely list any important

dates for the current month that have been input into the system.

Quicklinks Important Dates


The Member Dashboard The most involved screen in the system is the member dashboard. For each member, this screen will display

virtually anything about the person. The page is broken into five panels. The panels can be collapsed or

removed if not needed. Collapsed just means the panel is shrunk down or minimized. All the data can be

viewed by expanding it. Users will probably want to collapse a panel that they occasionally need to look at, but

not consistently enough to warrant it being fully visible on page load. Users will probably want to remove a

panel if they never look at it. One example of a panel most may remove is the “Stages and Courses” panel,

which is primarily a Virtual campus function.

Demographics Panel The demographics panel is the top most panel and contains all contact information, demographics, and key

information about a user. Some functions can be performed within this panel and a lot of links can direct people

to other areas of the site. We will review this in-depth below.

Top of the Panel

The top of the demographics panel lists various information and has a couple of links to perform certain actions.

Clicking “Edit Contact” will take you into edit mode.

Clicking the email address on the record will allow Outlook or similar mail client to open with the email

in the TO line of the email.

Clicking “Send Letter” will bring up the pop up panel to generate a merge letter (word or email format)

to send to the user. See the “Single Mail Merge” section to learn about this feature.


Clicking “Hide” will collapse the panel. If the panel is hidden, it will instead display “Show”. This is how

you toggle any panel that is not removed on this screen.

Stop List Indicator

If the person has an active stop, two graphical displays alert the user of this fact. First is that the panel bar gets

small stop sign icons on both sides of the person’s name. The second is a friendly “growl” message pops up on

the screen. Unlike other growls in the system, this one does not go away unless the user clicks the X in it. The

stop sign icons and growl will be present on every visit to this user’s page until the stop is cleared.

Stop Sign Icons Growl

Quick Search Links

Many of the labels on the demographics panel have a link. If the link is clicked, it will take the user to the

advanced search page and may default the search to a specific type of search. For example, clicking the label

“City” will take the user to the advanced search page and make the search default to the city field in the

database. So if you wanted to search for anyone with an address in the city of “Rancho Cucamonga” the search

would return all those users.

Name and Demographics Column

The name and demographics column contains some key elements about the person. Things to note about this

column:

Campuses: Indicates which campus the person is associated with. Can be more than one, or none, as

well.

Foreign IDs: Lists all IDs from other systems (PowerCAMPUS, Raiser’s Edge, etc.). This column is where

you will find the student ID number.

Former Names: Maiden or Former Names appear here

Date of Birth: The age is calculated based on the date for convenience; it is in parenthesis after the DOB.

Relationships: This is a special area where relationships to people can be listed. Spouse information

typically goes here, but the CRM allows for all sorts of relationship associations. If the person exists in

the CRM, they can be linked to and if they are linked, clicking the link of the name of the person will take

you to that person’s page.


Address Info

All primary address and contact information is here. Things to note about this column:

No Contact: This indicates the person should not be contacted if set to YES/True.

Emails: The CRM can list more than the primary email. Alternate or duplicate emails can appear. The

label next to the email address indicates which it is in the system. Only the admin can delete an email

labeled as a duplicate email at this time. This distinction is from the import of Virtual campus data and

indicates this person shared an email with someone else who may or may not have been a duplicate

record.

Call Pref: This is the preferred time to reach someone. You may want to pay attention to it before

calling someone or to plan the best time to call someone.

Work, Church, and Education

The work, church, and education column displays most of the information concerning those topics. Things to

note about this column:

Ministry Name: This is a designated space to track what ministry the person is currently associated

with.

Ministry Position: If they are associated with a ministry, they can have their position listed.

Colleges: This indicates what degrees they have earned at other institutions

RTS Programs: This indicates what program they are either interested in or accepted into at RTS. There

can be more than one.

Scholarships: This field indicates what kind of scholarship the person is receiving or should receive.

There can be more than one.

Member Account Information

The final column displays information about the member’s record. Things to note about this column:

Primary Roles: A list of what the person is in the system (student, prospect, staff, etc.). A person will

likely be in more than one role.

Counselors: This indicates who is a counselor for this person. There can be more than one.

Active User: Indicates whether the person is active. A person may be made inactive if they have no

interest in RTS, is an invalid record, or some other reason. An inactive user, by default, doesn’t get

returned in search results.

Stops: If the person has any active stops, the number of them appears. Clicking the link allows one to

manage the stops on the user account.

Alerts: Lists the active alerts. Clicking the link takes the user to a management screen to view them all.

Two buttons next to the link allow the person to view all or create a new alert. This can also be

accomplished via the alert panel on this page below the demographics grid.

Update Date: Shows the last date and time when the record was updated (meaning, profile

information).

Referral Type: Indicates the type of way the person found out about RTS (or how they made first

contact)

Referred By: Lists what specifically referred them to RTS or where they made first contact.

Merged From: If a record has been merged, the old shell account of the old merged record can be

viewed in part.


Restore: Experimental function, may be able to restore a merged user.

One last note is that at the very bottom of this column is a special link, “View All Addresses / History”. Clicking

this link will pop up a new window that displays all the alternative / historical addresses for the record.

Stages and Courses Panel The stages and courses panel is largely a Virtual campus panel. Most will probably remove it from their

dashboard view. It is a compact way at looking at the recruiting stage information and any active courses being

taken. These features will not be covered in this user guide, but in a supplement guide for Virtual campus.

Recruiting Panel The recruiting panel has a lot of features and graphical displays. This is where the matriculation cycle is tracked

for the prospect. An important item to note is that the top right has a “Pick Campus” drop down. Each campus

has its own unique tracking cycle for the record. The campus will default to your campus of preference in this

drop down.

Top half of panel:


Bottom half of panel:

Recruiting Stages Overview

The major grid of recruiting stages is at the top of the recruiting panel. This lists, by order of stage cycle

position, where the person is in the recruiting process. The master record for each unique stage lists the stage

name, campus, original stage date, most recent status, withdrawn date (if applicable), group, year, and term.

The last column is an action link that lets you make a new status update for the stage.

You will notice in the above screenshot that there are two visit stages. This would indicate there were two,

rather distinct, visit sessions. In most circumstances only one stage will exist for each stage type. If it is part of

the same recruiting cycle the status gets updated for the stage instead of inserting a whole new stage record. A

good example of when two distinct stages should exist is if a person inquires for Fall 2008, and then inquired

again in 2011. Those are distinct recruiting cycles. Same goes for applications. If the person applied to MA in

2008 and is now applying to MDiv in 2011, those should be two separate stages. However, if you are simply

updating the fact the prospect has changed from an incomplete application to a completed application, this is

where a new status update is most appropriate.

Recruiting Stage Operations

The following section is a description of how to do basic operations

within the recruiting stage panel.

Adding a New Stage

Adding a new stage is done when the prospect has progressed to

the next stage of the matriculation cycle. Sometimes stages may

also need to be back-entered for reporting purposes. Duplicate

stage types should only be input if it is a unique recruiting event in

addition to one that already exists. Such as two separate

applications. In most circumstances, the person will only have one

recruiting cycle within one campus. To add a new stage, click the

“Add” link on the top left of the panel. A pop up window will

appear.

Notes about the fields on the pop up:

Stage Type: The type of stage in the matriculation cycle.

Stage Date: The date the stage occurs, defaults to current date

Status Date: The date the status (typically same as stage date, defaults to current date)

Withdraw Date: This is only pertinent if the person withdraws from the process


Group/Role: This is the recruiting group or degree program.

Status: The initial status when the stage is first created. This is required.

Workgroup: The campus the stage needs to be associated with

Year / Term: The year/term the person is targeting for the stage.

Other notes:

Depending on if the person has had other stages input, certain information will default based on the last status

update for any stage for that person. Example: If the Year/Term was setup before, it will default to the last

Year/Term input. First time entries should default the workgroup to your campus preference setting on your

account.

When all information has been input as needed, click the “Add New Stage” button and the new stage will be

created. This also creates a mirrored status update based on the initial stage information.

Updating a Stage’s Status

In most circumstances, you will update the status of a stage

when something new has occurred during that stage. When

you are ready to update the status for a stage, click the

“Update Status” link at the right of the row for the specified

stage. A pop up window will appear.

Notes about the fields:

Stage Type: This cannot be changed, as you are

updating a given stage type

Status Date: The date of the update, defaults to

current date.

Withdraw Date: Only pertinent if the person is

withdrawing during this stage

Group/Role: Degree or recruiting group, defaults to last group/role input

Status: The status of the stage, defaults to latest status for that given stage type

Year/Term: The year and term of the projected stage, defaults to latest year/term input

Some general notes:

When adding the status update, most fields will pull whatever the last value for the last input status date.

Status updates may need to be back entered, but they will default to the current date. Once it is added, the grid

will update to reflect the latest status update (assuming the date is the most recent for the stage and wasn’t

back entered). The stage status history will also reflect the new status alongside the existing status updates for

the stage.

Manage Existing Stages and Statuses

Clicking the arrow at the very left column of each stage will either collapse or expand all the extended details

about that recruiting stage. You typically view this if you need to see the complete history of updates about a

stage.


If you made a mistake at the stage level, you can click the value in the “Stage” or “Campus” area to edit the base

stage information. Note that all information can be modified, however, if you are doing a status update, do not

edit the base stage as you will lose original information. Simply choose the update status link on the row at the

right to add a new update. Also note the delete link, when clicked, it will delete the base stage and all

associated status updates for that stage.

You will notice from the subset of updates that at the far right, an edit button exists. If you made a mistake on a

stage, you can click that to edit it. Note that you cannot change the stage type. Also note the delete link next to

the edit status button. Clicking this will delete the status update.


Recruiting Tracking Bar

The tracking bar is similar to a thermometer display. As the person progresses through the matriculation cycle,

the bars become colored toward the right. Note though that only stages that have been created will color in the

particular segment of the cycle. In the example below, the person has gone all the way through and

matriculated, but never had a first contact stage input into the system.

This bar is unique to each campus based on the stages that have been input.

Enrollment and Last Year/Term

Nested below the recruit tracking bar is a place to store the expected enrollment date (a literal day in time) and

a display of the last Year/Term based on the most recent status update. These are both used to estimate when

the person is going to enroll or did enroll.

Expected Enrollment Date Last Year/Term

Recruiting Sliders

The recruiting box provides three sliders to help quantitatively rank certain priorities of recruits. These will be

most helpful for reporting and finding the recruits that need the most attention, but on the individual level they

help indicate how likely a person is to enroll and what priority should be placed on them relative to other

prospects. These metrics are unique to each campus, so if the person was more likely to go to one campus than

another, this could be compared in a report. To update these, simply click a position on the bar and the system

will update it automatically. The sliders are as follows:

Recruit’s Perceived Interest: What this metric is subjectively rating is how interested the person is in

RTS. Based on interactions with the person, it should be able to be ranked as to how interested they

really are in coming to RTS.

Recruit Priority: This simply ranks how much priority staff should place on the particular recruit. For

example, if the chancellor is trying to influence this prospect to come to RTS, they may have more

priority than someone who has indicated they are more interested in going to another school or has

shaky qualifications.

Likelihood Rating: This bar is less subjective than the others, but it is used to rate how likely the

prospect is to actually come to RTS. For example, if the person has only applied to RTS, they will be

more likely to come here than someone who has applied to four or five schools. Generally, it is thought

that this should coincide to how far they move on the matriculation cycle, but some considerations may

boost how high or low this actually is for the campus.

Recruiting Trip Quick Actions

This is an experimental feature that is not yet finished. What it will do in the future is allow admissions to insert

the fact they met the person at a particular conference. Reports could then be run to pull all who were met at

particular conferences.


Alerts Panel Alerts are the primary means of tracking information and activities for most campuses. Virtual will more heavily

use Notes, but all other campuses will be heavily focusing on alerts and using Alerts for their notes as well.

Alerts are essentially like scheduled actions in PowerCAMPUS. They are identifiable tasks or activities that are

completed on a person’s account. Reports will be created and heavily based on alerts to track overall progress

by admissions staff.

Notes about the columns in this grid:

Action: The first column, blank, has a simple icon. This icon corresponds to an action (if one is selected)

on the alert. Clicking it will generally pop up a box to generate a letter or reveal a call script.

Alert Type: The type of alert. These will be more generic in nature.

Responsible: The staff member responsible for completing the alert.

Create Date: The date the alert was created.

Schedule Date: This is the date that the alert and/or action should be completed on. If the date and

time of the scheduled date is less than the current date and time, a red text notification appears telling

you it has “expired” and should probably be completed as soon as possible.

Series: If the alert is actually a scheduled action series, this column will populate to allow you to

manage the series for that person.

Completed: A checkbox that indicates whether the alert was completed. Clicking it will automatically

complete or un-complete the alert.

Notes: The notes, if any are present, load below the alert information so that they are easily readable.

Alert Operations

The alerts panel has many features similar to the checklist, albeit, it is the “checklist” for the specific user being

viewed. Alerts can be easily added, managed, and completed without leaving this screen. This screen however,

limits the results to the most recent 25 alerts. If there are more than 25 alerts, one will have to click a view

more link to view the complete history. The alerts are loaded based on scheduled date descending, meaning the

alerts with the latest scheduled date appear first. This ensures older alerts do not appear on the dashboard and

only relevant/current information is presented.


Adding an Alert

At the top left of the alerts panel is a link to create “New Alert”. Clicking this link will open a pop up window

that will allow you to input all alert information:

Notes about these fields:

Alert ID: Typically this is a more generic identifier for an alert. Things like “Phone Call”, “Follow Up

Email”, etc. would be presented here and shared by all campuses.

CRM ID: The ID of the user this alert is being assigned (read only)

Create Date: The date the alert is created by the user (read only)

Created By: The email of the person creating the alert (read only)

Schedule Date: The Date and Time of the alert. This can be typed in an acceptable US date format, or,

the date picker can be used to select the date.

Assigned To: This is where you will decide who the alert should be assigned to.

Action: This is an optional, though important drop down. If the alert needs a pre-defined action

associated with it (specific letter, specific phone call script) it would be selected here as to be completed

with the alert. Some alerts may not need this (such as inputting a general note about the fact the

person called the RTS office with a question), but the action will likely be defined in all planned

interactions with the prospect.

Completed: The completed checkbox indicates whether the alert was completed. If it is clicked, two

other options appear.


o Completed Date: The date the alert was completed.

o Completed By: The person who completed the alert (may not be the same as the person who

scheduled it)

Alert Notes: The notes on the alert. Should not really be HTML, just words and line breaks. These can

be fairly long but we recommend only putting in the notes what needs to go there so that the database

doesn’t grow terribly over time and that it is easy to read about the note on the dashboard.

When finished inputting information, click “Save Changes”. At a minimum, the scheduled date and assigned to

fields should always be filled out. This will cause the page to refresh and show the new note in the list

(assuming 25 other notes scheduled at a later date do not exist).

Editing/Deleting an Alert

To edit an alert (or mark it as completed) you can click the alert name in the alert type column to bring up the

pop up window. All information that has been input previously will load into the form.

The form is exactly the same as the add new alert form, minus one difference. A delete link is present below the

notes box. Clicking it will delete the alert and all associated data on it. For details on the fields, read the add

alert section above.

All Alerts View

As users get numerous alerts, it may be appropriate to review a full listing of them. There are two ways to get to

this from the dashboard.

1. If more than 25 alerts are present on the alerts panel, a “View All” link appears at the bottom left below

the last alert.

2. In the grid of demographic information in the demographic panel, a link to view all alerts is present.


Alerts Panel Demographics Panel

Clicking either link will take you to the page to view all the alerts the person has ever had.

For the most part, all the same functionality is here on this screen as it was on the member dashboard. The

main difference is that the notes are not fully in view, and instead of seeing the “Create Date” we get to see the

“Completed Date”. At the top right, a link to return to the person’s profile is present for easy navigation. The

top left is the link to create a new alert. Also, the completed column cannot be checked to automatically

complete the alert, unlike the checklist or dashboard version of this display.

If you hover over the note field, a blue box will pop up and display the full content of the note:

Notes Panel The note’s panel is the final panel on the dashboard screen. There are three primary operations here: update

status, update action, read/create notes. The status and action items may be more pertinent to the Virtual

campus, and most campuses will be using Alerts to manage all interactions with the prospect. However, several

actions input a note automatically and the notes allow for greater levels of privacy and other details. They are

also a good spot to put things that may not really need to go into the Alerts panel.


Status and Action

The status drop down allows the user to pick the current status for the person. It more or less classifies the

current role or situation the person belongs in for tracking purposes. The action drop down can be used to

indicate the last action performed on the persons account or the last action the person has taken. It is used

mostly for tracking purposes. Both of these items should have a complete history of when these values were

changed in the notes as well as in the database.

The Notes Grid

The notes grid is where you can read previous notes. Similar to alerts, the number of results returned is limited

to the last 25 items. To view all notes, a link below the final note is present which will allow you to view the full

history of notes. This limitation is mostly an efficiency issue for helping load the page faster and reducing the

strain on the database. At the launch of the CRM, Virtual had over 500,000 notes in 10 years of use, and this will

grow once all campuses use the system.

The columns in the grid are simple:

Date: Date of the note

Type: Type of note

Person: The initials of the person who created the note

Note: The actual note itself, fully rendered to display cleanly.

Recycle: The recycle cup next to each note will allow you to delete the note

Creating a Note

Creating a note is accomplished by clicking the “New Note” link at the top left of the notes grid. A pop up will

appear on screen and allow you to create the new note.


The fields are very simplistic. You can choose a type for the note and either type or paste a note into the

textbox. The note can be fairly long, but we believe the more concise the better. The only other options are

related to the privacy of the notes. Notes are different than alerts in that they can be set to be only visible by a

campus, a department, a person, or any combination of them.

Note Privacy

Clicking the “Show” item will expand the notes privacy options:

By Workgroup (Campus) The workgroup box is a drop down list where multiple campuses can be selected. If no campus is selected, and no other settings are set, everyone will have full access to read the note. Campus selections can be combined with a role to further limit access to the note to people in the selected campus with the selected role. By default, it will always check the campus of preference for the campus when creating a new note.

By Role The roles are limited to the three primary role groups in the CRM: crm_admin super admin of system crm_user what most people will be crm_public read only users If not combined with a campus, only those in that role will be able to read the note.


By User The by user setting for privacy is in addition to the other two fields. Specific users can be allowed access to a note, and if no other settings are set, only those users will be able to see the note. This is particularly helpful if only certain people should be allowed to see a specific note for privacy reasons.

As mentioned above, the Campus + Role selections can be combined to limit or not limit the note access to a

very specific group of users. The “By User” area acts independently in its security from the other areas. If

nothing is selected in any of the three options, the note will be available to everyone in the CRM.

Editing a Note

Clicking the date of a note will allow you to bring up edit mode.

The edit mode window is very similar to the create note pop up, however, it allows you to edit the date and time

of the note and gives you the option to delete the note. The privacy box is the same as on the create note (see

Note Privacy above to learn about note privacy settings).

The only thing to really pull away from editing a note is that a small notation will exist on the bottom of the note

to indicate who last edited it.

Automated Notes

Many actions across the system will generate an automated note to indicate who did what and when they did it

on the persons account. Many of these notes may even provide a link to the related resource.


Some examples:

Email/Word merge is done on the persons account

Action or Status update

Profile update

Former education record added

New RTS degree added

New stop added

Exam Requested (Virtual feature)


Adding a Member One of the activities that will be done every day is adding new members to the database. There are some

safeguards in place to help ensure a person who already exists is not input into the database again on the main

add member screen. However, we highly recommend doing a full member search before entering the

information for the user or heading to the create member screen. The full search on any information you have

outside a first name, last name, or email will help definitively show if the person exists or not already. Please

see the section “Searching for Members” for information on how to do this in the CRM.

To begin the add process, go under the “Member Management” option on the menu and choose “Add

Member”. A link also exists on the home screen. When you arrive at this page, you will see three fields and two

checkboxes.

First Name: The first name (not nickname or middle name)

Last Name: The last name (not a maiden name)

Email: If you know the persons email address, input it here

View all matching: This will return everyone with the last name that has been input. If this is not

checked, it will only match on first name + last name both being the same as other records.

Include Email: If checked, this will search for duplicate email addresses for this user regardless of the

name input. By default, it is always checked.

It is highly recommended that you always check the “View all matching” and “Include Email” checkboxes on this

form.

Once you’ve typed all information you have about this user, please hit the “Add New Contact” button. If no

potential duplicate is found, it will automatically bounce you to the edit member screen. If however, a possible

duplicate is found, a pop up will appear.


If none of these members match who you are creating, you can click the “confirm and create contact” button

below the grid. If they do match however, do not create the member. Instead, double click the row and the

system will redirect you to the existing record so you can further investigate and update that contact in the

system accordingly. But if no existing record is appropriate, go ahead and click the create contact button, which

will take you to the edit screen.


Editing a Member There are a lot of different ways to get to the edit member screen. The most common will be directly after the

member is first created. The other most common will be from a link on the top left of the Member Dashboard

page for a given member. Other links from the home screen or elsewhere may have a pencil icon or context

menu to enter the edit screen. Regardless of how it is done, the edit screen is where the bulk of the contact,

demographic, and degree information will be input.

Home Screen Member Dashboard

Tabs of Edit Member Screen The edit member screen itself is broken into a series of tabs. You can access each tab and the information input

on the tabs will be maintained until you are ready to hit save (unless you refresh or cancel the page). Some

items will also be updated instantaneously by the page (such as adding a degree, record type, etc.)

General Information

Mailing Information

Demographic Information

Employment / Education

Other Information

General Information

The general information tab has name, status, relationship, and campus affiliation.

Title: The prefix to a person’s name, such as Mr., Mrs., Dr., Rev., etc.

First Name: The first name of the person

Middle Name: The middle name of the person

Last Name: The last name of the person


Suffix: The trailing element on a name, such as Jr., III, Esq., etc.

Former/Maiden Name: Name prior to marriage, previous marriage, or otherwise.

Nickname: This would be the name the person may go by instead of another name. Such as “Mike”

when the person’s name is Michael. Another common practice for international students (especially

from Asian countries) is to adopt an English name, this would be an appropriate place to input that

name vs. the legal name of the person.

Status: This correlates to the Quick Status Update on the Member Dashboard in the notes panel.

Account ID: This is the ID of the person in the CRM, the actual CRM primary key.

Campuses: A person can be in zero or many campuses, but most will be in one. A drop down and add

button allows the user to add a campus to the member. This is updated automatically without need to

hit the main update button. Clicking the red “X” will delete the campus.

Marital Status: If you know the persons marital status, it can be selected here.

Relationships: Relationships are a robust way of listing names of key people associated with the contact,

or for linking actual CRM records together. Spouse will be the most typical relationship input into the

system.

Relationship Management

Existing relationships will show up with red “X” next to the name. Clicking the “X” will automatically delete that

relationship. To add a new one, click the “Add” link below the list. This will pop up a new window.

Step 1 Step 2

Notes: First Name: First name of related person Last Name: Last name of related person Relationship Type: A preset list of relationship types exist to explain how this person is related to the contact

If the person happens to have a record in the CRM database, you can click on the “search” button to perform a

search of the CRM database. If records are found, it will display below the fields you have input. Simply click

the name to select it and then hit “Save”. If you do not click a record in the search results, it will not link to

another CRM record.

Not Selected Selected


Once you’ve hit save, the edit member screen will refresh and list the new relationship record alongside the

others.

Mailing Information

The mailing information tab contains all contact information. At the bottom of this screen, alternative addresses

are also available in the event the person has older addresses or alternate types of addresses for reference. The

one that displays on the screen by default is the primary address for the record. If you wish to add a new

address and keep the current as an archived address, you should always use the “Add New Address” button at

the bottom left of the screen.

Type: The type of address. These are predefined options such as personal, business, etc.

Address Lines 1-3: Depending on the type of address, there may be three lines needed.

City: The city of the address

State: This displays a drop down if the database has states for the given country. This defaults to

Alabama.

Postal Code: The zip or postal code for the address.

Country: The country, this defaults to United States.


County: The county the person is in if applicable.

Territory: This is a loose designation. Depending on the person, a value could be typed here. It could be

a geographical region or used to indicate a person is an international student.

Email: The primary email for the person.

Alternate Email: If the person has multiple emails, the alternate can be input here (or on an alternate

address record).

Home Phone: The home phone number

Work Phone: The work phone or office phone.

Mobile Phone: The person’s cell phone or other device (like a google voice account)

SMS Phone: If the person has a separate pager or cell phone for text messages, this would be the

number to put there

Fax: The fax number for this address /person.

No E-Mail: Indicates the person should not receive emails.

No Postal Mail: They should not be mailed physical letters if this is checked.

Is Billing: If the address is a billing address, this can be checked.

Is Shipping: If the address is a shipping address, this can be checked.

Zip Code Verification

If you input a zip code, you can hit the “Verify” link / checkmark next to the postal code field. This will query a

table in the database and populate certain fields automatically. So if you know the zip, you can simply input it

and it will fill out the Country, State, City, and County automatically. If you have a city + zip combination that

doesn’t exist and hit verify, nothing will happen.

Non-US Addresses

For non-US / Canadian addresses, the address form will change to have more freeform textboxes for inputting

the state. State now shows as “Region” and is a textbox. Note: Territory is NOT a place to input the state. It

will not show up on mailing addresses. Region will show up on mailing addresses for non-US/Canadian

countries.

Adding a New Primary or Alternate Address

If you need to add a new primary address and want to keep the current primary address, do not edit the form.

Click the “Add New Address” button. If you want to add an alternative address for the contact, also click this

button. A checkbox on the form will allow you to indicate what type of address it is in terms of being primary,

alternate, or inactive/archive.


Once you click the “Add New Address” button, a large pop up will appear that looks similar to the main screen.

You can input information for all the same fields.

Note the two subtle differences on this form, both being checkboxes:

Active Alternate: If this is to be considered an active address, but not the primary, this box must be

checked.

Is Primary: If this address is to be considered the new, active, primary address, this box must be

checked. When the changes get submitted, the main form will replace with this information and the old

address will become an alternate address.

Editing/Deleting an Alternate Address

A primary address cannot be deleted outright. However, any address that appears in the alternate block can be

edited or deleted. Simply double click the item you wish (the first click will highlight the row) and it will pop up

the same screen as the “Add New Address” button above.


The only difference is the “Remove” address button will now be enabled. So if that button is clicked, the

alternate address can be deleted. Otherwise, hitting submit changes will submit the changes. As with adding a

new address, if you check the “active alternate” or “is primary” the address will be considered either an active

alternate or the new primary address.

Demographic Information

The demographic information tab is one of the more simplistic of the edit contact tabs. It consists of three

primary items: traditional demographics, referral information, and religious information.

Gender: The sex of the contact, if known.

Ethnicity: This is using the older PowerCAMPUS criteria, not the IPEDS criteria

Citizenship: This is a selector to pick a country of citizenship.

Language: If they do not speak English, something else can be input here for reference

Date of Birth: Use the date picker or type the DOB in an acceptable US date format.

Referral Type: A predefined list of referral types that are general in nature.

Referred By: This is a dynamic predictive textbox. As you start typing, it will show options that already

exist. If the value already exists, simply click it. If not, type it as a new referred by value.


Church: A freeform textbox to input the church membership

Denomination: This code table initially matches what was in PowerCAMPUS, but is the denominational

affiliation of the contact

Ministry Name: If the person is involved with or works for a ministry, input it here

Ministry Position: If you know the position the person has with the ministry, type it here (things like

accountant, president, volunteer, etc.)

Employment / Education

Employment and Education tab has a lot of automatically updating fields. For the most part, all education fields

automatically update without having to hit the master update button.

Employment: both are free-form textboxes:

Profession: What is their current job title / profession / position

Employer: Who do they currently work for in their job

Education:

Primary Degree(s): These are the RTS degree programs that they are actually interested in or currently

enrolled in at RTS.

Scholarship: These are scholarships the person is currently earning or should earn.

College(s): This is where you input previous education records. It is a complex mechanism that we will

cover below.

As with all records with the red “X” next to a value, clicking it will delete the record.

Primary Degree(s)

To add a new primary degree, click the add button after choosing the degree from the drop down. Notice the

checkbox next to each degree. If it is checked, it means it is the currently active degree either in potential

interest or current enrollment. Checking or un-checking the box will activate/deactivate the degree, this update

is automatic. Unless the person is active in two degrees, only one should usually be checked.


Scholarship

If a person will earn a scholarship or is currently earning a scholarship, one or more can be input on a person’s

record. Choose the scholarship from the drop down and hit “Add”. If you need to remove a scholarship, click

the red “X”.

College(s) (Previous Education)

If the person has earned a degree from anywhere (including RTS) it should be logged here. The mechanism to

add an education record is a little complex. You start by choosing a state. If the state has colleges associated

with it, a number in parenthesis will indicate how many. This is including all US and Canadian stages / provinces.

The next step once a state is selected is to find the school. If the school doesn’t already exist, it can be entered

by choosing “Add New College” at the top of the drop down. If the state does exist, simply pick it.

After the college has been selected, simply input the Year and Degree. Then hit the add button to add a new

record.


Adding a New College

If adding a new college, this will pop up:

State: The state the college is located

Abbr: The popular abbreviation of the school (like UCF, USC, UT, etc.)

Name: This should be the full and official name of the school. No abbreviations. So UCF would be

University of Central Florida.

Hit save and the new college will appear and be selected for you on the degrees.

Editing a College

To edit an existing college record, click the pencil next to the college name.

This will pop up a window and allow you to update the information. Hit OK when done. Note: you cannot edit

the actual college. If the college is wrong, it has to be deleted and reentered from scratch.

Other Information

The final tab is the other information tab. A lot of other generic items are stored here about the person. Some

of the items on this page are very important to be set, as it can impact how and where they show up throughout

the CRM. Example: If made inactive, they will disappear in searches by default. This is a common problem when

people report they cannot find a user.


Operator ID: This is read only and indicates who first created the record

Operator Initials: Indicates the initials of who first created the record

Initial Date: The create date for the record or date of first contact, can be changed

Date Update: The last date that the contact information was updated

Active: If the user is active or not

Deceased: If the user is alive or not

Deceased Date: this will only be available if the person is set to deceased = yes

Group / Roles: This defines what group or roles the person belongs with. To add a new role, simply

select it from the drop down and hit “Add”. To delete a role, click the red “X”. These update

automatically.

Foreign System ID: This is a place to store the IDs the person has in other databases. PowerCAMPUS,

Raiser’s Edge are two examples. To add a new ID, click “Add”, which will pop up a window. Select the

system the ID belongs to, type the value of the ID in system code, and choose whether it is the primary

(in the event the person is in the same system duplicate types). Hit submit. These update

automatically. To delete a foreign ID, click the red “X” next to it.

Counselors: Most records will only be assigned to one counselor at a time. To add a new counselor,

pick a person from the drop down and hit “Add”. Only those CRM users who have a role of counselor

will show up in the drop down. To remove a counselor, hit the red “X”.

Time Zone: The time zone the person resides in

Call Time Preference: When it is best to contact the person


Finish Editing a Contact To finish editing a contact after changing the needed items on the tabs, look to the bottom right of the screen.

An “Update Contact” button is present. Click it to update the record. If it updates successfully, a growl will

appear on the top right of the screen to indicate the status.

Unless you mouse-over the growl, it will automatically disappear. If an error occurred, it should show a big red

“X” in the growl and return a semi-friendly message about the error. The error details will be emailed to the IT

staff for review. Growls will also appear for the items that happen instantly (like adding a new degree, role,

campus, etc.) in most cases, telling you it was added successfully.

To return to the contact’s dashboard page, click the “Return to Dashboard” link in the top left.


Searching for Members There are various ways to search through the system for specific members. The quick search is always present

on the top right of the screen. The Member Dashboard provides links within the demographics grid to instantly

search based on certain available criteria. The search page is also accessible off the “Member Management”

menu item. Clicking it or the sub-menu item of “Member Search” will bring you to the master search page. The

system is pretty powerful in the options presented for searching.

Basic Search The most common search will be the basic search. By choosing the menu to get here or some of the non-

advanced search links on the demographics page, you will arrive at the search page in basic mode.

Basic mode essentially looks for anyone based on first name, last name, or email. Some information about all

the field elements in basic mode:

Search Term: The term to search

Search Matching: You can have it do an exact match (whole field) or any part of field (wildcard) to find

results. The wildcard is the default, but it is a back-end wildcard. Meaning, if you type “Cope” into the

box, it will look for anything beginning with “Cope”. This would be things like Cope, Copeland,

Copening, Copemann, etc. It would not return “McCopening” because it is not putting a wildcard at the

start of the search term.

Include Date Range: You can opt to include a date range on the search. This would limit the search to

people created within a certain period of time.

General Options:

o This search box is very important. By default, the system is only returning active accounts. If

someone was marked as inactive or they were not originally created in the CRM (such as a

ListServe account) they would not show up. Checking this box includes those records. Use this

if you do not find who you are looking for among active accounts to double check.

o You can also search address items by including alternate addresses. So if you knew a person

once lived in “Rancho Cucamonga”, it will also look for that person based on previous, alternate,

or archived addresses, as well as the primary addresses. By default, it is only searching address

information based on the primary address.

Advanced: Clicking this link will change the search from basic to advanced mode.

Advanced Search If you click the “Advanced” link when in basic mode, you will toggle over to the advanced mode. This will default

you with four boxes to input data. You can leave the boxes blank or remove the ones you do not need.


If you found your way to the advanced search page by way of the member dashboard quick search links, it will

default to whatever was selected. See the “Member Dashboard” section for more information on these search

links.

In advanced mode, you have to search on very specific fields. You can include one or more fields in the search.

The more fields you include the more specific the search will be. You will notice the top half of the basic search

mode is replaced, but the bottom half for date ranges and general options are still present.

To remove a search option, hit the red circle “-“ button (subtract). To add a criteria, hit the green circle “+”

button (add). By default, four fields are present: Last Name, First Name, Email, Nick Name. If you leave any of

the boxes empty and choose to search on only one, you can without having to remove the unwanted search

boxes.

You will notice a “Fuzzy” checkbox next to each criterion. Fuzzy means a wildcard search, but again, it is a back-

end wildcard. So searching for last name “Cope” will return Cope, Copeland, Copening, Copemann. It will not

return McCopening. By default, “Fuzzy” is always checked since wildcard searches are preferred in most cases.

Also present is the and / or drop down. Like any search, this will behave by either requiring all criteria to exist

on the record, or will be flexible and look for either one. An “and” search between criteria is good to limit

results. For example, searching for last name “Smith” will return hundreds of records. Including a state or other

criterion will limit the results. A good “or” search would be to find anyone living in “Orlando” or “Oviedo”.

If you want to return to basic mode, click the “Default” link near the bottom of the criteria grid to switch back to

basic mode.

Search Results Once you’ve done a search in either basic or advanced mode, the results will appear the same regardless.


Staying with the example of searching for “Cope”, you can see a series of results. The columns are helpful to

determine which person is which by including some address and ID information:

Last Name

First Name

Contact Name: This is actually the nickname.

City

State

Zip:

Foreign ID: The system will show all foreign ID’s on the person’s account. So if you had two John Smith

records, you could try to figure out which is the person you want if you know their ID in another system.

Single clicking a column will highlight it. Double clicking will take you to their Member Dashboard.

Right clicking a row will bring up the context menu and let you do certain options right from the search screen.


Checklist The checklist is accessed off the home screen. The current alerts grid has a link to “View More” and displays the

user’s checklist. This area allows staff to manage all the alerts that have been assigned to them. Supervisors

and campus administrators will also be able to view other people’s checklists to see their progress or complete

tasks on their behalf.

Understanding the Checklist Interface The checklist is a complex screen. It is broken down into a series of tabs, as well as filterable options. The

system lists all alerts and action series items in this view. Depending on the type of item, different options for

completing the alert will be present.

All Incomplete Tab

The all incomplete tab will list all alerts / action series items that are assigned to you (or the person you are

viewing) that are not complete. The items are ordered based on the scheduled date ascending (meaning oldest

first) so that the items that need to be completed more immediately can be done.

Upcoming Tab

The upcoming tab lists those items that are coming up in the next 7 days and are not currently completed or

expired (meaning before the current date). This again is sorted by schedule date ascending. This is the default

tab that is viewed when the page first loads.

Expired Tab

The expired tab lists all alerts that have expired (past date). So anything that is past due can be viewed here that

isn’t yet completed.

Completed Tab

The completed tab will return all completed alerts that were assigned to you (or the person you are viewing).

The list is sorted by scheduled date descending, meaning you will see the most recent items first.

All Tab

The all tab will list all alerts assigned to you, whether completed or not, in scheduled date descending order so

that you will see the most recent items first.

Filter Options

Above the tabs are a series of filtering options. The system allows any user to view alerts assigned to them or

that they’ve created. Administrators/supervisors for a campus have the added option to view anyone’s checklist

where items are assigned to that person or created by that person. Regular users will not have the drop down

to change to view other users and can only see their own lists.


The other area where the checklist can be filtered is via the “Filtering Options” section that blends into the five

tabs. By default it is collapsed. To expand it, click the “show” link at the right. To close it, you can click the link

which now says “Hide”.

This filter allows users to filter by alert type, action type, and/or by scheduled dates. This is especially beneficial

if the number of assigned and incomplete alerts is very high. Filtering by alert type can be helpful, for instance,

if someone wanted to knock out their entire phone call alert types first. Once the filter has been chosen simply

click “Apply” to apply the filter to the current view of alerts below.

Understanding the Grid Columns If you are looking at the three tabs related to incomplete alerts, the display will be slightly different than if

looking at the two tabs related to completed alerts.

Incomplete Alerts Columns

All incomplete tabs have the same columns and options.

Action Icon: Clicking the action icon (if applicable) will pull up the letter or phone script

Alert Type: Indicates the type of alert. If it is an action series, the action name will be present instead of

an alert name

User: The member the alert is attached to

Create Date: The date the alert was created

Scheduled Date: The date the alert was scheduled to be completed. If past due, red text saying

“expired” will appear

Series: This only populates if the alert is actually an action series item. Clicking it will bring up an

interface to manage the action series steps.

Alert Notes: The first few characters of the note are visible to the eye, but if you mouse over the alert

notes item a blue pop up will appear and display the full notes.

Completed: You can click one or more items in the list and then click the “Update Checked” button at

the bottom of the list to complete those items. It will mark the item as completed as of the current date

and time and indicate that whoever has completed it was the one to complete it. So if you are viewing

another person’s assignments and complete his/her alert, it will indicate you completed it.

o Note: See the section on Managing Checklist Alerts for more specific details.

Completed Alerts Columns

The completed alerts columns are pretty similar to the incomplete alerts columns, however, some functionality

and displays of information are changed.


Action Icon: Clicking the action icon (if applicable) will pull up the letter or phone script

Alert Type: Indicates the type of alert. If it is an action series, the alert type is set to “Action Series”.

The display however indicates the item was an “Action Series – Action Item Name” to tell the user the

type of action series item that was completed.

User: The member the alert is attached to

Create Date: The date the alert was created

Scheduled Date: The date the alert was scheduled to be completed.

Alert Notes: The first few characters of the note are visible to the eye, but if you mouse over the alert

notes item a blue pop up will appear and display the full notes.

Managing Checklist Alerts Alerts will be managed in two different ways depending on if the alert is an alert or an action series item.

Action Series Item

An action series item is a series of actions scheduled to be completed in a predefined pattern. When they

appear in the checklist, there are two scenarios in which they get completed:

1. If the action series item is being completed on the scheduled date or past due date, it will have been

converted into an alert and will be completed as an alert.

2. If the action series item is scheduled for a future date, it has to be completed slightly differently.

In case #2 above, the nightly process hasn’t processed the series item into an alert yet. So it has to be handled

slightly differently in order to complete it. The alert type cannot be clicked to update and complete it. Instead,

you have to click the checkbox in the right column.

If the item is an action series item, a “Notes” link will appear next to the checkbox. Clicking the notes

link will allow the user to input completion notes for that action series item. This is not available for

regular alerts.

Completed When Checked Notes Pop Up

Note: Only the series items can have the notes input during this stage.

Remember to click “Update Checked” to complete the items.

If the action series item was already transformed into an alert, follow the steps below in handling traditional

alerts.


Normal Alerts

Normal alerts can be completed and/or edited in a couple of different ways. The first option, and probably most

useful, is to click the text in the “Alert Type” column for the given row. This brings up the usual pop up screen

and allows you to update any information on the alert and complete it. For more details on this screen, view the

Alerts Panel section of this document in the Member Dashboard section.

The second completion option is to select the checkboxes in the right column for any alerts you wish to bulk

complete, and then hit the “Update Checked” button below. This will mark all the alerts as completed by you

and refresh the screen to remove them from the incomplete tabs. This will not present you with options to

change anything on the fly, like adding notes, etc. so it is best to use these options for tasks that do not need

additional information and just need to be completed.

Completed alerts can also be adjusted after the fact. Clicking the “Alert Type” value for the row will bring up the

same edit window and allow changes to be made.


Actions and Action Series Actions are individual tasks or planned interactions with a contact in the system. An action can be assigned to

an alert or an action series. Actions are typically in three formats: phone call, email, word merge. An action

must have an associated script or letter template.

Action Series are a series of predefined items that can have any number of steps to be completed in a specific

sequence. The idea behind an action series is it is a commonly repeated series of steps taken with each new

prospect once they enter into certain classifications or spots in the recruit cycle. The series are flexible,

however, in allowing the user to schedule them and change any setting about them before or after it has been

assigned to a specific user. The action items will get funneled into the view that contains all alerts, be it on the

member dashboard, the checklist, or elsewhere.

Action Series to Alert Conversion Nightly Process A process runs each night that converts all action series items into an alert, assuming that are scheduled in the

next 24 hours. The reason this process exists is to help staff cancel or change action series items that are no

longer needed without cluttering the alerts history. So in essence, it allows for a clean deletion of the item

before it becomes an alert if it is no longer needed. Once the item becomes an alert, it cannot be edited via the

Action Series wizard and can only be edited as an alert.

Action Management Under the “Action Series” menu option, you can choose the “Manage Actions” link. This will bring up an

interface to allow you to manage the actions in the system. Actions can only be added, edited, or deactivated,

but never deleted. Again, actions are predefined interactions with members that currently have three types:

phone call, email, word merge.

The columns in the main grid are easy to follow:

Name: Name of the action, should probably be prefixed with your campus name or abbreviation.

Description: It will explain what the action does. If it is a phone script, it will list the text. If it is an email

or word merge, it will list the letter + signature being used.

Type: The type of action

Active: If checked, the action is currently active and available for use in Alerts and Action Series.

Edit: The pencil on each row, when clicked, allows a user to edit the action.


Adding/Editing an Action

To add a new action, please click the “New Action” button on the bottom of the grid. A pop up with the wizard

to create an action appears. Input a name for the action. It is recommended that you prefix all names with your

campus name / abbreviation. Once you select a “Message Type”, the options in the box will change to include

more fields. When finished with the form, hit the insert button. Then the screen will refresh and load the latest

results.

Step 1 & 2 Step 3 / Phone Step 3 / Letter

Phone Fields

If the action is a phone call, a script drop down will be presented. Choose the appropriate phone script. You

may also indicate whether the action should be active, but in most cases, it should be.

Letter Fields

Letters load a lot more drop downs on the screen. Campuses and Departments is simply a way to filter the

Letter drop down to the campus specific letters. Signature is where you can select a signature available to you

to be used on the letter.

Edit Mode

To edit an action, click the pencil icon to the right of a row. This will bring up the same window as the add

screen, though populated with that actions information. Simply click update when finished.

Action Series Management Under the “Action Series” menu is the “Manage Series” link. This is where you can setup all action series to be

used in the system. Compared to actions, actual action series will probably be limited in number.


The grid for action series is a little more complex than the actions grid. You will notice some basic columns at

first. Below the grid is a button to add a new series.

Template Name: The name given to the action series. Should probably be prefixed with your campus

name or abbreviation.

Description: Describes the action series and what it accomplishes in the system.

Is Active: If checked, the series is active.

Edit: The pencil at the right will allow you to edit the series.

Note however, the arrow at the left of each item. If this is clicked it will expand / collapse the steps within the

action series.

The action series steps grid has different columns:

Action Name: The name of the action.

Description: Just like the action management screen, if it is a phone script, you will see the beginning of

the script. If it is a letter, it will show the letter name + signature being used.

Date: This is the date from which the series plans each step. This will probably almost always be the

start date (date of creation) for the series.

Interval: This tells the series that the item will be scheduled x days before or after a given date.

Edit: Clicking the pencil allows you to modify information about a specific step.

Delete: The recycle bin, if clicked, will allow you to delete the step.

Below the grid is a “New Step” link which allows you to create a new step in the series.


Creating a Series

To create a new series, start by clicking the “New Action Series” button below the grid. This will pop up a

window. You only have four fields: Name, Description, Is Active, and Privacy.

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3

The columns are simple:

Name: The name of the series. Should probably be prefixed with a campus name or abbreviation.

Description: This is a good place to explain what the series does and when it would normally be

scheduled, as well as to whom it should be scheduled.

Is Active: If the series is in use, it should be active.

Privacy: Similar to the privacy boxes found elsewhere, this will limit who has access to use this series. By

default, if you have a preferred workgroup assigned, it will select that as a default. The series can also

be limited to specific roles and specific users. See the “Common Sections” area of this document to

further review the privacy features.

When you are done, simply hit “Insert” and the new series will be created. This new series however, is absent of

action series items. We will need to input them next.

Creating Series Steps

After a series has been created for the first time you can follow the below steps to add a new step. The same is

true of adding a step to an existing series.

Start by clicking the arrow to the left of the series you wish to add steps. If it is a new series, nothing will be

seen. If it is an existing series with other steps, you will see those steps. Regardless, click the button to add a

“New Step” and it will pop up a window.


Step 1 Step 2

The fields on the new step wizard are very powerful and important. The most important thing to know about a

step is the scheduling sequence. The three parts that make up the interval for when this is schedule to be done

are the key to helping make a successful action series.

Action: The action, picked from a drop down list.

Interval: A number of days between 1 and x (the upper limit is not set).

After/Before: The interval will take place either before or after a certain date.

Date: The date will typically remain as start date (day of creation for the series). However, certain

important dates can be used here as well. These would be dates in the future and used for specific

action series.

Override: The override date if expired can be checked should the important date have already come and

gone and need to be reset.

When you have completed the step, hit “Insert” and it will save and refresh the action series window. Repeat

this process for each step that is needed.

Editing a Series

The thing to know about editing a series is that it will only edit the base information for the series. The

sequence of steps must be edited separately. See the “Editing a Series Step” below for those details. However,

to edit a series’ base information, click the pencil to the right of the series. This will pop up the same window as

found in creating a new series.


Editing a Series Step

To edit a series step, expand the action series and click the pencil for the step you wish to edit. That will pop up

the same window as the create window. Simply hit “Update” to save the changes.

Phone Scripts Phone scripts are special items that can be associated with an action. They can be literal scripts that people

should read when calling someone, or they can be used to highlight points to discuss with the member and

server as a reminder of the objectives for the given phone call. Phone scripts are typically used for planned

communications with members.

Because the phone scripts are strongly associated with actions the link to manage them is found under “Action

Series” on the menu. The interface is fairly simple.

Name: The name of the phone script. You may want to prefix the name as your campus name or

abbreviation.

Description: This will preview the first few words of the phone script.

Is Active: If checked, this will indicate that the phone script is available for use.

Edit: The pencil icon, when clicked, will bring up the edit screen for the phone script.

Creating a Phone Script

Click the “New Script” button at the bottom left of the grid to start the creation process.


Step 1 Step 2

Notes: Name: Input a name for the script. Script: The actual script of words Is Active: Determine whether it is visible in certain places When ready to insert, click “Insert” to create the new script. The page will refresh.

Editing a Phone Script

To edit a phone script, click the pencil icon next to a script in the main grid. This will pop up the familiar

window, similar to the create screen, populated with the data from the database. When done making changes,

click “Update” to update the phone script.

Important Dates Important dates in the system are used for both reminders on the home screen as well as for scheduling special

action series. For example, a special program or conference may be happening in the future and you want to

invite specific members to that event, an action series can be built around that special date.


Name: The name of the important date

Date: The date of the important date.

Description: Describes the important date (what happens / why is it important)

Campus: The campus the date is associated with.

Date Type: The only option is default presently

Is Active: Determines whether this date is active and appears in the system.

Edit: Clicking the pencil allows the existing date to be edited.

You will notice at the top right of the page, a drop down exists to allow for filtering of the dates by campus.

Dates will display based on date descending.

Creating an Important Date

Clicking the “Add Important Date” button on the bottom left of the grid will pop up a window to add a new date.

Step 1 Step 2

Notes: Date Type: This field only has one option at this time, which is default. Workgroup: This means “campus” in the CRM. The Date / Time: pickers can be used to select the correct date and time. Is Active: will control whether the important date is visible or not in certain areas. Click “Insert” when you are done, the date will be created and the page will refresh.

Editing an Important Date

Editing a date requires you to click the pencil next to the row at the right. The same window as the create a date

window will appear, though populated with the information from the database. Click update to update the

information.

Action Series Dashboard Clicking the actual “Action Series” link on the menu will pull up an action series dashboard. This shows all

incomplete series that have been scheduled to any user in the system. Individual steps can be made active or

inactive and entire series can be disabled so that they disappear. Individual steps can be made inactive as well.

Three radio buttons exist on the top right of the page to toggle the view from Active series, inactive series, or all

series.


Clicking the arrow next to a series will bring up the steps in the series to which the user has been assigned.

Clicking the pencil icon at the right of each step will allow the step to be edited.

The interval, assigned status, and active status of the step can be modified on this screen. The active checkbox

has no label, but if unchecked, the step will no longer appear anywhere in the system except for where the

series are managed. Click update to finalize any changes.


Letters Letters are a key aspect of the CRM. They can be setup as a template with field replacements, images, and other

features and formatting. They can be output in four different ways:

1. Word Document (one person)

2. Word Mass Document (more than one person)

3. Email (one person)

4. Mass Email (more than one person)

Managing Letters To manage existing letters or add new ones, go to one of two options on the Letters menu. “Manage Letters” to

see a list of existing letters or “Add Letter” to add a new letter. Links to these features exist on the Letters

Dashboard and you can choose to add a new letter from the manage letters screen as well. For simplicity, we

will demonstrate most of the features as branching off from the “Manage Letters” screen.

Notice on this screen a series of filters at the top and a familiar grid below. Depending on the filters that are set,

the grid will filter the results. By default, the campus selected will be the one that is your campus of preference

as set in your preferences. Letters are also placed into departments, typically based on where the letter would

be originating from or what the subject matter relates to in the system. Also note next to the filters is a link to

create a new letter.

Subject: The actual subject on the email. Clicking the link will put the letter into edit mode.

Theme: The theme used to wrap around the letter

Campus: The campus associated with the letter

Department: Department the letter is typically generated from by users

Edit: The pencil icon, when clicked, will take the letter into edit mode.

Delete: The recycle bin will allow for deletion of the letters.

Adding / Editing Letters The add and edit screen for letters are identical. The only difference is that when in edit mode, the existing data

is loaded onto the form. The interface is fairly straightforward, and if you are familiar with the WYSIWYG (what

you see is what you get) editors used across other RTS applications this will not be hard to learn.


The interface is broken into three sections: letter properties/settings, the letter template, and the buttons. The

top is where the letter is categorized and given its important metadata. All are drop down options, except for

the title.

Title: This is the display for both the subject that will default for the letter as well as what is displayed to

the users of the CRM.

Campus: The campus of association for the letter

Letter Size: For the moment, most letters should be 8.5 X 11 standard letter size, however, the CRM is

capable of handling other formats.

Theme: This is the header, footer, and styles that get applied to the letter. The header and footer wrap

around the content you create here.

Department: Simply a way to designate the letter for filtering purposes

WYSIWYG Interface

The “what you see is what you get” interface is common to most others found around RTS or other web or word

processing applications. We will not cover the editor in depth here in terms of all the formatting options,

buttons, features etc. We will however, highlight some important things to note about the WYSIWYG.

Field Replacements

Perhaps the most important feature of the letters interface is the insertion of field replacements. These are

common elements that get inserted into the template and will be replaced by the data on hand in the database.

All field replacements are formatted as <%field%>, where field is a special code that correlates to fields in the

database. A drop down in the WYSIWYG will let you place these elements.


Outside of the common contact information or name fields, there are also some specific fields that have been

added to the system:

Address Block: This will pull a fully formatted address based on what has been input for the user.

Student ID: This is pulling the PowerCAMPUS ID, if it has been entered, from foreign ID.

Admitted Year & Admitted Term: This pulls the latest stage status update Year / Term values for

someone with a stage of admitted

Degree: Pulls the active and latest degree program as set on the profile.

Application Year & Application Term: Pulls the latest stage status Year / Term for those with a stage of

applied.

Counselor: Pulls the active counselor’s name from a person’s record.

HTML or Design Mode

Often overlooked in the WYSIWYG is a series of three tabs at the bottom: Design, HTML, and Preview. Preview

is not really relevant since it doesn’t full format the letter from the theme. By default, you will see the design

view, which enables all WYSIWYG features. If however you know HTML you can go into this tab to fix syntax

problems or add more complex code or customized table structures.

Design Mode HTML Mode

In HTML mode, all the other WYSIWYG options are disabled on the menu, and you see the HTML syntax as

demonstrated above. You should only tweak HTML if you know what you are doing.


Pasting from MS Word

It is highly recommended that you do not past content from a Microsoft or other word processing product. This

means no pasting content that was copied directly from MS Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. It is also not

a good idea to copy/paste from a website. What happens with these when pasted into a WYSIWYG editor is that

it will bring over a lot of ugly behind the scenes HTML that can cause problems in your letter. It is highly

recommended that you paste into a format-free application like Notepad, and then copy/paste into the

WYSIWYG interface. Worst case scenario, you can try to use the “strip formatting” buttons, but they are not

perfect and may leave behind empty HTML elements that could potentially mess up a letter when generated.

As seen above, the little paint-brush icons on the WYSIWYG can be used to strip certain formatting elements.

They will remove bad MS Word formatting, CSS, font, or span elements. If you strip all formatting, it will remove

everything from the letter (sometimes even line breaks). Thus the best bet remains to just paste into Notepad

and then copy/paste from Notepad into the WYSIWYG.

Previewing Letter

Before or after you save, you can preview the letter. By clicking the “Preview as Word” or “Preview as Email”

icons, it will load up the letter and give you an idea for how it all comes together. It will either open in Word or

open in a browser to help you preview it.

Saving Letters

To save the changes or add a new letter click the “Save” button. If you wish to cancel click “Cancel” and it will

take you back to the list of letters and not save the changes. If the save operations was successful, you will see a

growl appear on the top right of the screen to tell you the status of the letter.

Themes Themes are the CSS (styles), header, and footer that wrap around and format the content of your letter. They

are similar in concept to the themes found in the ListServe for email campaigns. In many circumstances, a blank

theme may be used or one that has a graphic as a heading. In most circumstances, a system administrator will

help you craft these themes since it requires HTML knowledge. Themes will not be further covered in this guide.


Signatures A highly important feature in the CRM is the signature. This signature is used for both sending letters and

scheduling actions that use letters. There are many important considerations with signatures. To manage the

signatures that you have access to, go to the “Letters” menu and pick the “Manage Signatures” sub menu. Any

signatures you have created will be present in a grid.

Clicking the pencil icon will bring up the signature in edit mode. Clicking the recycle bin will delete the signature.

Clicking “Add new record” will allow you to add a new signature. Below the grid is a browse button and some

upload labels.

Uploading a Signature Image

In many cases you may want to upload an image to use with signatures. A president’s signature, admissions

director, etc. may be appropriate on some letters. Clicking “Browse” will open a dialog box to let you find the

signature image that you have scanned and placed on your computer. Once you’ve found it, you will be able to

modify the signature in the image editor.

You can choose to pre-crop and clean up the signature or you can wait until you upload it to edit it. The image

editor in the CRM will allow you to scale and crop the signature file as needed.


Depending on the raw size of your image, you may have scroll bars on the pop up edit window. In this case, I

will scroll down and reduce the scale of the image so I can see it all on my screen. You can also click and drag

the edges of the pop up to make it fit better.

At the bottom of the window is the zoom, preview, name, and save buttons. Because my image is rather large, I

will zoom out to show more of it on the screen at one time.

I return to the top of the view. You may see a black opaque effect on the image after zooming. This indicates

none of the image is selected.


To select the part of the image you want, click and drag the mouse from one location to another within the gray

area. Do not click and click, click and drag. If done correctly, you will see a white box cut out with the signature

within it. You can click and drag the square corners or middles of the selection to adjust it slightly, or repeat the

click and drag process to try selecting the image again.

Once you have selected what you want, return to the bottom of the form to give the image a name, preview it,

and save.

If all is successful, you will see the new image appear on the signature screen below the grid.


The final image is cropped to a specific size so that it is normally sized. Try to reduce as much blank space

around the signature as possible. The image is now ready for use within a signature if desired.

Adding / Editing a Signature

The interface to add or edit a signature is the same. To edit an existing one, click the pencil in the grid. To add a

new one, click the “Add new record”. We will do this exercise by creating a new one. The fields that pop up on

this form are very important.

Signature Name: The actual name of the signature, you should probably put your name or a generic

indicator as to what it’s purpose is (so either John Doe or Charlotte Admissions) would work depending

on if it is a person or departmental signature.

Full Name: Type the full name of the person or department.

Title/Position: Type the title or position of the person if applicable.

Phone & Phone 2: Type the phone type (if needed) + phone number (example: Office: xxx-xxx-xxxx or

Fax: xxx-xxx-xxxx)

Email: This is a very important column and should never be left blank. This email is both what will

display in the signature and what the FROM address on the email will be. So an email could be sent

from John Doe in this system and if the person replies, the message will go to John Doe.

Image: If you uploaded and what to use a signature, pick the image that is appropriate.

Allowed Users: If you want others to be able to use your signature in sending or generating letters, pick

from the drop down who should have access. This is very helpful for those who need to send letters as

campus presidents or if all staff are sharing a generic departmental signature when they send emails.

This is a drop down list with checkboxes for every user in the CRM.


When completed making your changes, hit “Insert” or “Update” pending if you are in add or edit mode. Hitting

cancel will cancel any changes and return you to the edit screen.


Mail Merge Mail merge is a feature that will allow users to generate letters either individually or in mass. The generate

campaign screen allows you to go through all the steps to send a single or mass mail letter in either an email or

MS Word format. You can also send single campaigns when going through a Checklist of Alerts or when viewing

a member dashboard, or when right clicking and choosing to send a letter from the context menu. All mass

mailings must be handled via the generate campaign mechanism.

Single Mail Merge The four main ways to initiate the options for a single mail merge are illustrated below.

Member Dashboard Click the “Send Letter” link next to the name / email.

Alerts / Checklist The icons at the left of the grid provide a clickable button to generate the word or email. Context Menu Right click on many grids and pick “Send Letter”.

Campaign Screen This screen works differently than the other interfaces. It allows the creation of a letter on the fly to a contact, whether the contact is in the database or not. If the person is in the database, you must know the CRM ID and put it into the member ID box to auto-fill the fields below.


Other than the campaign screen, the sending method is the same for all other places to a single recipient. A

letter, signature, and mode box pops up.

The fields are pretty simple, though the template has a hierarchical tree to allow you to pick the appropriate

letter. The system defaults you to the last items you used in generating a letter.

Template: The letter template to use.

Signature: This will list all the signatures you have access to and allow you to pick one.

Output: This can be set as Send Email or Word Document. Behaviors will be different pending which is

chosen.

The template may look like a traditional drop down, but it actually brings up a hierarchical tree. Letters are

divided by campus and department. It will default to your campus in most cases.

Once all the values have been selected, click the “Continue” button. Two different things will happen depending

on if you selected Word or Email:

#1 – If Word is selected, it will ask you to download or open the document. Pending your browser, this will

behave differently.


Internet Explorer 7/8 Firefox Chrome

This actually displays at bottom of browser.

#2 – If email is selected, the screen will pop up in a full screen mode and look like a typical webmail interface.

The fields on this email interface are very straightforward.

Email Recommendations

Attachments can be made to the email. It is recommend you BCC yourself when sending an email with

an attachment, to ensure the correct attachment was sent.

It is also recommend that you change the subject of the email if the default letter name is too vague or

not very helpful.

You should review the WYSIWYG editor for field replacement items that are missing or did not process.

In some cases, some letters have areas that are left blank and no mail merge operation exists and it

must be done manually. Thus it is always a good idea to review the content of the email before being

sent. If custom changes are needed to the particular email, you may make them at this point and it will

not impact the template, only this single email.

When ready to send the email, click “Send”. If you wish to cancel the operation, hit “Cancel”. If successful, a

growl will appear.


Final Results of Single Merge

When you are done sending the email or generating the word document, you will see a note has automatically

been generated. A link will be present in the note, which takes the user to the template for that given note if

they are curious what type of email was sent. If any major customizations were made, you can edit the note to

list them out as well. Most campuses will be using the Alerts section to track and drive the sending of emails, so

any pertinent notes can also be listed there about the generated emails.

Mass Mail Merge Mass mail campaigns can be done in one of two fashions: email or MS Word. In most circumstances, these will

only be MS Word campaigns, as it will be more appropriate to send emails individually to ensure all content is

correct for each merged message.

Going to “New Campaign” under the “Letters” menu will begin the process of running a mass mail merge. The

interface starts out fairly simple.

The system acts very similar to a single campaign. You filter the available letters based on the Campuses +

Department drop down. Pick a letter, signature, output method, and data mode. Data mode means if it is going

to a mass mail list or single recipient. If single recipient see the “Single Mail Merge” section of the document,

otherwise read below.

Clicking the “Preview” button above the initial list of drop downs will preview the letter. You can make changes

to it here that will not impact the template, only this particular campaign.


Click “Letter” to return to the grid of sending options.

Once the “Data Mode” has been selected, a new series of options appear on the screen. For mass merge, a very

simple drop down becomes presented.

The “List” drop down is where you pick who needs to receive this letter. The lists are views created by the

system administrator. The views will typically return contacts based on an alert + action, contact information,

groups / roles, or people in the same phases of the recruiting cycle. Only the system admin can create the

actual view, because the query into the database is typically complex and not something an end user can

perform with guaranteed success.

Once a list is selected, you can preview who would be receiving the message. A label to the right of the list

indicates how many people are on it and a preview link, when clicked, shows the names.


If all looks correct, click the “submit” button on the far right bottom corner of the campaign screen. You will be

taken to the campaign screen.

The Campaign Screen

The campaign screen is found by going to the menu and clicking “Letters”. It is also arrived at after submitting a

mass campaign to send. A few quick links at the top will take you to the list of letters, to add a new letter,

manage signatures, or manage themes. All these items can also be accessed via the sub menu items under

“Letters”.

The columns of the dashboard are easy to follow:

Message Name: Name of the actual letter that was used.

Signature Name: The name of the signature used.

Type: Designates whether it was an Email or Word Document

Status: Indicates the status of the merge. Some complete quickly, others will be scheduled. If an error

occurred, that will be indicated.

Download: The download column is populated if the finished merge is ready to go. Clicking it will

download the file assuming it was a word merge.


Reporting One of the most important aspects of the CRM for determining trends and final outcomes is having solid reports.

The CRM is slightly integrated with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). SSRS is a very powerful reporting

framework. For the most part, the system administrator will help provider report construction. The system can

also be setup to use data models (similar to a Vista View) and allow users a limited report creation tool. To

access any currently available reports, visit the “Reports” link off the main menu. This is the integrated view.

The interface is fairly simple. On the left is a hierarchy of folders, on the right is the listing of reports within the

folder. Clicking a folder in the tree hierarchy will change the contents on the right. Clicking a report on the right

will pull up the report. Some reports have parameters that need to be inserted before it will run. Some will run

automatically.


The report viewer will look largely the same if you are in integrated mode or in SSRS itself. At the very top of the

report you will find a series of prompts if they exist. On some reports, no prompt is pre-selected. On other

reports, a prompt may be auto-filled (such as a date range report). The report in question here was created with

the limited Report Builder Tool. Start Date and Start Date 1 are the two prompts (the first being the beginning

of the date range, the second being the conclusion of the date range). The view report button sits next to them.

If the criteria were changed, you’d need to click “View Report” to reload the report.

Below the prompts you will see the paging, zoom, search, and export functions. Some reports are setup by

default and have paging. Some may list all records on one page. The paging is merely how the report viewer

lists the records. On some reports, paging results may be helpful, in others, it may not.

Zoom controls will allow you to zoom in or make the report appear larger. The find operation will search for any

text in the report, regardless of page. Typing “Smith” jumped us to page three of results and highlights the

person with last name of “Smith”. Hitting “Next” will jump you to the next result, should one exist.

The export function is perhaps the most powerful feature of the report viewer. This will allow you to export the

report to a file format that can be shared or manipulated. If you want to print a report, for example, it is usually

best to export to Excel or PDF, to allow you to set print margins or other settings. To export, simply click the

drop down, pick a format, and then click the now active “export” link.

The other thing to note about reports is they can be sorted on the fly by a given column. Any column that has

an up and down arrow can be clicked so the report is sorted in ascending or descending order.

For demonstration, I’ve clicked the “Workgroup Name” (Campus) and now the arrow is pointing up, telling us

the report is now ascending by that column. So in this case, Atlanta records show first, Washington last, and

everyone in-between.


Clicking a second time will make it go into descending order. Now Washington would be on top.

Further Reporting Training In most circumstances, the reports will be crafted by a system administrator. However, if you want to have the

ability to create your own reports, you can try the report builder tool. A video tutorial for this feature exists on

the Employee and Training portals. In the future, a full guide to SSRS may be crafted, but since it is a different

technology we will not cover anything else here with regards to using the CRM.


Duplicate Detection and Merging Through the course of any system, duplicate records may be created intentionally or unintentionally. Since the

CRM shares space with other applications in the EGEN system, it is possible that emails or records from other

systems could become a new record when in reality the CRM record should have just been updated. Using the

duplicate detection and merging features will be the tool to handle records that are especially problematic

within the CRM. Duplicate detection and merging will be limited to specific people at each campus. This helps

ensure only those with correct access levels can make the ultimate merging decision.

To begin a duplicate search or merge process, go to the “Member Management” menu and pick “Duplicate

Detection” from the sub menu options.

There are two primary ways to find duplicates and merge records. The first is a “Guided Search” which gives you

very basic parameters to look for people with the same last name / similar last name. And then there is the

“Search by ID” search, which has the ability to find people based on limited search criteria.

Guided Search Guided Search is the default duplicate search option when you arrive at the page. You start by picking a letter

that the last names begin with and then choose any other options. You can include within this guided search

those that have the same email addresses, those that are marked as inactive/part of other systems, and if they

have the same first name. Clicking these options will either limit or expand the result set returned.

Once you have selected the desired criteria, click the “Show Names” button to view results.

The columns on this grid will be used to help you determine if the person is a duplicate.

Checkbox: The checkbox column is used to add names to the merge cart.


Last Name: The person’s last name

First Name: The person’s first name

Address: Line 1 of the address on the record

City: The city of the address

State: The state of the address

Postal Code: The zip code of the address

Phone: If they have a primary phone number it will be listed

Email: The email on the record

Member ID: The CRM member ID. This helps show that it is two separate records

As seen in the examples, there appears to be two records for Janet Cabascango. The address records are

virtually the same, one record has an email, one has a phone, and they are distinct member IDs. If we decided

we’d go ahead and merge them, we’d click the checkbox column for each row. At the bottom of the grid of

results is a “Merge Selected” button. Clicking it will put them into a cart and take us to the next step.

Also note, this is setup to page results. The paging controls are at the bottom and can be adjusted.

Once “Merge Selected” is clicked, it will take you to the confirmation and selection screen. We will cover this

just below in the “finalize merge” section, since this screen is the same for both the “Guided Search” and

“Search by ID” processing.

Search by ID The Search by ID process of duplicate detection is a little more powerful than the Guided Search. It will allow

you to find people of different last names or other information and merge them together. This is helpful for

those records where you know they are duplicates already from normal use in the system. Clicking the “Search

by ID” tab when you arrive at the duplicate search page will change the page to this mode. It allows you to

search based on CRM ID, Last Name, or First Name. The search is not a wildcard search by default. To change

into wild card mode, click the checkbox above the search button. The wildcard is a full wildcard.


In our previous example, we found two records for Janet Cabascango. So I will do a search for her last name and

see what results are returned. I type the last name into the “Last Name” field, and hit search at the right.

Only two records are returned. Had I decided to turn on the wild card search because I wasn’t sure how Janet’s

full name was spelled, I could have typed “cab” into the last name box and checked the box above search. This

would return anyone with a last name containing the sequence of letters “cab”. Below is an example of the

results.

The columns on this form are very similar to the “Guided Search” results.

Last Name: The person’s last name


First Name: The person’s first name

Email: The primary email address on the record

Nick Name: The person’s nickname.

Address: The line 1 address for the person’s primary address.

City: The city of the address.

State: The state of the address.

Phones: If they have any phone numbers, they will appear here.

Foreign ID: The foreign system IDs on the records, if any.

Checkbox: Checking the checkbox will allow you to select those records for the merging process.

Once I’ve found a name or series of names to merge, I can check the box at the right of the grid for that record

and hit “Add Selected” to add them to the merge cart.

The “Merge Cart” will then load with these results.

The grid is the same as the above search results, save the checkbox is replaced with a “remove” link. If you

incorrectly add a record, you can hit remove to remove it from the cart.

The other main difference between a “Search by ID” and “Guided Search” is that once you’ve added people to

be merged, the “Search by ID” page still allows you to find other records. If you needed to merge a record with

a misspelled last name that didn’t return in the first search results, you can search again and add that record to

the merge card. Once you’ve got all names you need in the merge cart for the single merge, you can click the

“Merge ID” button below the bottom right of the grid. This will take you to the final step to confirm and merge

the records.

Finalize Merge Confirmation Screen Once you have the records you want to merge, you arrive at the finalize merge confirmation screen. Here you

select which record is the primary and which records are the merge records. The grid is the same as the “Search

by ID” grid, minus the checkboxes to indicate which records to keep and which to merge into the kept record.


You should only click to keep one of the records. All other records should be clicked as merged. As you can see

here, we have an idea of which record has the “most” information by way of the Phones and Foreign ID

information. You can further investigate the records prior to the merge by right clicking the last name column

and choosing an option to open the page in a new window or tab. After doing this, it is apparent that we should

keep the record with the foreign IDs since it has the most information.

If you are ready to merge, click the “Process” button. This will redirect us to the kept record for review. There is

an area on the member dashboard grid that links the merged record, which is now marked as deleted, to the

kept record. It is on the bottom of the right column. It will list all IDs that were merged into this record. Clicking

the link will take you to the old record.

Restore Function There is an experimental “restore” function that can be used if the records are merged incorrectly. We say

experimental because we do not promote the use of this feature except in emergencies. If you feel something

has been merged incorrectly, please contact the system administrator as soon as possible to help you restore or

fix the current records.

Merging Warnings and Practices Because we are a multi-campus institution, campuses may duplicate records when someone contacts RTS and

needs to be added to the database. As such, the merge operation is very delicate. Since Virtual campuses uses

this for more than just admissions, we need to be careful to not merge records of theirs with student

registrations. While the system can handle such a merge with no record loss, we need to fully understand the

sensitivity of the merge operation and what should or shouldn’t happen. We should also be in communication

with each other when a merge needs to happen.

A merge should be considered a permanent operation. Although the restore function exists, we don’t

want to use it or make a habit of using it. Be absolutely sure you want to merge the records.

PowerCAMPUS is less forgiving than CRM, so everyone should be aware of the severity of these

operations.

The “merge team” should communication about records if they are unsure. If you are simply merging a

near empty record into a full record of information, this may not warrant a conversation, but if both

records have registrations with Virtual, foreign IDs, recruiting stages, etc., it is a good time to stop and

discuss before proceeding with the rest of the merge team.


Certain information is not transferred during a merge. Data that are not multi-valued (meaning, only

one can exist for a record) like date of birth, email, name, etc. are maintained by the record that is kept.

The merge record will not merge that information into a kept record. You may have to do some manual

clean up after a merge in these cases.

Addresses and other items are copied from the merge record into the kept record. You will find the

merge addresses as alternative addresses on the kept record. If it is in duplicate, you may wish to delete

it.

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