Connecting Faculty to Students

Connecting Faculty to Students

After you have turned on the Faculty Module and have configured the settings and faculty custom fields, you will be ready to set up the connection between Faculty and Students. This is done as a Custom Field on the Student Form. There are 2 ways to approach this, depending on whether or not you have an existing teacher field and have already connected your students for the year.

Connection Option #1 - Modifying an Existing Custom Field

If you currently have a teacher custom field, you can modify the custom field "type" and configure it so that you are now using the faculty module/list for the teacher options.
Follow these steps ONLY if you have NOT already added teacher information for students for the current year.
  1. Go to People > Configuration > Custom Fields.
  2. Click to "edit" the Teacher Custom Field.
  3. On the Presentation tab, edit the Field Type from Select Box to the new Faculty List type.
  4. Select the Types of Faculty you want included (from your Faculty Module Configuration) and how you want the data to present on the Student Form and Student List.
Important! - For organizations that have already connected their faculty and students for the year:
  1. If you change a custom field from a select box type to the Faculty Module, you will lose all of the data that was previously associated with that custom field.
  2. We have a utility you can run to automatically update your student records to the new faculty field without breaking your data.

Steps to Run the Utility:

Step 1 - Be sure you have...
  1. Turned the Faculty Module On
  2. Configured the Faculty Module Settings
  3. Added your Faculty List.
Step 2 - From the Faculty List or from People > Configuration > Faculty Module, use the link at the top to to access the utility.



(You can also access the utility by going to Admin > Account Utilities > Migrate Field to Faculty List Field.)


Step 3 - Select your existing Teacher Custom Field to Convert.

Step 4 - Map your fields from the original teacher custom field to migrate to the appropriate Faculty Module fields. If you are missing a faculty value to match, you will either need to add the additional faculty member to the Faculty List (People > Faculty List), or leave it blank to ignore.


Step 5 - "Convert" to update your student records.
Make sure you have mapped all values that you want to keep above before proceeding, THERE IS NO UNDO.

Connection Option #2 - Creating a New Custom Field for Faculty

If you don't already have a teacher or faculty custom field, you will need to submit a ticket to our Help Desk to have the new field added. Include the following in your ticket:
  1. Request for Faculty Module Custom Field
  2. Field Label users will see (such as Teacher)
  3. How you'd like your teacher names to present (such as Lastname, Firstname, (Grade) - you can change this later)
  4. Position (sort order) of the field on the student form (This could be a numerical value or a direction such as before graduation year.)
  5. User Permissions - Can the user: See & Change the field, See but NOT Change the field, or NOT See OR Change the field?

Editing the Faculty Module Custom Field

Once we have set up the field for you, you will be able to edit all of the above and more, just as you would be able to do for any other custom field. For more information, view our article on Editing Custom Fields. The exception to this is the Presentation tab. (see more details below)
  1. Go to People > Configuration > Custom Fields.
  2. Select "edit" for the Faculty List custom field.

Custom Field Presentation Tab

If you want to change the design or options for your custom field, go to the Presentation tab. There is even a "Custom" option for the data format so you can customize the information that is shown.


Viewing Faculty Information for Students

As an Admin, you can view the connection between faculty and students in two places on the Dashboard:
  1. the Contact Record under the "Students" section
  2. the Student List (People > Student List)
On the Student List you can filter by this field and use the "update checked" button to update it, or you can download to excel or send an email to the selected list.



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