Reducing Duplicates, Bulk Email and New Charts - Jan 2023

What is covered in this article? 

• Reducing Duplicates
• Setting Student Status on Form Submission
• Searching Students by birth date range
• Sending Bulk Email
• Email Templates
• Address Lookup
• Email Flows
• Funnel Metrics by Starting Year
• Updated Events Section 
• Inquiries by Month

Reducing Duplicates

We have added two new features to Connect that will assist greatly in reducing the potential number of duplicates along with providing a way for you to quickly identify potential duplicate students.

Look for Duplicate Students

That's right, you can now look for duplicate students in Connect. This is important as each student represents a potential seat at your school and in most cases, should not be counted more than once. So if a student is repeated, there is a high probability you want to merge them into one common record so they are only counted once.

Learn more in Searching for Duplicate Students

Update Existing Records on Form Submission

Whenever a form, such as an Event Registration or General Inquiry form were completed, a new contact and corresponding student would be added to Connect.

Not any more!

You now have an option, which has already been enabled for you, to update any existing record in Connect versus adding a new one. Keeping duplicates to a minimum.

Tip: If you have a multi-campus school you may want to disable this feature as it may be important to track inquiries for each campus separately.

Learn more in How to update existing records versus adding a new record when using Signup Forms

Setting Student Status on Form Submission

Whenever a form is submitted, you have a new option to specify what Student Status you want to to set. This is important as it provides a simple way for you to move a student down your funnel automatically.  For example, you may wish to set the status to Warm Prospect if they register for an Event

Read Setting the form options for Signup Forms to learn more

Searching Students by birth date range

Users often want to be able to find out families that have potential students that are born between specific dates to make sure they are eligible for entry to the school.  Well now you can easily do this!

You can use the new Birth Date filter as an option from the More… selector and then use the new range picker to set the date range.

Read Searching by Birth Date Range to learn more

Sending Bulk Email

We've added the ability to send bulk email from 3 new screens to make you more productive with personalized emails!

• Event RSVP list - now you can send an email to all registrants with an update on an event - whether you need to reschedule, cancel or provide a general update
• Student List - select a group of students and send a personalized email
• Applications list - choose a range of apps and send a personalized email, whether it is a reminder to complete the form, add missing documents or just general communications

Just go to the respective screen and select the desired rows and send your email. But, it gets even better as you can now choose from a set of pre-written templates!

See this article on Sending Bulk Emails to learn more

Email Templates

Now when you send bulk email you can choose from several prewritten templates (about 17 in all!) to make your life easier.  Any School Admin can edit existing or create new templates that can be used when sending email from the Bulk Email screens.  These will make your life so much better!

Learn more about Email Templates.

Address Lookup

We have a new address lookup feature that helps families enter their address correctly when filling out forms online.  This is also available to School Users when filling out the address on a contact details screen.

Users can simply begin typing the address in the street address field and it will auto correct and populate all other fields once selected.

Email Flows

You can now deactivate the follow on emails once an application has been submitted.  

Charts

We've added a brand new chart and updated the event summary to include the student status.

Funnel Metrics by Starting Year

Our new chart allows you to see how different stages of your funnel for one school year compare to prior years. Instead of displaying the data as a traditional Funnel Chart from top to bottom, we have turned it on its side so you can easily compare totals for each stage of the funnel from year to year. You can compare the trends for the totals across each stage - including Declined students.

Learn more about Funnel Metrics by Starting Year

Updated Events Section 

We've done an overhaul on the events analytics and have added the following:

• Expanded the event filter to support Starting Year and Intake/Grade Year level.  
• Key Statistics boxes now cover all, past and upcoming events
• The Event Summary table has been updates to display both status at the time of the event compared with today
• Added the Declined stage and a new event performance index

See Event Analytics for more information

Inquiries by Month

A new legend has been added to the the chart that allows you to overlay Events and Personal Tours, which is handy to see when new inquires are added to your pipeline.

More stuff...

Notifications: If you have elected to receive email notification anytime a classic form is completed then you will notice two improvements

1. If a message has been entered on the form is now highlighted in a newly formatted email
2. A new announcement icon will appear in the subject if a custom message has been entered

Google Analytics: We have added support for new Google Analytics 4 as on July 1, 2023, standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits. If you rely on Universal Analytics, we recommend that you prepare to use Google Analytics 4 going forward.

Follow the instruction in Setting up Google Analytics 4, however, if you are using GTM, please be sure to read Tracking form submissions through Google Tag Manager with Connect forms.

Student Details: We have rearranged the fields in the student information section, this has no impact whatsoever aside that we are preparing to add some new features down the road to handle more inquiries.  Based on your feedback, we also renamed Special Needs to Additional Needs.

SIS ID: Under the Admin use section on the student details screen you can request to prevent this value from being edited.   For some schools we populate this value during integration with your Student Information System and, under these circumstances, you would not want to permit this value to be edited.  If you want editing disabled - then please create a ticket and we will take care of it for you.

School Lists: We have renamed School Classification to School Type, nothing you need to do as the change will appear throughout the app.