Academic Plan Messaging provides a mechanism for institutions to begin communicating academic plan data - profile, course recommendations - to students.  This information is valuable as an advising tool, but also as a way to survey students and gather data about their intent, profile changes, preferences, and specific term and course selections.

 

Students can link directly to editing tools from within their plan message to make changes to their preferences and profile, as well as make changes to course recommendations and future term selections.

 

To create a new Academic Plan Message Campaign, perform the following (requires Edit Student permission):

 

1.Click the Message Campaigns option on the Academics tab.
 
The list page for message campaigns is displayed, showing any existing campaigns.  These may be edited or deleted.
 

2.Click Add a Message Campaign.
 

 

3.Enter a unique name for the campaign.
 

4.Optionally enter a description.
 

5.Select a data source (a Planned Courses, Simulated Registration, or Sectioning sandbox) from the drop-down menu.
 
The source data defines the population of students available for messaging in the campaign.  Additionally, the source data configuration defines the terms to which planned courses are assigned, and the student academic history to be applied.
 

6.Optionally, you may add one or more persons to be notified any time the campaign is used to send plan information to students.
 
This feature is handy to keep someone in the loop that may have an interest in knowing when students were sent plan data. (e.g. academic advisors)
 
Click Add Recipient and choose one or more people from the list.  Click Add, and then Close, to return to the campaign form.
 

7.The student population available for messaging in this campaign is defined by the sandbox source selected above.  However, you may optionally further limit the list of student message recipients within this population to a select sub-group by using the Student Recipient feature.
 

 

8.Once clicked, use the student property filters in the recipient window to narrow the list of students.
 
Click View Filtered Students to check your list.
 
Click OK to save your selection.
 

Define Message Content

9.In the Message Content section, enter the email address to be used as the "from" address.
 

10.Enter the subject line that will appear in the email message.
 

11.Click Edit next to the message body section and select the desired message template from the drop-down list.
 

 

12.If desired, additional changes can be made to the template here, using the RTF editing controls.  If you wish to save these changes as a new template for use again later, click Save Template and assign a new name to the edited version of the template.
 

13.Click Save to save your campaign changes before continuing.  This will ensure that your student selections are saved with the campaign and accessible for sending messages.

Send Messages

Academic Plan Messages can be sent from the campaign in batch to all recipients, or as a single message to a single, specified recipient.

 

14.Click Edit to enter edit mode for the campaign.  This will provide access to the message sending options.
 

15.Click Send Batch to send the plan message to all recipients in the campaign.
 
In this case each student selected in the campaign will receive their own, personalized academic plan message.
 

 

16.Click Yes to confirm.
 
Notice "Last Sent" is recorded at the top of the campaign form for reference.
 

17.Or, click Send Single Message to send a single message to a single recipient.
 
When sending to a single recipient, you will select a single student from the list on which to base the plan recommendations, but will have the opportunity to manually enter the email address.  This feature allows you to send the plan message to the student, to yourself as a test or for advising, or to another interested party for advising purposes.
 

 

18.In the recipients window that appears, search the student list using the filters and paging controls provided to identify the student on which you would like to base the plan message.
 

19.Click the Select Recipient icon to the left of their name.
 

 

20.Confirm the Send To email address.  You may edit this address and send this message to yourself or someone else.  This is a convenient way to test your messages or to send a student's plan to an advisor.
 

 

21.Click Send Message.
 
Notice "Last Message Sent" is recorded for each student in the recipient list.