Hatching an intake is serious business. 🐣 It’s a huge hallmark of success and a lot depends upon it – meaning the stakes are 🔥 hiiiigh 🔥 –, but it's also not the type of thing you do every day and human nature dictates that lack of practice gives way to forgetfulness! 🙇‍♂️ We understand, and we've got you covered!

To help you, we’ve come up with a foolproof cross between a tutorial and a cheat sheet to be the glue that holds everything together. Just follow the steps below and soon enough you’ll be welcoming a new batch of fresh candidates eager to join your school! 💪

ℹ️ Disclaimer: the present article is most suitable for staff who are already familiar with this undertaking and just need a memory aid.

➜ Part 1: The back-office set-up of managing a new intake

・Create a new programme and class (or just a new class)

・Define the details of your class

・Build class automations

・Get your class an application template

➜ Part 2: Going public

・Update the application portal

・Make the class available

➜ Follow along with our printable checklist

You can't make an omelette without eggs, so this is the unsurprising starting point for our journey. 🥚 If you already have a programme, great, all you’re missing is a class; but if you have neither, creating both is equally easy. 😉

So let’s get started:

     1) Click the gear at the top right-hand corner and choose General settings
​     2) Go to Institution
​     3) Enter Programmes & Classes

Here you'll find all of your school's programmes. To access an existing programme and create a new class:

     1) Click the gear next to the programme

     2) Click the button Create a new class
​     3) Set what date your class ENDS ON
​     4) Tap Create class and add more info

There you go: a class is born! ⭐️

If you’re introducing a new programme to the curriculum, creating a programme is likewise very simple:

     1) Inside Programmes & Classes, click Create a new programme
​     2) Write a NAME
​     3) Hit Create programme and add more info

From there on, switch over to the tab Classes and continue as instructed above to create a new class.

You didn’t think you were getting off that easy, did you? Creating a class is just the beginning, because the devil is in the details. 😈

Firstly, you should give your class a Custom name to elaborate on key aspects like duration and work schedule (e.g., 1YFT = 1 year, full-time). Preferably use the same structure and acronyms as in previous classes for cohesion and recognisability.

We also recommend enabling the setting Update state automatically, because as long as the class dates are correctly inputted (you'll see what we mean soon), this will do the whole job of pushing the class ahead on your behalf.

Next up is Owner, the staff member who's to be automatically notified whenever a new application is submitted. If a class owner isn't assigned, the system won't know to whom to send the notification.

We now arrive at the dates delimiting your class, which are extremely important as they inform the behaviour of the portal in relation to it. Applications open on and Applications close on establish the period when people can apply, and Class starts on and Class ends on encompass the span of the actual course. Quite helpfully, the dates can also populate automated emails such as offer and acceptance letters by utilizing substitution tags.

Lastly, if your school has more than one campus, you should tick which campuses currently offer the class to let applicants know and make a choice on their application forms.

It's time for some big operational decisions: do you want the system to alert additional staff members (aside from the designated class owner) that a new application has been submitted? Do you want candidates to be automatically notified that they've been rejected? Do you want to send out admission letters? Do you want to grant payment plans to admittees?

These and other procedures can be efficiently carried out by implementing class automations, whereby, when a profile transitions from one lifecycle state to another, a certain action is triggered.

To do so:

     1) Navigate to the tab Automations
​     2) Press Add workflow
​     3) Select the initial and concluding lifecycle states (from something to something)
​     4) Pick an ACTION and the supporting email, offer or payment plan template, and then fill in whatever details are requested onscreen

To add more actions, click Add step and repeat, but if an action requires a different transition, click Add workflow.

This one is fairly predictable: you need to have an application template that covers all the bases of what you need to know from your future applicants, and you need to put said template at the service of the class (the system doesn't read minds… yet). 🔮😎

Most likely, you've already got an existing application template from a previous intake that's a wonderful fit, in which case you just have to duplicate it for the new class if it's a single-intake template, or, if it's an institution-wide template, link the two.

To duplicate a class-level application template:

1) Navigate to the tab Institution and then to Programmes & Classes

2) Enter a programme and a class

3) Jump to the tab Application templates
​ 4) Press Duplicate template
​ 5) Select the template you wish to duplicate

To duplicate an institution-level application template:

1) Navigate to the tab Institution and then to Application templates
​ 2) Press Duplicate template
​ 3) Select the template you wish to duplicate
​ 4) The new template will show up at the bottom of the list of application templates

To link an institution-level application template to a class:

1) Under the tab Details, ensure that the answer to the question Will applicants need to choose a programme? is Yes

2) Look for the product choice field within the schemas of the custom tabs

3) Once you locate it, double-click it to open the respective field editor

4) Click the button Edit products inside the field editor

5) Select the relevant class(es) and press Confirm

6) Back on the field editor, click Save to preserve the changes

A word of warning: if you intend to make major modifications to an existing application template, think twice, because deleting fields retroactively amends started and submitted applications, leading to data loss. ⚠️ If that's not a "side effect" you want, you're better off duplicating the template and editing the duplicate or creating one from scratch.

Since building and editing application templates allows for a great deal of customization and different schools have different set-ups, we won't go into that. You can just get in touch with us to solicit assistance. 🤙 That said, we'd like to raise your attention to three crucial aspects. In no particular order:

     a) If you want to run evaluations in Full Fabric, you must link at least one evaluation template to the application template. You'll be happy to learn that reusing an existing application template spares you the trouble of setting this up, thereby killing the proverbial two birds with one stone. 🐦🐦 Awesome, right? 😁

     b) Second, is the application template's Opens on date. You don't necessarily have to insert a Deadline, because, in the absence of one, the portal will consider the Applications close on date that you specified when defining the details of the class before – a response strategy to address the ability to associate the same template to multiple intakes with different timings. However, you must absolutely insert an opening day (which can be inaccurate), simply because otherwise the template will be closed.

    c) Last, but not least, if you're using an institution-wide application template, don't forget to update any schema fields that were designed to be dependent on the product choice, like so:

With the bulk of this enterprise now past us, you're finally ready to lift the veil and let the show begin – in other words, share your class onto a webpage and curate the information that's to be delivered to your site visitors! 🎭

Your portal pages are managed in the Portal module, of course. To go there:
​
​     1) Click Apps on the left sidebar
​     2) Select Portal

Again, chances are there's already a dedicated webpage that you just have to update. So, right off the bat, validate if the portal page(s) you want prospects to have access to aren't restricted:

Then click the gear on the right of each page to go inside, edit the content and refine the audience, as appropriate.

In terms of content, the basic guidelines are:

After all, in order to convert prospects into candidates, you need to earn their interest and their trust. 🤗

This is the crux of the biscuit, as they say. 🍪 If you employed an application template that was already in use by an earlier intake and you correctly linked it to the new class, then the template will automatically show the new class through the Applications widget and prune any "dead leaves". 🍂 But if you opted for a new template (duplicates also count as new in this regard), then you'll have to open the Applications widget yourself to replace closed classes with your new one.

Having read the entire article, we now have a surprise gift for you: an easy-to-follow printable checklist with the most important steps and precautions. If you're interested, click here to download it!

You have reached the end of this article. Thanks for reading! 🤓 If you have any questions or comments on the topic at hand, or if you enjoy reads like this and have article requests, let us know. Also, please leave a rating below. Your feedback is highly appreciated! 💖
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PUBLISHED: August 2, 2019
​LAST UPDATED: September 22, 2022 at 5:38 p.m.