Applications make the High Ed world go round, and they're the main draw of Full Fabric's Origin module. 🌏 Therefore, we prepared an easy-to-follow guide on how to create an application template from start to finish. 😃
What's an application template?
An application template is a digital form that you create and edit yourself for candidates to later fill and submit their applications to your school. In other words, it's the basis for their application forms.
How do I start and open an application template?
To start a new application template, follow the steps below:
1) Click the gear icon on the top right-hand corner and choose General settings
2) Press the tab Institution
3) Tap Create a new template
4) Give it a NAME and press Next
5) Select the desired TABS, to personalise the template and collect special types of information, and press Next. You can change these tabs at any time:
Your new template will be swiftly added to the collection. To open it, just click the gear icon next to it:
How do I configure the functioning and edit the content of an application template?
By default, an application template has five tabs: Details, Personal, Application, Video Interview, Experience, References, Payment, Payment Plan, Digital Signature, Evaluations, Automation and Submission. Simply drag and drop them if you wish to reorder them differently, and press the '+' button to create a brand new tab.
The Details tab
The Details tab is where you set up the general parameters of the template and also some important settings of its functioning, namely:
Name - The name of the template, visible to both staff and candidates.
Info - Any extra piece of information you'd like to share about this template (only visible here).
Application form link - An automatically generated link through which applicants may access the form. Clicking Copy link will copy the URL to your clipboard, ready to be paster elsewhere.
Can applicants submit multiple applications? - Decide if the same profile can or cannot submit that application template more than once.
Will applicants need to choose a product? - If you want to include or not include a product choice field for applicants to select a product.
Which products can applicants select in the product choice field? - If the previous option is set to Yes, you can choose whether applicants should see a specific set of products that you select, or only the products in which they already have an active journey.
Available to applicants in one or more of the following states - Define whether this template can only be accessed by profiles who already have an active journey on a certain lifecycle state.
Allow applicants to select the courses on the study plan of the selected primary product choice? - To enable the Subjects tab in the application template, allowing applicants to select the courses on the study plan of the class that they have selected in the product choice field.
Primary product choice automation - If the setting 'Which products can applicants select in the product choice field?' is set with 'a specific selection of products', you can then choose whether to enable automations that to add applicants to the selected products or not add them.
Secondary product choice automation - Same as the previous, but for the 'secondary product choice' (if it exists).
Allow applicants to choose to start an application for someone else as a proxy? - To allow applicants to start this application template as a proxy, on behalf of someone else.
What type of form is this? - Application or Registration. Different countries use different therminology, pick the one that suits you best.
Opens on - Which date the template should be made available to candidates.
Deadline - Which date candidates can no longer submit their applications or start new ones (an error page will be returned if they try).
Downloadable by applicant - Whether a PDF version of the application form is to be provided for download to applicants (Yes or No).
Billable? - Set this application template as billable (Yes or No).
Send GTM events for this application template? - To Include this application template into the GTM integration (if it exists). More info about GTM here.
Enable application ecommerce experience? - To configure if this application template will be considered 'ecommerce' in GTM.
The Personal and Application tabs
These tabs contain the fields that candidates must complete. Organisation-wise, our suggestion is to reserve all personal details, such as First name and Last name, for Personal, and put everything else (e.g., essays, documents and whatnot) in Application. That said, you're free to create additional content tabs and even rename or delete the default ones as you wish, for every application template is yours to customise however you deem appropriate.
Please refer to the article How schema fields work to learn how to design input fields, such as dropdown lists, checkboxes, date fields and more.
Video Interview tab
Experience tab
References tab
Payments and Payment Plan tabs
Digital Signature tab
Evaluations tab
Automation tab
As you know, Automations are a super-important tool of Full Fabric that lives among plenty of our features, thus they could not be absent from application templates. In the automations tab you have two automation possibilities (and you can enable both at the same time): Applicant notification template and Automation:
Applicant notification template: this feature serves the purpose of launching an automatic notification to the applicant right after the application is submitted. You can customise its subject, sender email and sender name. As for the notification's content, you can either build it from scratch or upload an existing template from the Shared Email Templates area.
Automation: here you can use our powerfull automation tool, which you've perhaps already stumbled upon, to build more complex workflows based on multiple triggers and a wider range or actions.
The triggers can be either application is started or application is submitted.
Actions can be add tag to profile, send SMS to profile, send email to profile, send email to proxy, send email to staff, send letter to profile, and wait.
Submission tab
Here is where you can define the process that the applicant will follow after they click the submit button, and how does the template behaves on those moments:
Confirmation Modal: Optionally show a confirmation modal when the applicant attempts to submit their application. It's essentially a pop-up window, requiring the applicant to confirm the submission. You can freely customise its content.
Redirection: Control where applicants are redirected after submitting their application. You can send them to another application, to a URL of your choice or back to an overview of their submitted application.
