Overview
Department Apps is an add-on feature that allows institutions to define which tabs, person types, widgets, campaign types, surveys, and tags are accesible for staff users to view/use/select from the SS&E UI within each department app.
- Determines which tabs are visible and accessible in the top menu bar. People and Home tabs should always be active.
- Determines which person types are available to select within the app.
- Determines which widgets are accessible in the app. Some widgets will require the student person type in order to display data.
- Determines which campaign types are able to be created in the app.
- Departmental Apps are also selected in Tag Administration and Survey Administration.
Department Apps Administration configures what is accesible for staff users to view/use/select within a specific App.
- Apps only apply to Non-student users.
- Departmental App settings determine what is available and display in each departmemt app for Staff and Faculty (non-Student) users, eg. on a Staff View.
- Student users will only have access to a Student View, and this is not applicable to Department Apps.
- Users will only have access to what is configured within Departmental App Administration. For example, if a user has permissions to a certain item via Role Administration, yet the item is not available within an app, then having or not having permissions set via Role Security settings will not matter if the item is not accessible within the app.
- Departmental App settings allow institutions to remove items from displaying on the UI if they do not apply to a specific App. For example, if there's a tab that is not applicable for Instructors to view and it is not used by instructors, the Instruct App settings can be configured so that this specific tab does not display on the UI when using the Instruct app.
The three different Department Apps that staff users may be assigned to are:
- Advise
- Instruct
- Recruit
Note: Admin is not considered a Department App since it only allows access to the Administrator page.
To learn more about Department Apps, click here.
What Happens Upon Release?
- When Departmental Apps is disabled, all staff and faculty users are assigned the Advise App.
Department App Settings
After activating Department Apps in Features Administration and configuring the Departmental App settings, each app may have different options displayed on the UI.
This is to be expected, since each app will only display what is relevant to use/view within it's own "department".
Department Apps Administration determines which of the following items display/are accesible from the UI when viewing a specific App:
- Primary Navigation (Home, People, Plans, Reports, Surveys, Meeting Requests, Courses, Campaigns) - Determines which tabs display on the primary navigation menu bar.
- Person Types (Applicant, Prospect, Staff, Student) - Determines which person type populations are available to select and view within each app. This determines which person types display in the People Page dropdown and filtering/reporting selections within a specific app. To learn more about Person Types, click here.
- Badge Color - The color of the source app badge that displays the originating app name on each Note that appears on the Activity Feed and the Students Notes tab.
- Widgets - Determines which widgets are available for users to choose from on each Dept. App's Home Page Dashboard.
- Campaign Types (Application, Appointment, Enrollment, General) - Determines which campaign types users can create in each App.
- Upon the 7.0 June 2022 release which included the departmental apps feature release, all the existing active/inactive surveys and tags that were already in the system were assigned the Advise app, since that is the default app that got assigned to all staff users during the 7.0.0 release.
- When configuring tags or surveys after the 7.0 June 2022 release, Administrator users will have to manually select the associated app(s) where the tag or survey should be available.
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- If Departmental Apps is enabled in Features Administration, the administrator must select each app where the tag or survey is to be used and viewed from.
- If Departmental Apps is not enabled in Features Administration, then the "Advise" app must be selected on each new survey and each new tag being created in order to be visible from the default "Advise" app UI, since that is the only departmental app currently being used.
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Available App Settings
There are two levels of Department App Settings:
- During implementation, institutions can decide which configurable settings may display on the UI within each App. If everything is left accessible on every app in the database settings, then there will be no difference between the available app settings in Departmental Apps Administration.
- Within SS&E Administration, Admin users can configure each departmental app to determine what is accessible from within each App. An enabled item will display on the UI and a disabled item will not display on the UI.
Admin App
The Admin app is not considered a department app as it's use is to associate Administrator users with the Administration Page and is not a configurable "app" since everything available in Administration is accessible to all SS&E Administrators.
For example, People Administration Bulk Actions on tags will always be available to add/remove tags from person records and this cannot be "disabled".
The difference is that within each department app, administrators can configure what may or may not display on the filtered Staff View when viewing records within each department app (this also depends on what is allowed to display for each logged-in user based on their security role(s) permissions).
How are Department Apps assigned and removed from Person records?
- Each security role may be assigned one or more department app in Role Administration, with the exception of the Student and Administrator roles.
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- A user with a Student role will only be assigned the Student app, and by design, the student role cannot be assigned additional department apps.
- A user with an Administrator role will be assigned the Admin app, and by design, the administrator role may be assigned additional department apps.
- A user that is assigned both a staff (non-student) and a student role is considered staff and will not be assigned the Student app.
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- Each user will be assigned all department apps that are associated with all their assigned security roles.
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- In order to remove user access to a specific department app, you must remove all security roles that are associated with the app from the person record user details via People Administration.
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The difference between Apps and Roles
Apps determine what items are available for app users to use and view while working in a certain app.
Roles determine what each user has permissions to view/use throughout the Student Success & Engagement application.
- By design, departments apps allow institutions to tailor each app to include only the necessary features and functions, while security roles are what set permissions at the user level.
- A department app may add or remove a feature/function that the role itself grants/does not grant permissions to, as each has a different focus.
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- When setting up a department app, make sure that each app includes all items that may be used within the app to fulfill all requirements and complete all tasks.
- When setting up permissions on a user role, make sure that the role only assigns the necessary permissions.
- After assigning a department app(s) to a user role, each user will have a list of associated apps and assigned roles. The combined permissions assigned by all user roles determine what is available for each user within each app.
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Surveys
Each Survey can be configured to display only within a specific App.
- Recruit can only view and use/send out Surveys that display within the Recruit App.
- Advise can only view/send Surveys that display within the Advise App.
- By default, all Surveys will be assigned the Advise App.
- This determines what survey is allowed to appear on the Surveys Page - what displays in each Department App on the Surveys list, which surveys can be sent through any of the modules, what respones can be viewed (both in Survey Responses and My Survey Responses).
- If a survey was assigned an App and later the App was removed, the survey will no longer display within the App.
- Survey Roles settings determine who can send and view the Survey. However, if the survey is not included in the App, then it does not matter if the user role can use or view the survey. For example, if there are no Apps listed on the Survey Apps setting, then the survey cannot be used by any user of any role.
Tags
Each Tag can be configured to display only within a specific App.
- By default, all Tags will be assigned the Advise App.
- This setting determines which tags are allowed to be used/selected and displayed within each App.
- This setting also determines which tags display in the Student Filter, Manual Tags etc, within an App.
- This determines which tags may appear on a student record within each App.
- If a tag was assigned in an App and later the App was removed from the Tag Configuration, the tag will be removed and no longer display anywhere within the App.
Campaign Types
The Department App Campaign Types Settings determines which campaign types (Application, Appointment, Enrollment, General) are available within each Department App. Users are only allowed to use/view a specific campaign when creating/viewing campaigns within the appropriate App.
- Campaigns, Metrics/Analysis, Emails and Templates are separated by App.
- Campaigns and Campaign Templates are always tied to an individual App.