What are Person Types?

Overview

There are five Person Types in Person Types Administration:

1. Applicant
2. Faculty
3. Prospect
4. Staff
5. Student

Person Types determine what is displayed on the person record when viewing information about a certain person type.

• The main consideration for designing person types is that based upon the nature of higher education institution operations, there are many different types of "people" at an individual institution, and the relevant information for different types of people is very different.

Without person types, all the different types of people within SS&E (i.e. users with at least one assigned role) will all show up as the same "person type" and display the same information on a Staff View (for staff and faculty "users"). By default, this person type is "Student".

• Users, aka person records, that are only assigned a Student role, will only be allowed to see a "Student View" and this is NA for this article.
• Person Types is only used to categorize users, i.e. display different information for different types of people/users, displayed on a Staff View.

Enabling Person Types allows schools to decide what information is visible when viewing a "person type".

• When an institution does not enable usage of Person Types, this means that staff and faculty users will be included in "Student Filter" results and display on the Student page in the built-in "Everyone" filter results.
• Enabling Person Types allows schools to view different data for each user type on a separate "People/Person Type" page.
  • • When Person Types is enabled, the "Student" page will change to a "People" dropdown that lists all Person Types enabled in the Department App.
    • Each Person Type will have it's own Person Type Everyone filter, Caseload filter etc., that only include results for person records that are associated to the selected Person Type. Each person record will only display tabs and information that is relevant to the Person Type, as defined in Person Type Administration.
• Since SS&E most likely includes person records for different user types, such as advisors, faculty, students, applicants etc. enabling Person Types will allow institutions to define which tabs and actions apply to each person type.
  • • For example, a lot of information displayed on a student record does not apply to faculty or staff. By leveraging person types, staff and faculty can easily be excluded from any results on the Student page, aka excluded from Everyone/Caseload/Custom filter results. In addition, this also allows institutions to define what actions can be taken on students vs. Staff/Faculty.

For information about how person types are assigned and removed from person records, please review the Person Type Administration article, found here.

Applicant and Prospect Person Types

With the introduction of Person Types in the 7.0 (June 2022) feature release, SS&E also introduced the Applicant and Prospect person types, so that schools can further separate students vs. applicants and prospects.

For example, some schools have separate teams that handle prospects, applicants, and students. The intention is that differentiating between prospect, applicant, and student person types will help the SS&E staff/faculty users by allowing person type configuration settings that will allow these users to view filter results, filter selections, available actions etc. that may only apply to a specific person type. An example of where this is useful is at a school where applicants and prospects are handled by a separate team(s) prior to the students being assigned to an advising team; here it would not make sense for staff users to view or filter on registered courses and advisors since those are not yet assigned and would not be applicable.

• By associating person types to person records in SS&E, institutions can categorize their SS&E users by user type.
• Person Types are only "seen" and "used" by staff/non-student users.
• When leveraging person types, the staff view will only display tabs and actions that are relevant for the selected person type from the "People" dropdown.
• When not leveraging person types, SS&E will only display one "Student page" instead of the People dropdown. What this means is that all user types will display with the same person type. The person type name is "Student" since that is what displays on the menu bar and is the person type that we are mostly/usually targeting. However when person types is not enabled, there is no difference between what is available to view/use on a student/staff user.
• Person Types allow institutions to categorize users based on the items and actions that should only be visible and available when viewing person records associated with a certain person type.

Person Types are associated with a Person record. Person Types are used to group the same type of SS&E users all together so that each person record will only display information and actions that are applicable to the person type being viewed. When viewing a person record within SS&E, the idea is that the UI will only display information and actions that are relevant to the person type.

• For example, it is to be expected that institutions wish to display different data about students and faculty. Therefore, by enabling person types, student users can be associated with a Student person type while non-student users can be associated with a Staff or Faculty person type.

Student Filters

By design, Student Filters are scoped to Person Types. 

• When not leveraging Person Types, all users, eg. student and non-student users, will be included in the student filter results when filtering on the current student status.
  • • • • If Person Types is not enabled, then by default, in the default Advise App, student filter results will always include "everyone", not just students.
        • By design, Staff are considered "current".

Department Apps

If the Departmental Apps add-on is not enabled and Person Types is not enabled, then all person types will be included in the default Advise App. 

• If using Departmental Apps is enabled, then each department app will include a People dropdown that includes each person type that is configured within Department App Settings.

How to Display Person records by Person Type

In order to remove staff/non-student users from being included in student filter results and display person records by their separate person type:

1. Person Type settings need to be configured in Person Types Administration
2. Person Types needs to be enabled in Application Administration (reach out to Services or Support as this will change the UI and requires prior planning)
3. Person Types need to be assigned to person records via the Person stream data extract definitions.
   1. • As soon as Person Types is enabled in step 2, every person record importing from the SIS must already be associated with one or more person type(s).
      • For more detailed information about person type configuration, please review the Person Types Administration article, found here.

Person Types Setup - Flowchart

From Person Types Administration, the following flowchart helps demonstrate what changes will appear on the UI for non-student users upon enabling Person Types.

Person Types

• Person Types determine what items and actions display on the UI.
• Person Types determine what is available to use when searching for a person record.
• Person Types are configured based on what and how logged-in users will want to find, view and target person records associated with a specific person type.
• A user may be associated with more than one person type.

Person Types are configured in People & Roles Administration on the Person Types Administrative menu. Person Type Configuration settings include which actions, items, details, filters, and tabs are available for each person type. 

• When looking at a person record, it may not display all data associated with the person record. This is by design since viewing a person record through a Person Type applies a filter on the staff view so that only relevant person data is displayed on the UI.
• Viewing a person record by selecting the Person Type will only change what is visible and accessible from the UI, yet this does not change any of the underlying person data. For this reason, if the same person record is associated with multiple person types, the same person may display different information on the UI, depending on the person type being viewed.
• If users are assigned multiple person types, when searching for a person from the Global Search, you will be prompted to select which of their "person type" records to view.
• Person Types, by design, can change what is displayed/hidden on the UI for each person record.

Person Types vs. Roles

Person Types are different than Roles in that:

• Roles determine what each logged-in user can view/access based on their role permissions.
• Person Types determine what is available to view/use when a staff user is viewing a person record based on the specific person type settings. If something is missing from the UI, this does not mean that the logged-in user does not have permissions to view the item, rather it means that Person Type Configuration has determined that this item is not applicable for the person type and therefore should not display on the person type record.

For example, Staff Person Type configuration will most likely disable "Show Advisor/Coach/Followers On Profile Tab" in Person Types Administration, since this most likely does not apply to staff.

• When disabled, the system will remove the success team people section from displaying on the UI when viewing Staff Person Type records.
• This does not mean that all Staff users do not have anyone on their success team, it only means that the People section is not visible when viewing a person record with a Staff Person Type. 
  • • When person types is disabled, the student person type will include everyone, students and staff.
    • Once Person Types is enabled (eg. set to true in Application Administration), all person records will display on the UI based on their assigned Person Type.
    • Multiple person types may be assigned to the same person. What this means is that the same person may display different information and available actions based on how they are being viewed. For example, a person that is both student and applicant will always display their success team as a student person type, and most likely this will be disabled and not display while viewed as an applicant person type, since it is N/A in the Applicant Person Type realm and would always be empty.
      • • The student success team exists, however this will not display on the UI when the person type being viewed Person Type Administration setting "Show Advisor/Coach/Followers On Profile (tab)" are all set to No. 

How are Person Type Settings enabled?

Person Types are enabled/disabled to display on the UI when they're assigned to an app in Departmental App Administration*. This is what determines which Person Types are accessible within each App. For example:

• Applicant and Prospect are usually the only Person Types enabled in the Recruit App.
• Student is usually the only Person Type enabled in the Advise App.
• Student is usually the only Person Type enabled in the Instruct App.

*A pre-requisite is that the Departmental Apps add-on feature is unlocked in Institution Administration.

What Happens Upon Release?

Upon the 7.0 June 2022 release, all users will display under the Student Person Type and Person Type Usage is disabled.

In addition, each user is also assigned a person type based on each of their assigned security roles. Everything will look the same as prerelease with two exceptions in that:

1. Reports using the Person data source that filter/display on Person Type will show the system-assigned role-based person type(s).
2. People Administration will also display the system-assigned role-based person types.
   • • Users that are only assigned the Student person type are assigned the Student app.
     • Users that are assigned both Staff and Student person types are assigned the Advise app.
     • A user with a Staff or a Faculty person type are assigned the Advise app.

By design, the Admin App is not associated with any Person Types since the Admin App is not a department app and it is only assigned to users with the Administrator role.

Resources is also not a department app yet this displays within the app switcher and is listed on the assigned Apps on each person record - user details.

Once Person Types is Enabled:

UI Changes

When viewing different Person Types, each Person Type view will look different - 

• Person Type Admin Settings configure what displays and is accessible on a person type. 
• Once Person Types is enabled in Application Administration and implemented to import on the Person data feed, when a Person Type is selected from the primary navigation menu bar, all pages, filters, and information (person record tabs) displayed for each person will look different between apps and between person types depending on the Person Type configuration and Departmental App configuration settings.

People Administration

There are three different ways that person types may be assigned to SS&E users:

1.  Role-Based person types are assigned by the system when the Person Type Import is set to False in Application Administration. 
2. UI person types can always be manually assigned from the UI via People Administration Bulk Actions.
3. SIS Import person types import via the SIS Import process on the Person data feed when the application administration person type import is set to true. For more information about importing Person Types, click here.

The person type source determines if/how/when a person type gets removed. In general:

• A person type added via the UI (People Administration bulk actions) is the only person type that will not be removed when it is not importing on the person record from the SIS via the Person data feed (once the person type import is enabled).
• If the person type was previously added via role-based person type assignments or assigned via the SIS import, and it is no longer importing from the SIS, then it will be removed from the person record. 

Caseload

• Each logged-in user may see users grouped in a Person Type Caseload for each person type displayed on their UI, under the People dropdown.

A Person Type Caseload includes all Person records that are assigned the Person Type and are within the logged-in user's Caseload.

Since the "Student Page" is now segmented by Person Type via the People dropdown, Messaging Filters will also display each Person Type Caseload in the dropdown messaging options.

• Anywhere caseload is referenced outside of the specific Person Type Page, it will be replaced with a Person Type Caseload.

Report Source

The Person Report Source has options for Person Type both in the report data and the report filters.

Daily Digest

If a staff member has subscriptions with different Person Types, the Daily Digest will display all people with different person types on the same Daily Digest. When linking to a person, it will open within the Person Type "view".

If a staff user has multiple Apps, and the Person Type is associated with multiple Apps, the staff user will be prompted to choose the App they want to use to view the Person record.