Overview
The Decisions module is where you review and process application submissions. It seamlessly complements the Applications module to ensure a streamlined workflow from submission to decision.
This module enhances efficiency by automating routine tasks—thereby reducing staff manual processing—and improves the student experience by providing transparent, real-time updates on their application status.
Below, we outline the key features and functionalities of the Decisions module.
Key Decision Features
Fine-Grained Access: Decisions has an exclusive Groups and Permissions feature that allows you to define roles and responsibilities to control who can view and process applications, ensuring security and efficiency.
Customizable Decisioning Process: The Decision board, equipped with configurable stages and statuses, will tailor your decision process.
Automation: Leverage our Intelligent Admission feature to automate application evaluations with rules that manage statuses, stages, and notifications, streamlining operations.
Standardized Reviewing/Evaluating: Add your institution's criteria to set specific evaluation metrics such as GPA and class rank to standardize application assessments.
Checklists: Develop detailed checklists for required documents and actions, which will be visible to applicants and reviewers and enhance clarity and organization.
Decision and Financial Aid Letters: Use the Packages feature to generate personalized acceptance letters and financial aid information, which can be automatically populated on each student's microsite.
Transparent Application Tracking: Students can check their application status directly in their portal. This feature provides transparency throughout the application process, allowing students to see real-time updates and next steps, fostering engagement and clarity.
How Decisions Are Created
Decisions are generated once a student submits their application. Essentially, the decision process begins with the submission of the application.
Applications that are still in progress or haven't been submitted will not generate decisions. To automatically submit completed applications on behalf of the student, consider setting up a workflow or rule with the 'submit application' action.
Additionally, decisions can be added for imported applications through a workflow. For more details on this process, please see Importing Application Data.
Accessing Decisions
To access the Decisions module, navigate to Applications > Decision in the top orange navigation menu.
In the menu, you will find the following pages:
All Decisions: Listing of all your application decisions and cohorts.
Overview: Provides at-a-glance analyses of your application decisions.
Reports: Provides more in-depth analyses of your application decisions and allows for filtering by term. We recommend using the Insights module for a more comprehensive application/decision data review.
Decision Settings: Configure your settings for the decision board, criteria, and more.
Explore More on Decisions
Having introduced the basics of the Decisions module, it's time to dive into its advanced settings and features. For a comprehensive understanding and to tailor the decision-making process to your needs, we recommend exploring the Decisions collection in the following order:
Decisions Settings + Configurations:
Decision Groups + Permissions: Learn how to configure user roles and permissions to manage access and responsibilities effectively.
Decision Board, Stages, and Statuses: Understand how to tailor the Decisions module to reflect your application review process with custom stages and statuses.
Decision Criteria: Discover how to add and manage criteria used to evaluate each application.
Decision Checklists: Gain insights on creating checklists to ensure all decision-making requirements are consistently met.
Decision Packages: Learn how to assemble and distribute acceptance letters and financial aid awards.
Decision Cohorts: Learn how to segment applications into cohorts for streamlined processing and organization.
Intelligent Admissions - Rules for Automating: Explore how to implement rules that automate critical aspects of the application and decision process.
Locating + Processing Decisions
All Decisions Page + Searching/Filtering Applications: Navigate the All Decisions page to find specific applications and apply filters effectively.
Reviewing + Processing Application Decisions: Learn how to review, evaluate, and process application decisions effectively.
Additional Resources
The Decisions Module is included with the Element Engage package.