Advisories - Getting Creative

Before we go too far, let’s talk about the primary function.  Advisories assist Faculty/Staff who are guiding students and making sure they are on the right academic and moral tracks.  Advisors can have access to almost everything a parent would have access to and more.

Such things include:

• Learning Profiles

• Schedules

• Assignment Grades Access

• Report Card Grade Access

• Transcripts

• Online Course Requests Recommendations/Requirements and Review

• Report Card/Progress Report Grade Review

• Advisory Grading

• Attendance

• Official Notes

As well as Access to advisees Group pages

*Please note: Access to the above information is usually set per feature and will require you to go into each feature as the manager and grant access to Advisors.  

As you can see, the Advisors can have extensive access to information for students that are in their Advisory if the applicable access has been granted.

It’s important to note that making someone the owner of an Advisory group doesn’t give access to that user automatically.  They must also be employed as an Advisor, so updating their employment record to include this role is necessary.

Let’s get creative!

Heads of school

I see a lot of questions regarding how to clone roles or give heads of school access to student information without giving them full edit access.  Advisory groups are a great way to do this.  

You can create a “stealth” Advisory group set up for your heads of school that includes all the students in the school or grade level you would like the Head to be able to view, but by using group page access, you can hide the group from the students so it doesn’t confuse or clutter their groups menu.  Heads of school can then have access to the features listed above to access student information via the Directory if the student was under review or called into the office.  

One note on this method- I do not recommend granting access to the Roster page in this instance.  If the Head of school were to navigate to the Roster page with, let’s say 300+ students on it, it may take a while to load. This restriction can also be controlled by editing the group page access for the individual group page.

Help with student Course Requests

We all know how busy and hectic course requests can get, and having help to handle course requests is usually welcome.  Typically you do not want to give several users a manager role to go through and perform these actions as it gives access to other tasks you may not want them to have.  Adding users to Advisories allows you to give access to  student course requests and gives staff the ability to make recommendations, require a selection, and/or approve requests made by the student.  

Disciplinarian/Vice Principals

Many times Disciplinarians or Vice Principals have a specific group of students they are in charge of monitoring. In addition to creating monitoring teams in Official Notes, the user may need access to grades, course pages, and assignments to assist them in determining the appropriate course of action for a student.  Advisory groups are a great way to grant this access as well!

Tutors/Teachers/Educational Consultants

You’ll have Teachers or outside Tutors that are assisting students with subjects they may be struggling in.  These users often need access to the student’s assignments and grades, but in the past you would need to give them Parental Access or access to a manager role. Alternatively, you could create an Advisory group with those students on the roster so the user can have easy access to all that information.  This group will also make it easier tomanage access for the students they are assisting.  Simply adding or removing the students from the roster will grant or remove the access!