Creating an Alumni Portal in Core

Derek Porter · March 2023

We're looking to set up a Community Group or Resource Board for our alumni. We want a place to share info/news and allow class agents to have a place to collaborate to some extent. We are still in our first year with BB on the SIS/Education side (we've had RE for years) and we have not yet implemented ConnectRE.

Since the “portal” offered on the RE side doesn't do what we're looking to do, it seems like the way to go is to import our alums from RE into Core and get ConnectRE going. I'm curious to know what others are doing for alumni portals and how the experience has been with setting it up and managing it - either in Core or some other platform. Thanks for any insights!

Kathy Hannon · March 2023

@Derek Porter we have built out our Alumni Resource board similar to the Student's Resource Board. We have where they can submit a form for Transcripts, Button that links them to the Alumni Social Media area, and a Button for Alumni Events (we post the upcoming big school events). The RE Alumni coordinator does all biographical changes (updates email, addresses, phone numbers, etc.) in Core so ConnectRE will populate correctly and then she does the School affiliations in RE. We have not backloaded Alumni - we are just moving forward. We add alumni as they request access if not in Core. This has worked great for us - no community group as it's easier to email through RE and the buttons on the Resource boards allow for building content to push out to Alumni vs them having to go to a group. Hope this helps. Side note - after graduation we make the graduates login and set up their personal email account login(BBID) and disable their SSO - very successful.

Derek Porter · April 2023

Thanks @Kathy Hannon, very helpful. I guess we need to dig in to ConnectRE and get that going. We've been hesitant due to some mixed reviews, but it sounds like it's pretty neccessary if we want a portal in Core. Has it been at all challenging to manage some alums in Core (the one's who have requested access) and others in RE? Our staff is somewhat limited so we're also trying to keep workloads in check.

Thanks again!

Kathy Hannon · April 2023

@Derek Porter all biographical is handled in Core for the Alumni. Alumni can update their own profiles in Core, annually we push in September an Alumni push page reminding Alumni to update their profiles. Our Alumni Coordinator does very little on the Core side, if the alum completes the “Update your information” on the website, she emails us the information to change. I can tell you since we've transitioned the last few years of alumni to having logins - if I get 5 updates from the coordinator a year, it's a lot. Happy to share further if you want

Karen Roop · October 2023

@Kathy Hannon
Kathy, I'm interested in how you handle all of the other things that ConenctRE changes in the Raiser's Edge record. It seems that ConnectRE is so rigid that we have to comb nearly all of the major tabs in a record if a change comes through. Like, it will make the new address the primary, but won't check the Send Mail box, and it leaves the previous address checked to send mail. Also, it a change comes through that involves a name, it doesn't update the add/sals at all… Etc… How are you all handling all of these changes?

Kathy Hannon · October 2023

@Karen Roop ConnectRE is clunky! When we look at the records changes we make sure that the address from Core is in data standards otherwise a new address record will be created - changes are made in Core. ConnectRE will not change addressee/salutation - that has to be done manually after you Process records. We will download the change file after we Process and if any address changes will make sure address wasn't duplicated - that seems to be where we have the most issue with the ConnectRE sync. And we will check new statuses (married/divorced) - manually make sure that they are updated correctly.

Creating an Alumni Portal in Core

Comments

Categories