Advising Communication FAQ
Following are the answers to most frequently asked questions about Advising emails, SMS messages, and notifications.
Messages
Messages are managed and viewable within the application. Recipients get a message as email or SMS (phone text). Only the student’s institutional email and official phone number on file are used.
Will students receive messages I send in the test environment?
Emails are disabled in test environments by design. However, you can go to the student’s profile in the test environment and verify that the messages arrived there.
How far back are messages kept?
All messages are kept; there is no limit on time or number. For group messages, the count of messages includes all unique recipients.
Can I cancel a pending message?
You cannot delete a pending message, but contact Support to clean the database if it’s an urgent situation.
Can I share messages with other advisors?
Messages are private, but Notes are not. Neither email nor SMS messages are visible to other staff. Be sure to enable “Save message as note” (which are not seen by students) for communication that should be shared. If you didn’t do that, you can copy important parts into advising notes and then share those.
Writing Messages
What do I include in a message?
These best practices will help your message get through:
- Greet the student by preferred name: “Hi, Lizzy!”
- In group messages, select Personalize > Recipient’s Preferred Name to add the variable:
- Hi, {recipient_preferred_name}!
- This is your academic advisor, Brenda.
- I see you haven’t registered for Fall yet. For help with that, just text me back or call Advising at 555-123-4567.
Important
Do not use any personalization variables in the message Title; that location isn’t supported.
How many students can I include in a message?
There is no limit, but be aware that emailing a large group could take longer. The system creates an email batch job, set to go out as soon as possible given the resource constraints and the existing jobs in the queue. For a large job (such as several thousand), you might see a 20-minute delay before they are all sent. You can keep working within the application and check back on the status of your job.
What can I attach to an email message?
Size — Be aware that messages can take any number of attachments, but emails themselves are limited to a total size of 10 MB; if your attachments exceed that, your email goes without attachments.
Type — For safety, you can’t send executables or compressed (zip) files, but standard office and media formats are accepted:
- txt, pdf, docx, doc, gif, png, jpg, jpeg, mp4, avi, 3gp, mpg, divx, flv, vob, mov, m4v, wmv, ppt, pptx, mp3, wav, ics, xls, xlsx, csv, bmp, tif, tex, cls
Emails
When I email a student, does the thread get saved?
Yes, the responses between you are saved to Advising; if you also enabled “Send a copy to my email”, it shows up there, too. Special system emails ensure the thread responses make it back into Advising. These system emails enable Advising to integrate code-free with your email system:
How students see your sender address:
How the behind-the-scenes email gets the reply back into Advising:
Because messages start in Advising, the student’s email is always their official institution email.
Can I just use my Outlook account to reply to students?
Yes, you can reply from your email, once you initiate the contact in Advising. Your email threads in institutional Outlook (or Gmail) are saved to Advising, on the Communications page.
However, be aware that using messaging in Advising has additional features, such as the ability to save the message as an advising note.
What if a student emails me first?
If a student emails you first directly, the conversation needs an extra step to make it back into Advising:
- If your institution enabled an inbound email address, you can BCC (blind copy) this special address on your email reply to the student. This pulls the outside email back into the system for tracking as an advising note.
- To forward a conversation without copying the student, identify the student in the Subject line using one of these codes:
- ASSTUDEMAIL:
- ASSTUDID:
Why is Outlook/Gmail messing up my emails from Advising?
In most cases where there are problems, institutions have enabled email scanning rules that cause Advising emails to be handled like malicious content or be quarantined as external. Contact the entity at your institution that manages those rules. Advising’s URL may need to be listed as a “safe” sender.
This can also be solved by enabling DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail), an email authentication method to protect from spoofing. DKIM requires your IT to add some DNS entries that Support will provide.
Texts (SMS)
The Communication area has separate inboxes for email and SMS (text messages). On their Settings page, students can opt in or out at any time and set their preference for SMS or email.
Will I need to text from a phone?
No; you don’t need any phone at all. Your advising account is assigned a dedicated number that is managed by the application, which will handle all your SMS communication. Students, however, do receive your messages on their mobile phones, and they can see a read-only record of these SMS messages in the application.
Can I use my own phone to send SMS?
Yes, but only from within the application running on your phone. All SMS messages from advisors and staff are sent from within the application and are not associated with a mobile device. Currently, you cannot use your own phone number to send official Advising SMS messages.
Do students have to opt-in for SMS?
Yes, unless your institution chose to have students opted in by default. Students can opt in and out of SMS messages on their profile settings. Whenever they opt in to SMS, they receive an SMS confirmation to the phone number on file in your SIS.
Which mobile providers are supported?
All of them. There are no service provider requirements for students to meet. SMS messages are sent to the number on file in the SIS, so any changes must be made there.
What if I send SMS to a student with no phone on file?
If the application detects this situation, it allows you to add an email subject line and send the message as an email. If you’re messaging multiple students who don’t get SMS, you’ll see a checkbox to send it as an email to those who opted out (or have no phone on file).
Will students see who else I texted?
No. For privacy, students cannot see who else has been texted or emailed in a group message. You start a text or email with one or more students, but students see it as a private message with you, with private responses. Think of it as working like a “blind copy” (BCC) list in email.
Can students text me?
Yes, after your first outreach. If your students have already been texted by you, they can send new text messages to that number, which will show up in your Communication inbox.
How do I know when my student texts me?
Advisors always get a bell notification for incoming SMS messages.
10DLC Registering of SMS Numbers
10DLC Registration is an anti-spam measure required by U.S. mobile carriers, and it affects how new SMS numbers are assigned to individual Advising users.
What is 10DLC?
10-Digit Long Code (10DLC) is the new standard for Application-to-Person (A2P) text messaging via a traditional 10-digit phone number. To combat spam, U.S. mobile carriers now require special registration for SMS messaging: providers such as Civitas Learning must register on behalf of our customers for all 10DLC SMS messaging sent out by our web applications. For details, see campaignregistry.com/what-is-campaign-registry.
Who is responsible?
Civitas Learning handles this registration. We register on behalf of our customers as directed by our provider. All current Advising customers using SMS are registered, and each new Advising customer who opts for SMS will be registered during implementation.
What information is used?
To comply with these requirements, Civitas Learning must register each customer that uses SMS features in Advising. This is the information we use for registration:
- Your institution’s legal name
- Your institution’s official address
- Your institution’s Tax Number/ID/EIN
- Official documentation of your institution’s Tax Number/ID/EIN (not the information available through public search), which may be requested by a carrier
Does this delay getting an SMS number?
After enabling SMS, the user’s SMS status will change from Pending to Enabled only when registration is complete. Registration happens immediately or else as long as 6 weeks, if additional approvals are required by our provider or the Campaign Registry organization. We pre-register blocks of numbers to avoid delays, but this is subject to limits when many users are enabled in quick succession.
Daily Digests
Are there daily digest emails?
Yes, depending on how they’re enabled and configured for your institution. There are two types:
- Alerts – summaries of yesterday’s new course and advising alerts (advisors only)
- Appointments/Events – summaries of your day’s appointments and events (advisors and students)