Advising Roles

Advising Roles Overview

Advising is a highly configurable system driven by roles and permissions. 

• Role controls what functionality the user can access and what student data they can see. 
• Permissions extend the user’s power beyond their role.

Primary Roles

Civitas Advising includes these roles by default (your implementation may have added custom ones):

1. Director: Sees all advisors and students in their SSU and have access to all features within their SSU. Can create and share student groups and schedule advising slots/ appointments on behalf of other advisors.
   • Example: Director of Academic Advising
   • Focus: manage advisors and groups; report
2. Advisor+: Sees all students in the SSU but may also have assigned students. Can create and share student groups.
   • Example: An advisor who may have a cohort of students, but who also holds open office hours or creates reports for an entire school/program so they need access to all students.
   • Focus: advise, connect, engage, report
   • Restrictions: Does not have access to the Advisors management page. Does not have the ability to schedule on behalf of other advisors, but they can view other calendars.
3. Advisor: Advisors have access to assigned students, can create custom groups (but can not share or access shared groups).
   • Example: An advisor who has FERPA access limited to his or her own students.
   • Focus: advise, connect, engage, report
   • Restrictions: Does not see “all students” – ONLY assigned students (if a user needs to see both they should have Advisor+ role). Does not have access to advisors tab in advise. Does not have the ability to schedule on behalf of other advisors, but they can view other calendars. Can not share groups and can not access shared groups.
4. Faculty: Faculty view rosters for classes they are currently teaching, give commendations to students, or raise alerts on struggling students.
   • Focus: alerts, messaging
   • Restrictions: Faculty cannot view full student profile information unless they are also an advisor. No advising note functionality, unless they are also an advisor. No calendar access.
5. Assistant: Administrative assistants schedule advising slots/appointments on behalf of advisors. 
   • Focus: calendar; scheduling appointments on behalf of others
   • Restrictions: Assistants, by default, do not have access to advising notes or individual student profiles. This access would need to be configured.
6. Student: Students schedule advising appointments, can view shared resources, view announcements, view messages, and review their course history.
   • Focus: calendar (scheduling advising appointments) 
   • Restrictions: There is no student entered data at this time.

Optional Permissions

There are five additional permissions in Advising which can be added on to any advising role (not a student role) above on a user by user basis.

1. User Management Admin: User Management Admins are given permission to access and update user account management settings and permissions across the institution’s Advising user base and can create new user accounts. Requires: the Director role.
2. Institution Director: Institution Directors can see other directors, advisors, and all students across student success units at an institution. This is typically added onto a director or advisor + role.
3. Scheduling Manager: Gives a user the ability to manage other advisors’ calendars. They will only gain access to other calendars in their SSU.
4. Announcement Manager: Gives a user the ability to create announcements. If the user does not have this permission they can view announcements created within their SSU, but can not create them.
5. Library Manager: Gives a user the ability to add content to the resource library. If the user does not have this permission they can view content created within their SSU, but can not create it.

Important: Roles are specific to an SSU. Each SSU can have its own Institution Director, Director, Advisor+, Advisor, Admin, and Faculty roles, as needed. Have at least one Director for each SSU.

Role Affects Student Visibility

The Students filter is different between roles. 

Level	Scope	Roles	Visibility
1	All Institution	Institution Director (granted permission)	Sees all students across the entire institution (every SSU)
2	All SSU	Director Advisor+	Sees all students within their SSUs (if user belongs to multiple SSUs, sees students in all of them)Can filter to see assigned students only
3	Assigned Only	Advisor	Sees only their assigned students

Note how each role (designated in red) sees progressively fewer options and fewer students in total:

Advising Roles & Permissions

Advising is highly configurable through roles and permissions. Your configuration choices change visibility and behavior based on role (Director, Advisor+, Advisor, Assistant, Faculty) and the permissions you grant to each user.

• Roles allow the system to control the access rights for groups of users. This drives security:
  • What functionality they may use
  • Which students they may access (just their own, their SSU’s, or all)
• Permissions are then added to individual users, to grant special rights (such as alert management).

Limited to SSU — Except where noted, these permissions operate within the user’s assigned SSU (Student Success Unit, such as Advising, Financial Aid, Athletics). That is, if you are granted the power to manage others’ calendars, it only applies to other calendars within your own SSU.

Advising Roles

Roles are the system-defined groups you use to organize and manage your users. Each new user must be assigned a role.

These Roles are the default access control groupings for Advising staff users. Some Roles also include specific permissions for all users in that role:

Role	Visibility and Access	Permissions Included
Director	Sees all students, advisors, and faculty within an SSU	Manage resource libraryManage schedulesSend announcements
Advisor+	Sees all students within an SSU
Advisor	Sees only their assigned students within an SSU
Administrative Assistant	Sees no students; manages advisor calendars	Manage schedules
Faculty	Views student rosters for their current sections; gives commendations or raises alerts on struggling students

Optional Permissions (Individual)

Permissions are added to individual user accounts, except where the Role grants them by default. 

Best practice: First determine that the user is assigned to a sufficiently powerful role for them to do their work, then add additional permissions only as needed.

Permission	Typical Roles	What it grants
Manage alerts	DirectorAdvisor+Advisor	See, resolve, and comment on all alerts within the SSUReceive any daily digest (Alert Committee)
Manage resource library	Director	Add, edit, delete, and share materials in the resource library.(Without this permission, users just view its content)
Manage schedules	Director	Add availability, view schedules, and create appointments on behalf of other advisors in their SSU.
Manage users	Director only	Change roles and permissions for others in the SSU
Send announcements	Director only	Send announcements to student groups they have access to in their SSU.
View all students at the institution	DirectorAdvisor+	See all students across all SSUs.
Faculty	DirectorAdvisor+AdvisorAdmin Asst	View rosters for classes they are currently teachingGive commendations and raise course alerts on students

What Can Be Customized

The left half of the table below shows the default visibility for the different roles, which users can change for themselves in their own in-app settings.

The right half of the table shows which permissions can be changed by someone with Manage Users permissions; the ones with asterisks (*) are built into the role and cannot be removed. Note that Manage Calendars refers to handling other users’ calendars, not your own.

Default Settings

Role	Who Sees Calendar	Can Be Messaged	Advising Directory	Manage Announcements	Manage Calendars	Manage Library
Director	All Students	✅	✅	✅ *	✅ *	✅ *
Advisor+	All Students	✅	✅	✅	⛔	✅
Advisor	If Assigned	✅	✅	⛔	⛔	⛔
Faculty	No Students	⛔	⛔	⛔	⛔	⛔
Admin Assistant	No Students	✅	✅	⛔	✅ *	⛔

How Alerts Appear by Role

Who can see and manage Advising Alerts and Course Alerts depends on your configuration choices, which change behavior based on role (Director, Advisor+, Advisor, Faculty) and permissions.

Alerts for advising (advisor-raised) and courses (faculty-raised) are highly configurable. You manage them by type (high, medium, commendation) and have email and in-app notifications to ensure that alerts are resolved expediently.

The Role determines where alerts are seen and handled:

Students

Students never see their alerts within the application. If your institution enables alert notifications to go to students by email, that applies globally for all alert types. Ideally, however, students only learn about course alerts and commendations when their advisor reaches out to them about it personally.

Faculty Role

Faculty members raise course alerts for their students. Through Alerts, they first see student rosters for their current term’s sections, where they can add alerts, reply to notes, and see the resolution status. Faculty only locate students through their current section rosters. 

To see all of the alerts they raised across all sections, they use the Current Academic Year Alerts tab.

Advising Staff Roles

Advising staff (including faculty who also work as advisors) handle both course alerts and advising alerts for their students. Through Alerts, staff can add, work, and resolve advising alerts, and they can work and resolve course alerts from faculty.

Staff members can access alerts through Advising three ways:

1. Alerts (all viewable students)
2. Student Profile > Alerts (individual student)
3. Student List > Advanced Search > Academic Alerts (filtering)

Advising staff will be one of the following roles, which control what they can see and do:

• Director (all students and information)
  • Committee Member (if configured, only students in their SSU)
• Advisor+ (their team’s students)
• Advisor (their own students)

Committee Role (optional)

An Early Alert Committee is a select group from offices across the institution who are responsible for handling alerts and targeting outreach for students. Many offices outside of Advising may be represented:

• Admissions
• Athletics
• Dean of Students
• Residential Life
• Financial Aid
• Counseling

If your institution has such a Committee, the role is created by granting a set of individuals the Director, Advisor+, and Advisor role permissions, which lets them see the alerts for their students of concern. Remember that the Committee Member role can see alerts that happen within their SSU only.

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