Alerts FAQ
Following are the answers to most frequently asked questions about Advising and Course Alerts, which are highly configurable.
Alert Visibility
Be aware that who can create, manage, see, and resolve alerts depends on the workflow set up for your institution. If you can’t do something that you expect (such as raise an alert on your advising student), check with your Advising directors and administrators about your role and permissions.
Who can manage alerts?
Each institution decides who raises, sees, and manages alerts, and what kind. A key decision is whether alerts are handled by an Alert Committee (made of advisors across SSUs).
These are five common setups that institutions choose for Alerts:
| Common setups | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Is there an Alert Committee? | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Are alerts for Assigned Advisors only? | No | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Are alerts for Courses only? | No | Yes | Yes | No | No |
Will I see alerts raised in other SSUs?
Yes, but only for students that you can see: visibility is inclusive of the SSUs a student belongs to. Because a student is in your SSU, you will see any alerts raised on them in other SSUs.
Can we turn off alerts for an SSU?
Yes. You can ask us to restrict certain SSUs from accessing alerts functionality.
We don’t assign advisors, so how do I see alerts?
Alerts are sent to assigned advisors (if any) and SSUs, and notifications go to associated individuals or groups. As you don’t have individuals, create a group and access alerts through that group. With this method, you go to the group to monitor alerts, then open the student account to handle the alert.
If we configure “Staff sees Alerts for assigned students only,” can we assign alerts to others?
Yes, you are free to assign alerts to other staff members, such as tutors. The difference is that they won’t automatically see alerts for any students until someone directly assigns an alert to them.
Why do advisors without Manage Alerts get to manage them?
By design, advisors may resolve alerts (that others raise) for students who are assigned to them. The Manage Alerts permission exists to allow certain staff (such as an Alerts Committee) to manage alerts for students who are not assigned to them.
Who sees which alerts I star?
No one. The star is a visual flag that is for your use and convenience only: Stars remind you which alerts you need to follow up on. Using Alert > Advanced Search, you can filter to see only starred, unresolved alerts. Advising Notes also use stars, to help you track your work.
How do I get a report on alerts?
Use Alert > Advanced Search to pull a list of students with alerts, then download the list in XLSX format.
You can also go to Reports and start a Students report. Filter the students, then scroll to Academic Alerts. Select the plus + icon next to Type and Status, filtering as needed. After it runs, go to Add/Remove Columns > Academic Alerts to remove unwanted terms, then download the report in XLSX format.
Raising Alerts
Can I put links to services in the alert?
Absolutely, and a set of links can also be included within your alert message templates. What isn’t possible without customization is having certain links included dynamically based on which checkboxes you selected.
Can I save time and create alerts in bulk?
No. Alerts are raised student by student, which encourages you to be thoughtful about customizing the selections and feedback that you add. However, you can mark “Okay” in bulk during Checkpoint reviews, for those students who do not need new alerts.
Do students see alerts that I raise on them?
By default, no, because seeing them might be quite alarming or discouraging. In the default configuration, students are not notified when an alert is raised for them, so that advisors can manage those outreaches intentionally, to avoid upsetting students. However, your institution may have opted to enable direct student notifications.
Best practice: Have students find out in a personal outreach from their advisor. If your institution enables student notifications, you can customize the template for the emails they would see (such as whether to include the checked items from the alert).
When will I get notified?
You will be notified when an alert that you can see is resolved. You will not receive notifications for each new comment made on an alert.
Comments
Who gets to see alert comments?
Alert comments provide internal status updates on an alert’s path to resolution. If you have permission to see comments, you will see all of the comments in a thread. Comment visibility is enabled at your institution by group: Advisors + Directors, Faculty, Assigned advisors, and Alert Committee.
Is there a way to add comments in bulk?
Although you can create messages and notes using a bulk outreach to students, you cannot currently append comments en masse to notes and alerts.
Tip: Keep a Google Doc or similar to store your commonly used comments, so that you can paste them quickly, when and where needed.
Who gets to see resolution comments?
Resolution comments detail how the alert was resolved; some subset of groups can see these details when viewing any alerts that they have access to. Just like alert comments, resolution comment visibility is enabled at your institution by group: Advisors + Directors, Faculty, Assigned advisors, and Alert Committee.
Where do we find resolution comments?
It depends on your role:
- Faculty see resolutions comments on their Current Academic Year Alerts page, which outlines all alerts they have added across their section rosters.
- Advising groups see resolution comments either on the Alerts page or in the Alerts for a specific student.
Course Checkpoints
Checkpoints are optional reporting periods for alerts that you can set up to prompt faculty to make performance reviews at critical times in the term. Checkpoints give the advising team time to intervene to improve the course outcome.
Can faculty review the performance of all their sections without flagging any students?
Yes, through Course Checkpoints that your institution sets up for key times in the term. Faculty can bulk-select students in the section and mark them as having OK performance (meaning, no alert needed). However, Medium and High Alert evaluations must be done individually, with details as to why there’s concern.
How do faculty learn about checkpoints?
Through email notifications. Your institution sets up checkpoints with specific start and end dates, and these dates trigger automated email notifications about each reporting period starting and ending. Faculty also learn about their alerts being resolved through automated emails.
Bulk notifications (digests of the day’s alerts) can be enabled if your institution has assigned advisors or an alert committee to receive those digests, but faculty do not get those by default: they use their Current Academic Year Alerts tab to see all of their alerts.
How many checkpoints are best?
Keep in mind that faculty already have the ability to raise General alerts at any time in the term, so checkpoints are in addition to those alerts. You may add 1, 2, or 3 Checkpoint alerts, which each need a title, open/close dates (with no overlaps among them), and email notification content.
In general, keep checkpoints few and focused. As instructors will perceive checkpoint reviews to be additional work for them, be sure to create checkpoints only for milestones most helpful for timely feedback. For example, if poor attendance in the first few weeks of class is a strong signal of trouble for your students, add a checkpoint for an early review. If Analytics surfaces new Powerful Predictors, you can adjust the checkpoints and emails to support action on those new insights.
Does it matter what checkpoints are called?
Yes! Two guidelines:
- Keep them generic — Simplify maintenance by choosing Checkpoint titles that are so generic that you will not need to change every term or year. This way, only the effective start/end dates for the alerts will need to be adjusted each term.
- Make them meaningful — Although you could name them “Checkpoint 1, Checkpoint 2”, it will help your instructors to give a more descriptive name: “Early Check”, “Midterm”, “8 week”.
Does an OK checkpoint boost a student’s persistence prediction?
Not currently. If and when that data point proves to be predictive historically, it will be worked into the model.
Can teaching assistants (or other student workers) raise alerts?
Yes, if you add them as Faculty users, for the purpose of letting them work with alerts.
Resolving Alerts
How are alerts assigned out to be resolved?
Most institutions choose one of two strategies for assigning alerts:
- Assigned Advisors — Alerts go to the student’s assigned advisor, who is primarily responsible for resolving them as part of their caseload. If a student has more than one assigned advisor, all of them can see and resolve the alerts.
- Alert Committee — Alerts go to a designated “Alert Committee”, which is primarily responsible for resolving alerts. The committee usually has representatives across all relevant units, such as Athletics and Counseling.
Permissions override these strategies: Directors and others who hold permissions to see and resolve an alert can always do so, regardless of whether the alert has been assigned, and they can also assign and reassign the alert as needed.
Do we have to resolve alerts?
Resolution is critical to tracking your success with alerts. Resolution documents that it was handled, whether by addressing the problems that prompted each alert or by sharing the commendation with the recipient, to encourage them.
Each institution has its own policies and systems, such as centralizing alerts through coordinators or committees. It might work at your institution to have a policy that any advisor meeting with a student first checks their Alerts tab for outstanding issues, and then resolves or reassigns those alerts as soon as the meeting is finished.
How do we keep up with alerts? Can we mass resolve old alerts?
If you have a large backlog of alerts to work through, use the Alerts page filters to full advantage to triage the work, which is both assigning and resolving alerts:
- Filter Alert Status to only see Unresolved alerts.
- Tackle the most urgent Alert Levels first.
- Filter by Progress to Degree or similar to find students needing faster resolution.
- Filter by Academic Information to bulk assign students by similarity to a specific advisor.
When do Commendations resolve?
They don’t. There is no resolution date because commendations never need to be resolved.
Timing
How long do alerts stay on a student’s profile?
Alerts remain on a student’s profile for as long as they remain enrolled.
When will a Student profile show a new advisor?
In normal operations, a new advisor assignment will be visible on the student’s profile within a day. If it does not appear after 48 hours, contact Support for it to be checked out.
What changes the “Last Updated” column?
Last Updated changes when the alert is resolved and also when it changes priority (is starred or unstarred). It doesn’t change for new comments.
Can alert notifications be held for the daily digest email?
Yes, it is possible for the raised alert confirmations to be disabled so that the only notification is the daily digest. Digests can also be limited to the Alert Committee, if you use one. Contact your Civitas team to discuss your configuration needs.