As we mentioned recently, our upcoming release features a pretty substantial re-design of the Profile. The new Profile improves how information is organized and presented; further, it accommodates some new features (and some other things we'd like to do down the road). We think it's pretty magical and revolutionary—at an unbelievable price, to boot.
Many things spurred the re-design. The original profile was built around the functionality that Populi had at the time (pretty much just Academics and Admissions in the early days). But Populi's subsequent expansion filled the Profile to bursting, and it just wasn't as simple to navigate as we wished. Further, there were new features we wanted to introduce that just wouldn't fit in the old Profile. And, of course, we've had a good look over the past few years at how our users employed certain Profile features as workarounds for what they really wanted to do. For instance, almost everyone used Profile notes to store email correspondence. We really needed to make that easier on our users—and, we hope, more useful and enjoyable.
Without further ado, here's a brief video introducing the new Profile.
http://vimeo.com/11870432
And, should you care to have this in writing...
Basics
Wherever you are on the new Profile, you'll see the person's ID Photo, Roles, and Tags, as well as a quick Email link and a phone number so you can easily contact the person. Along the top are tabs to the information you’re looking for—Academics, Admissions, Financial, and so on. The basics are right there no matter which tab you’re on.
Activity Feed
The new Profile starts on the Activity Feed.
On the left side is the past: a complete history of your interaction with this person—notes, emails, letters, files, and to-dos that you or others have added. You can filter the Feed down to show particular items and people.
On the right is the future: to-dos and scheduled communications coming up with this person. It’s a complete summary of what you need to do and when you need to do it.
Speaking of communications, the new profile incorporates Populi’s new Communication Plans—scheduled emails, to-dos, and printed letters that help structure your interaction with your people. This’ll be really handy for Admissions staff who want to keep up with their prospects.
Bulletin Board
The Bulletin Board has been upgraded to a simple social networking tool for everyone at your school. Post updates on your board, leave comments on other people’s boards, and follow other people to get their updates fed directly to your bulletin board.
Info
Info shows basic personal and contact information—address, hometown, relationships, and so on. The new utility button which lets you do things like Reset a Password or Export an ID Card.
Academics
Academics gathers up all of a student’s academic information. On the left, the big-picture stuff like the Transcript and Degree Audit. On the right, the details: student information, courses, degrees, awards, discipline. Use the Utility button to export a grade report, schedule, transcript, or lock the student’s grades and transcript.
The new layout gives you all of the student’s academic information on one screen. Now you can do things like check the Degree Audit and compare it side-by-side to the student’s upcoming courses without changing pages.
Registration
Online Registration is the same familiar interface; the Utility button lets you lock a student’s Registration.
Admissions
The main Admissions screen hasn’t changed much. But don’t forget the Communications Plans on the Activity Feed; we built those to enhance other important Admissions workflows.
Financial
Financial’s generally the same, too, but we’ve improved a few things. The Current screen is now called the Dashboard—it gives you the overview of the student’s financial picture and lets you record payments. By Term still zooms in to the Financials for individual Academic Terms. The new History screen lists all of the student’s past transactions and lets you filter down to see particular transaction types.
Two other improvements: the Utility button lets you apply a Financial Lock to the student’s account. And invoicing lets you select individual pending charges to include on the invoice.
The long and the short of it
The new profile lets you track more information on people than ever before while at the same time making that information even easier to find.