Forum topic

Hi Frida,

I just directed these questions to the developers.

Priscila

There are a lot of different ways to search. There are ways of searching that are better for different circumstances and the specific reasons for the search.  Here is a general answer to your questions and requests. It would be best for us to have a meeting to go over any specifics.

Ease of Search

My users are having a little trouble searching for specific group of students.

For instance, if someone wants a group of Mass Communication students, they can search with the Track but it drops all students including the Graduated.

 When you say "it drops all students", I am interpreting this as "finds" and is the search results.  If you only put the degree track then yes, it will find everyone with that degree track.  If you want to exclude students that have a degree track with a graduation date, then you would deselect the "Include Completed Degree Tracks".  If you want only active students then you should also set the Status to Active on the search. Then it will find Mass Communication students that are active.  Active is designed to be all students that are currently matriculated to the college. If a student is no longer pursuing education they should be Status Inactive.  If you want a broader group of Mass Communication students then the degree track you can use the major. The major will include students in many different degree tracks that are all tied to the major.  

 If I just want those who have enrolled this term, how do I get them using the Search tool? Also, is there a way the search can accomodate the (Not) like I can filter with Classification as Not Graduated instead of picking those other classifications one by one?

 The search term Status=Active should be mostly accurate for most of each term. There are cases where a student is on a approved leave of absence or is doing their dissertation which can take several terms where they would be active but not enrolled for the term.  Thus we provide through Academics > Analysis > General Reports  several enrollment reports that provide exact results for students that have enrollments. You can select Classifications, Major, One or more terms, student status, and a few other things to get a more nuanced search results. The results can be made into a Contact List that allows you to access the students in the search results like you do for an advanced find.  

 "the (Not) like I can filter with Classification as Not Graduated instead of picking those other classifications one by one?" The advanced search does have the ability to only search on degree tracks that do not have a graduation date.  So your example has a solution. There was an attempt to accommodate most of the main searches schools do on a regular basis.  Other then the "Include Completed Degree Tracks" and "Primary Campus Only" there is not the ability on the advanced search to do a sub-select or a Not search.  This is able to be done in many of our General Reports which can make contact lists.  The following are the main ways schools provide results for very specific searches.

• Student Category's can be assigned to students to allow you to always get the exact group of students for a specific situation. For example, a group of students that graduated in 2023 and want to pursue a Masters later that year in 2023. This can be a Student Category of "2023 Bachelors Apply to Masters".  
• You can tie a very specific advanced query that can do much or detailed searches including NOT and give you the results you want. The advanced query can be tied to a Saved Contact List. This is called a Recurring Contact List and you can click Generate on the Saved Contact list. It will run and get you a list of all of the students that meet the criteria. This is a great way to return a specific group of students that you need access to that is changing over time and can be much more complex to find than the Advanced Search.
• Advanced Queries can also be made into Custom Reports. These custom reports can have changable criteria that produce a spreadsheet or the results can be made into a Saved Contact List. 
• Academics>Analysis>General Queries. These are streamlined report making tools that allow you to easily make an report that can produce more nuanced results then you can do with Advanced Search.

Can the search on the Academic side include students who have either an academic or Financial change on their accounts instead of the Address (We have never used the address for search and we don't mind it being eliminated/replaced)

We might need to have a meeting to go over this in more detail as your request is very broad.  Currently Student Accounts has the ability to run a version of what you requested to make sure billing is up to date.  The group of students that is found on the student accounts advanced search is not complete as it only shows  students with changes after the last time their billing was run. Thus if academics wants a complete list over a certain amount of time, it is much better to run a report.  There is a Schedule Changes advanced query in Query Topic: Student Enrollment / qStuEnr.  This can be teaked and made into a report that can be run in academics.  I would be happy to go over the steps to do this with you.