Finalsite's CMS and EMS can now be connected to share data from Finalsite Enrollment (formerly SchoolAdmin) into your Finalsite CMS database to facilitate communications from the Messages and Workflows modules. The goal of this integration is to use both systems for what they are best at: Finalsite Enrollment is your central hub for admissions and enrollment management (EMS), while Finalsite’s robust communication tools can be used to push inquiries through the admissions process (CMS).
How it works
When the integration is enabled, data will flow one way from EMS into CMS. The sync will run hourly to update the information in Finalsite, with a full refresh nightly.
Note: Users from the Finalsite Enrollment integration will not match on users already in Finalsite. If a user from Finalsite Enrollment already exists in Constituent Manager, a duplicate user will be created.
As part of the integration, a new node of groups will be created in Finalsite Group Manager. These groups will reflect the status of the applicant, as configured in Finalsite Enrollment. Additionally, there will be a corresponding group for relatives of those applicants, to facilitate targeting the parents/guardians with your communications.
Please note that we treat this data cyclically. The intended purpose is to populate and update the data over the course of your admissions season, then purge and start fresh at the beginning of the next season.
Best practices
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Use your Finalsite website to drive interested parties to your Finalsite Enrollment inquiry form, where they will be “picked up” by the integration.
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Nurture those inquiries using Workflows or Messages and get them to apply using your Finalsite Enrollment application.
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Follow up with those applicants using Messages or Workflows.
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Create targeted segments with the data you have available to tailor information specifically to the recipient.
Setup and deployment
If you are interested in this integration, please reach out to the Finalsite Support team to work with a deployment specialist who will walk you through the necessary steps, including:
- Granting access to the Finalsite Enrollment API
- Configuring the data mapping
- Verifying the data (on a clone site or live site)
- Enabling and automating the integration on your live site
We have a wide range of datapoints available that can be mapped into Finalsite, according to your needs. The best practice is to only import data that is required — like ImportID values, first and last names, email addresses, relationships — as well as data that is useful for your communication efforts and allows you to filter for segments you want to target (such as grade applying for, financial aid requested, or custom fields).
Also during the deployment process, you may want to work with our team on configuring your workflows or mailing lists to ensure they are behaving as expected.
Important notes
Constituents and groups created from the integration are largely hidden in Finalsite. This is intentional, as we don’t want constituents to be treated as portal users or to be manually edited in Finalsite.
Likewise, the groups that the integration creates should not be edited manually, as it can compromise the behavior of the integration. Groups should also not be created in the same “nodes” as the system-level groups the integration created.
These groups can be used for mailing list targets or to create other groups via dynamic filters, however, as your organization requires.
Note: If you wish to utilize Finalsite Enrollment data to update your active Parents and Students, this can be done in an automated fashion, although it is a different approach than the integration described in this article. Please reach out to your Client Success Manager, who can connect you with Support for deployment of this integration.
If at all possible, we do recommend that you utilize an SIS integration for this purpose, but we understand that, sometimes, Finalsite Enrollment will have the best data.
As admissions seasons can vary from school to school, we urge you to coordinate with our Support team at the end of your admissions season to clean up the data and prepare for the next admissions season.
Users who are removed from Finalsite Enrollment can be removed from Finalsite using our Off Feed Utility and the automation option.
If you adjust the statuses configured in Finalsite Enrollment, please reach out to Finalsite Support to re-align the mapping, so the sync will continue to work as expected.
There is no charge for the EMS-CMS integration.
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