Getting Started with Staff Assignments

Updated 20 Mar 2024
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Staff assignment rules assign staff members to students based on specific criteria.

This article walks you through the steps required to create basic staff assignments. This begins with prep work outside of Slate.

Create a complete list of staff assignments
Order the list by priority
Assign the priorities to staff assigned rules
Add all staff members as users in Slate (only active users can be assigned)

Creating a list of staff assignments

List rules on index cards or in a whiteboarding tool to get a complete picture of how staff assignments will work in Slate. This is a great opportunity to rethink and simplify old processes.

Here’s an example:

School Geomarket
School State
School Country
Specific CEEB Codes
Student Home Country
Transfer Students
Home School
Student Home State

Ordering staff assigned rules

With a complete set of assignment rules listed on index cards, put the cards in order of priority. To do that, you’ll need to determine which rules take precedence over others.

There are two important factors when ordering:

A student record can only match with one rule: For example, one staff member per student record.
Once a student record matches with a rule (a staff member), that record can no longer match with any other rules.

Examples

📜 Admissions

In the following example, if transfer students are assigned to a staff member regardless of the school they attend, the Transfer Students should be first in the order.

If specific schools should always take precedent, even if a record is a transfer student, then specific CEEB codes should be first in the order.

Once index cards are properly ordered, define which staff members are affected by each card:

Order	Index Card
#1	Specific CEEB Code
#2	Home School
#3	Transfer Students
#4	School Country
#5	Student Home Country
#6	School Geomarket
#7	School State
#8	Student Home State

🎓 Student Success

Consider the following example table. The first rule could run assign an academic counselor to students without a declared major. Staff assignments for those who have a declared major can then be matched to an advisor by an individual major, or by groups of majors.

Think of this ordering process as a flowchart that asks big questions first, then gets progressively narrower.

Order	Index Card
#1	Undeclared Major
#2	Declared Major - Biology
#3	Declared Major - English or English Literature
#4	Declared Major - Computer Science or Computer Programming
#5	Declared Major - Performance Art

Assigning priorities to staff assigned rules

Once cards are ordered, define which staff members are impacted, the rule definition, and assign a priority number for each item.

Once cards are ordered, define which advisors are impacted, the rule filter, and assign a priority number for each item. We recommend leaving a gap within the Priority listing (10, 20, 30, etc.) in case you need to add rules in the future without needing to re-prioritize multiple rules.

📜 Admissions

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🎓 Student Success

Index Card Rule	Staff	Filter	Priority
1. Undeclared	Sally Smith	Major = Undeclared	10
2. Academic Counselor - Biology	Phil Johnson	Major = Biology	20
3. Academic Counselor - English	Rudolph Muller	Major = English or English Literature	40
4. Academic Counselor - Computer Sciences	Julian Bellingham	Major = Computer Science or Computer Programming	50
5. Academic Counselor - Performance Art	Abigail Williams	Major = Performance Art	60

Create a Staff Assigned Field

Slate includes a Staff Assigned field by default. You can use this field, a custom field, or multiple custom fields to add staff assignments.

To create a custom staff assignment field:

From the main navigation, select Database.
Under Records and Datasets, select Fields.
Click Insert. A pop-up appears.
In the pop-up, enter the following configurations:
Status: Active
Scope Category: Records
Scope: Person
ID: Enter "user"
Name: Give the field an internal name. Feel free to change this name, even if data already exists for the field.
Folder: Organize your fields by keeping them in a clear folder structure. Create a new folder by selecting Other.
Field Type: Single Value
Prompt: user

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What's Next

Staff Assignment for Student Success

Table of contents

Creating a list of staff assignments
Ordering staff assigned rules
Assigning priorities to staff assigned rules
Create a Staff Assigned Field