Onboarding Plan and Sample Text

Here's a suggested sequence for onboarding your users. Sample email text is below.

Onboarding Sequence

Week 1

Prograds creates department site with one owner and any additional administrators.

Admins set up Department (instructions) and Programs (instructions):

Choose Department settings.

Set up Stages, Milestones, Requirements, Funding Sources.

DO NOT set up any Courses because they need a faculty instructor from existing accounts.

Administrators get trained, either self-directed from Support Site or a session with Prograds support.

Admins agree on and record protocols for use: e.g. whether messages will be sent to students from Prograds, settings and recommendations for email reminders (auto or manual, from whom?), etc.

Admins can add any additional administrators as required.

Week 2

Administrators invite Faculty (sample text below).

Wait 3 days, send a reminder, then wait another 3 days. Ensure all faculty members have accounts. If any faculty are unresponsive, contact support@prograds.com with their names and email addresses and we will create a placeholder account for those faculty members.

Provide faculty info/training session (create a couple of fake students for this).

Week 3

Administrators invite Students (sample text below)

If the Department allows Students to add course information, mention this and note that when one student adds a course it is then visible for all students to add it to their own course list.

🗣

We strongly recommend you forcefully point student to link.

Wait 3 days, send a reminder, then wait another 3 days and see which students haven’t signed up. Send them a less polite email. 😉

Week 4

Administrator(s) do a complete review of all faculty and students to ensure correct information and correct deployment and timing of Stages, Milestones, Requirements, Funding, etc.

Monthly as long as necessary

Email reminder to Faculty and Students to use the system. Include feature updates that are relevant.

Note that Students and Faculty get an automatic reminder email if they haven’t logged in in the past 45 days.

Sample text for Faculty invitation

Dear __________ Faculty,

The department has a new online system for tracking graduate students. It’s not just for administrative use; it’s a system where faculty and students enter information too. They complete milestones and requirements, update what is being worked on, and enter notes and events.

It’s called Prograds. We access it at https://app.prograds.com. You will receive a separate email with a link from which to create your faculty account.

An introduction to Prograds and guides for all its functions are available here.

We’re bringing all of our faculty colleagues into the system first, followed by students next week. It works better in that sequence. So you won’t see any students on your dashboard until they create accounts next week. When students complete their profiles, they’ll add their supervisors and committee members. If you then see a student you don’t recognize, let us know and we’ll clear up that error.

If you have any questions about the system, we’ll be holding an info and training session on….

We hope you and your students save time and they make better progress with the use of Prograds. If you have questions, send them to me. If you notice bugs in the system, please file a Prograds bug report from the header bar, or send them a description of the problem to support@prograds.com.

Sample text for Student Invitation

Dear __________ graduate students,

The department has a new online system for tracking graduate students’ progress and helping students and faculty stay ‘on the same page’. It’s not just for administrative use; it’s a system where faculty and students enter information, too. They complete milestones and requirements, update what is being worked on, and enter notes and events.

It’s called Prograds. We access it at https://app.prograds.com. You will receive a separate email with a link from which to create your graduate student account.

An introduction to Prograds and guides for all its functions are available here.

After you’ve created your account and logged in, please go to the person icon in the header to complete some items on your profile. Please do so as soon as possible, as the system really only works when all faculty and students have accounts. Faculty should already be in the system, so when you complete your profile, the first thing to do is to add your supervisors and committee members. If a faculty member isn’t there, please let me know.

On your Student Page (different than your Profile Page), you’ll see the department’s standard Stages, Milestones, and Requirements. If you're more than a year into the program you will have some that are market as overdue, but that's obviously because they haven't yet been acknowledged as complete in the Prograds system. You can go ahead and indicate ‘Complete’ for the ones you’ve done, providing a date of completion. We’ll approve those completions over the next few weeks.

If you have any questions about the system, we’ll be holding an info and training session on….

We hope you and your professors save time and you make better progress with the use of Prograds. If you have questions, send them to me. If you notice bugs in the system, please file a Prograds bug report from the header bar, or send them a description of the problem to support@prograds.com.