Candidate Portal Account Configuration

Overview

Most of the time, parents of candidates — not the candidates themselves — are the ones who receive user accounts and interact with the admission portal. You can configure your Admission Portal 3 (AP3) for candidates to interact with, depending on how involved in the application process you want candidates to be. These features are available by default and do not require additional setup from Veracross personnel.

Checklist Item Configuration

The candidate portal experience in AP3 is configured on a checklist item basis, meaning that each checklist item now has a "Parent Display Status" and a "Candidate Display Status".

The parent and candidate display status settings on a registration season checklist item record.

Display Status Values:

• "Updatable": Portal users can interact with and complete the checklist item
• "Read-Only": Portal users can view the status of the checklist item and have read-only access to any forms submitted for the checklist item
• "Status-Only": Portal users can view the status of the checklist item only
• "Hidden": Portal users do not see the checklist item

Each checklist item has a display status value for parent accounts and a display status for candidate accounts. These statuses can be used to tailor the portal experiences of both parents and candidates independently.

Example:

• Questionnaires are an excellent use case for this functionality. You can configure a student questionnaire to be updatable by the candidate but status-only for parents (screenshot above). This allows parents to see whether or not their candidate has completed the form without seeing what the candidate submitted.

Candidate User Account Configuration

Once you've determined which checklist items should be part of the portal experience for parent accounts and candidate accounts, there are a few configuration items related to the candidate account type that must be reviewed.

The VC_Welcome_APPLICANT Email Template

You can find and configure the welcome email that is sent out for candidate portal accounts in the system email templates query located on the system homepage. If you do not have the VC_Welcome_APPLICANT email template, please contact your account manager to have it enabled.

The "Applicant" Portal Role

Candidate accounts utilize the "Applicant" portal role (despite its name, this portal role applies to both prospects and applicants), so the first step is to review and adjust the configuration of this portal role via the "Security Roles" query on the Identity & Access Management homepage (also available on the System homepage). Below are the fields of importance for this portal role and their suggested values:

• "Primary App": Admission Portal
• "Default Portal Platform": Version 3
• "Primary Username Convention": *school-specific; typically aligned with the convention used for your parent portal*
• "Welcome Email Template": VC_Welcome_APPLICANT

Admission Portal Membership Security Roles

The "Applicant" security role is part of the standard set of membership security roles for admission portal 3. You can view the full list of membership security roles from the Configuration tab of the admission portal configuration record, accessible via the link in the Portals section of the Admissions: Candidate Changes homepage. If the "Applicant" security role is not listed for your school, please contact your account manager to have it enabled.

Candidate User Account Creation

Candidate user accounts can be generated in three ways: 

• Inquiry form: "Create Portal Account?" element in the "Inquiry - Candidate" section
• New Admission Candidate form: "Create Portal Account?" element in the "Registrant" section
  • Note: this form is used to add new candidates via the portal AND to update demographics information for existing candidates
• Manually via Axiom: "Create Admission Portal Account" & "Send VC Welcome Email" action menu items on the candidate's person record

Other Considerations

As mentioned in the note in the Checklist Item Configuration section above, there are a small number of portal components in AP3 that cannot be configured to display to portal users with candidate accounts. This is a departure from how candidate portal accounts functioned in AP2, so it's notable for schools who used candidate portal accounts prior to migrating to AP3.

Most notably, it is not possible for a candidate to complete the entire application process without the involvement of someone with a parent portal account. Only a user signed into the portal with the credentials associated with a parent portal account will be granted access to update household information (including parent demographics information), add additional candidates, and pay application fees. The checklist item widget types associated with these tasks will not be visible to candidates. 

If you utilize direct links to the Demographics and Payments screens in the navigation bar of your admission portal, candidates who click on these links will be denied access and see a generic error message. There is not currently a way to individualize the links that display in the nav bar based on the account type, nor is it possible to customize the error message - for this reason, we advise removing those links or including a note in your instructions for candidate portal users.