Finalsite FAQs

Inbound marketing is a method of attracting, engaging, and delighting people to grow a business that provides value and builds trust. The theory behind inbound marketing is that, by publishing and sharing the right content in the right place at the right time, your marketing becomes relevant and helpful, rather than disruptive.

All prospective families and students fall into one of three buckets along the applicant's journey: awareness, consideration, and decision.

Awareness:At this stage, the prospect is aware of their current situation, whether it is a problem, need, or desire. Then, the research comes in to begin finding a remedy to these obstacles.

Consideration: At this point, the prospect has clearly defined their exact obstacle and begins to research solutions.

Decision:At this stage in the applicant journey, the prospect has decided on a few schools that would be their solution, but does additional research before making their final decision.

Schools will get applicants in their pipeline at all points. Regardless, it's your job to have a plan in place for anyone who enters your pipeline at any given time.

Personas

Inbound marketing starts with personas. A persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal applicant, parent, student, etc. based on research and data about your currently enrolled students and alumni. Identifying these personas will help you shape all of your marketing content: emails, tweets, social ads and, most importantly, your website content.

Keep in mind that you're going to have many different personas. To get started, consider the top four or five different types of families you would like to enroll. Personas can be shaped around backgrounds, demographics, personality, goals, challenges, common objections, budgets, interests, age, academics, etc. or a combination of them all.

Your goal is to craft all of your marketing messaging to appeal to your personas goals and interests, while alleviating their common objections or challenges. Check out our Personas Worksheet (PDF) to get started now.

Applicant journey

Each persona will take an applicant journey. Within each applicant's journey, four actions typically take place:

You turn strangers into website visitors.

You turn website visitors into inquiries or applicants.

You turn inquiries/applicants into enrolled students.

You turn enrolled students into engaged alumni.

To be successful at each one of these stages, you need to equip yourself with the proper tools.

1. Turning strangers into website visitors

A billboard or magazine ads might turn into a few website visitors. However, there are many other amazing tools at your fingertips.

Search engine optimization (SEO): Most prospective families begin their search for a private school with a search engine: Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Optimizing your school's website for keywords that they're looking for will help your search performance. Also consider other SEO factors, like responsive design.

Pay per click (PPC): If you want to be at the top of the page in every search that matters, invest in a pay-per-click advertising campaign that uses top keywords related to your school to generate new traffic.

Blogging: Blogs are a completely free way to provide your school with more website traffic, as well as an inside look to life at your school.

Social media: Social media may be essential at every stage in the applicant journey, but it is particularly vital at this stage. Social media is the platform on which you can share your blogs, news stories, upcoming events, photos, videos, and other content that can attract completely new prospective families, as well as engage current families and alumni.

Website: It's always important to put your best face forward. If you're optimizing your website for search, investing in PPC, writing a blog, and sharing everything on social, you need to have a website that sets you apart.

2. Turning website visitors into inquiries or applicants

Now thatyou'vegot the applicant on your website, it's time to convert them. The following are some vital tools.

Forms: Make forms easy to find and fill out for an improved user experience. While some schools opt to use the long inquiry forms provided by their student information system, we suggest making inquiry forms much shorter to inspire more prospects to fill them out.

Calls to action (CTA): Users like to be told what to do next, so be sure to always provide them with a quick and easy next step to guide them down the path to exactly where you want them to go.

Landing pages: When a website visitor clicks on a call to action, they should be brought to a landing page, where the CTA promised can be fulfilled.

Automated Email workflows: Once someone has visited your website,you'vehopefully gotten them to convert! Onceyou'veearned the conversion, you should begin nurturing them with automated workflows.

3. Turning inquiries/applicants into enrolled students

Next, you're only going to need a couple of basic tools to turn all those inquiries or applicants into enrolled students.

Email: Using a platform like Messages and/or Workflows allows you to segment, target, and personalize email communications for your applicants.

Data: Run reports and analyze Google Analytics to figure out which strategies are working best to recruit the most qualified applicants, and pursue those.

4. Turning enrolled students into engaged alumni

Finally, your school community depends on alumni engagement, so it is essential to make them happy when they are on campus. Use the following tools to do so.

Social media: Engage your community when they're on campus and after they have left. Listen to what they're saying, and appeal to their needs in your marketing.

Portals: Top-notch communications are key to maintaining a happy community.Password-protected portals are an effective way to always communicate with the right audience at the right time, with personalized content that's just for them. Create portals for parents, students, and alumni to ensure they only see what's necessary for them.

Online forms and surveys: Make it easy to stay connected with your community with online forms and surveys. Whether you're looking for volunteers for an upcoming event or want feedback on last year's homecoming, making it easy to give money, time, or an opinion will foster an engaged community.

Conclusion

The inbound marketing methodology is becoming increasingly popular among independent schools due to its affordability and effectiveness. Prospective families no longer want to be marketed to, but they want to become informed and enjoy their applicant journey.

Go directly to the Status Page

TheFinalsite Status Pageis our most effective way to quickly and accurately inform you about service interruptions to your website. By subscribing to email and phone (SMS) notifications, you can learn about problems that may affect your website visitors as soon as we identify them(which will typically be before your visitors notice). You can also choose to receive automatic status updates to keep you informed of our progress as we work to resolve the issue. Finally, you can see any post-mortem reports of the problem and relay that information back to your organizationleaders.

Enabling access

To access the Finalsite Status Page, located at http://status.finalsite.com, you (the Site Administrator)must first enable access in the Admin User's profile. Youll do this for yourself as well as any non-Site Administrators who youd like togrant access.

Once access has been enabled in the Admin Users profile in the Finalsite CMS, users will receive an email asking them to create a password for their new Finalsite Status Page account.

Clicking the link in the email will take the user to a webpageasking them to create a new password for the account.

After setting a password, the new account is created and the user will be taken directly to the Finalsite Status Page. Here theyll be able to quickly see the status of various Finalsite properties including your website.

Subscribing to updates

Having access to the Finalsite Status Page is great, but whats even more powerful is the ability to receive notifications to your email or phone the moment we identify a problem that could affect your website visitors or organization. This way you always have the most up-to-date information about the problem.

To subscribe to notifications, click the Subscribe to Updates link at the top of the status page.

Enter your phone number and/or alternative email address (like a personal email address) where youd be interested in receiving these notifications. (Note: you can unsubscribe from alerts at any time.)

Receiving updates

Any time we identify a service interruption, well create anincident reportthat can be viewed on the status page.

If you have signed up for email and/or text alerts, you may receive messages that look like the following.

Email:

SMS:

Disabling access

At any time Site Administrators can disable access to the Finalsite Status Page by returning the Admin Users profile and clicking the Disable Status Page Access link.

Closing remarks

Site Administrators can enable access to the Status Page for any non-Site Administratoraccounts. We recommend enabling Status Page access for anyone who may contact Support during aservice interruption.

During service interruptions, our Data Center and Support teams are made aware of these problems instantaneously by our internal monitoring. We get to work on fixing these problems whether or not it is reported via our Client CommunicationChannels (Phone and Ticket Support).

If a team isn't showing up on acalendar page in Page Manager, check to see how you're selecting the teams to display on your calendar page. You've got two options: you can either explicitly select which teams to include on the page, or you can setup a filter to automatically capture any teams that match specified criteria.

Explicitly selecting teams

When setting up a Calendar Page in Page Manger, use the Calendar Properties box to select the "Athletics Teams" checkbox. The available sports seasons will appear, with their own checkboxes. Select the season (or seasons) whose teams you want to display on this page. Drill down and choose one or more teams - those teams' events will appear on the calendar page.

Note thatonly the teams that are selected here will ever appear on the page. So if you select all of the Fall sports teams, as in the example above, and then later add a new JV Boys Cross Country team, that new team won't appear on this calendar unless a page admin goes back into Page Manager and specifically selects that team. This is an extra step that would have to be performed any time a new team is added to Athletics Manager and needs to appear on a calendar page.

Filtering teams

That extra step can be avoided by setting up Athletics Filters instead of selecting Athletics Teams. To setup a filter, open the Calendar Page in Page Manager and in the Calendar Properties box select the "Athletics Filters" checkbox instead of "Athletics Teams." Next, use the "Add Filter" dropdown menu to select at least one filtering criteria:

Athletics teams can be filtered onto a page by:

School (if applicable)

Season (Fall, Winter, etc.)

Advantage (Home/Away)

Sport

Division (Varsity, JV, etc.)

Gender

Multiple filters can be applied to a single calendar page. Each filter will narrow down the teams displayed, as a team must satisfy ALL filter conditions in order to appear on the calendar. In the example above, the calendar page would display all Cross Country teams that compete in the fall, regardless of whether they are Boys or Girls teams, and including both JV and Varsity squads. In order to filter out JV teams and only display Varsity Cross Country events for instance, another "by Division" filter would have to be added.

Using filters, any new teams that are created in Athletics Manager will automatically have their events appear on the calendar page, provided they satisfy the filtering options. It's even possible to create a Calendar page using Athletics filters that don't haveany criteria selected - this will create a calendar page that displays ALL Athletic events, regardless of season, team, division, and so on.

Weve all been in the position working on our websites where we wish we could start over and undo everything. With Composer, you have the option to revert to the previously published version using the Restore tool. Click on the More Action Menu on the bottom-right of the Composer window, and the Restore icon is the first new icon from the right. Click this button to undo all unpublished changes to the page.

But what ifyou'vealready published? What if you accidentally deleted a page? In those cases, you can submit a ticket to Finalsite Support to have the page restored.

Permissions for Messages may be granted to any admin group that has admin access to Composer under Admin Users. "Global Permissions" are set on the "Permissions" screen, which you can access via the gear icon on the dashboard.

These settings determine what each user can do throughout the module.

Messages & Lists

For Messages & Lists, permission levels are: Not Allowed, View, and Admin. View privileges allow users to view the Lists and Messages tabs and their content, but not make any changes. Admin rights give full access to make changes on these two tabs, including creating a new mailing list. Not Allowed means the tabswon'tbe visible.

Operational Messages

Operational Messages ignore recipients unsubscribe settings and should ONLY be used to communicate critical information. For this reason, users can be granted either Not Allowed or Admin access to Operational messages. Best practice is to restrict access to Operational messages to only senior communication authorities.

Templates

Templates have the permission levels of Not Allowed and Admin. Only admin users with Admin-level permission will be able to view the templates tab and edit any content.

Additional permissions can be given on a per-template basis (as opposed to global permissions) to define who can use the template when creating a new message.

Dynamic Content

Dynamic content may be either Not Allowed or Admin. Users with Admin permissions will be able to view the Dynamic Content tab and edit configurations.

Regardless of these permissions, anyone with at least "View" rights to a list will be able to add any dynamic content element into their message.

Find Recipient

Find Recipient may be either Not Allowed or Admin. Users with Admin permissions will be able to use the Find Recipient search tool to investigate the send history for individual email addresses.

Workflow Messages

Workflow Messages permissions give users access to create messages to be used in the Workflows module. Users with this permission will see the "Workflow Messages" tab on the left navigation.

Preview Merge Tags

The Preview Merge Tags permission controls whether or not the user can see the preview functionality within the message editor. Users with Allowed permissions will be able to see a user's information with merge tags in the Preview mode of the message editor.

Permissions & Settings

Selecting Not Allowed or Admin for Permissions & Settings determines whether an admin group can view the Permissions and Settings tabs and assign rights levels to other groups (besides their own) or edit the Reply-To Addresses list.

6:00pm ET: Mailgun has corrected the issue and mail should be sending without delay.

9 December 2019 5:30pm ET: Currently our third party system that is used to send eNotify messages is having intermittent sending issues. We are speaking with them for updates as to when this issue is resolved. You may experience delays in sending of eNotify messages which should, eventually, be resolved. We will post a message here when we have been notified the issue has been corrected.

At this time, this is not currently affecting Messages.

We apologize for any inconvenience and our team is liasing with Mailgun to solve the issue as quickly as possible.

Any currency form (that is, any form that processes monetary transactions) can include a recurring payment component. Recurring payment options are configured in the "Payment" tab of Forms Manager.

Forms Manager supports payments recurring on the following schedules: monthly, quarterly, biannually, and annually.

To set up a recurring payment capability for end users on the Payment tab:

Use the Recurring Payment Option dropdown menu to select either "Optional" or "Required." This will present users with the recurring payment fields during the payment process at the end of the form.

Enter the Recurring Admin contact information for a site admin, school office, or school staff member who will manage recurring payments for this particular form.

Best practice: It may be a good idea to fill these fields with information that refers to an office or other general point of contact rather than a specific person. Some recurring payments, such as alumni donations, may span a long enough time frame that a specific person may no longer be filling the same role at the school if and when a user needs to update their payment plan.

Use the Recurrence Frequency and Recurrence Duration controls to set how long the end users' payment plans will run.

In this section, "cycle" refers to the number of times the payment will be processed. Selecting "Indefinite" means that payment plans created with this form will run continuously until cancelled by the user or by a school staff member. If you do not want the payment plans to run perpetually, instead assign a minimum and maximum number of cycles. These represent only the limits that users can sign up to pay during the checkout process; the actual number of cycles is selected by the end user when the form is submitted.

(Optional) Select the Recurrence Instruction checkbox to pop up a field to provide additional information or instructions to end users.

(Optional) Select Send a Notification Email one week prior to initiating recurring transactions. The Recurring Notification Email instructions allow form admins to set up reminder emails to end users, informing them in advance when a recurring transaction is coming up. The additional checkboxes that appear determine whether to include a custom message and/or a link to automatically end the recurring plan.

When users fill out a recurring payment form, they will be able to review their payment options before submitting. Form elements allow users to select the recurrence, frequency, and payment date options they want.

Example

Using the dropdown menus in the first line, the user has the option of establishing a recurring payment or selecting a "One-time" payment (because this form has the Recurring Payment Option field set to "Optional"). They can also set the frequency of the recurring payment ("Monthly" vs. "Annually"), as well as the duration (in this case, four months). The initial charge ($20 in this example) is set according to the options selected on the form itself.

The system automatically tallies the total payment on the next line. The dollar amounts outlined in blue are calculated by Forms Manager. If the user were to alter the frequency or duration of the recurring payment, these tallies would update to display the new total.

Note: These fields cannot be edited directly; they change based on the currency fields set in the form.

The user can then choose when the payment will be applied. By default, payments are applied based on the date the form is submitted; if a monthly payment is first made on the 19th of the month, then the next payment will be applied on the 19th of the next month, and for all subsequent months for the duration of the payment plan. The user can override this default and have payments applied on either the 1st or the 15th of the month instead. Again, the projected dates of the user's transactions will update based on their selections.

Use this template to create a datasheet that Finalsite Support can use to populate your Academic Classes in Group Manager.

Please use academic_classes2016.xlsx to create classes and set up for the gradebook for any applicable classes.

Please use academic_classes_integration_2016.xlsx if your school has an integration but is also using the gradebook.

Please use academic_classes2016_basic.xlsx if your school is not using the gradebook.

Registration Manager - Dashboard Overview Updated 03/17/14

Topics covered include:

Organizing past, current and future events

Creating new events

Registration Manager - Program Settings screen Updated 03/18/14

Topics covered include:

Entering program details

Using the Preview and Help controls

Registration Manager - Attendees screen Updated 03/19/14

Topics covered include:

Creating different price points for different attendees

Setting early registration discounts, late registration fees, and volume price breaks

Registration Manager - Sessions screen Updated 04/29/14

Topics covered include:

When Sessions are used

Creating new sessions

Session schedules

Optional session fees for various attendee types

Registration Manager - Sessions Screen Pt. 2 - Display Groups Updated 04/30/14

Topics covered include:

What are Display Groups?

Creating Display Groups and editing options

Customizing the display of session options

Re-sorting Display Groups

Registration Manager - Editing Registered Sessions Updated 3/10/15

Topics Covered include:

Finding Registered Sessions

Editing Attendee information (name and email)

Adding and removing sessions

Registration Manager - Forms screen Updated 04/30/14

Topics covered include:

What are forms used for?

What types of forms can I make, and how many?

Building forms and customizing form elements

Note: This document summarizes the updated version of the Schedule Star integration, which all clients will be deployed on/converted to by 12/31/2019.

The Finalsite-Schedule Star integration serves to populate data in Finalsites Athletics Manager extracted from the Schedule Star system. This includes team and event data.

The full set of available datapoints and how they are mapped are detailed in this document. The mapping is customizable, so data can be removed or added during your deployment or via a Support request after deployment.

Date ranges

The range of events is customizable, although we recommend pulling 1 month back and 4-6 months forward. As a best practice, you shouldnt pull further into the future than your events are set in stone, to avoid exposing tentative events to users.

Sync frequency

The Schedule Star sync runs every 15 minutes to update events on the site.

Cancelled/deleted events

It is a best practice to only pull in finalized events. Event statuses (Postponed, Cancelled, etc.) are reflected via the sync. Events that are deleted from Schedule Star but have already been pulled into Finalsite will not delete automatically.

To assist in deleting events, Finalsite offers a utility to identify and delete events that are not longer "on the feed". Details of this tool can be found here: Off-Feed Utility

Team matching

Teams are matched based on the combination of gender, level, and sport defined for the team. If these values change in Schedule Star, it will result in a new team being created in Finalsite, so it is important to keep those consistent. If you need to alter those values, please coordinate with the Finalsite Support team to ensure things are properly cleaned up after the switch so youdon'thave duplication in the teams.

Events that come through lacking any of the values for gender, level, and sport will not be saved to Athletics Manager.

Event types

The sync is able to target the following event types in Schedule Star, as long as they are associated with a team: Other, Practice, School, Scrimmage, Sport, Tournament, and Tryouts. By default, we recommend targeting Sport and Tournament. If you wish to include Practices and Scrimmages, that is also common and supported.

Locations/opponents

Locations and opponents are created and matched based on the name. If an exact match exists in Finalsite, that location/opponent will be associated to the event. If not, a new one will be created. For best results, be sure that all references to a specific location or opponent are consistently named in Schedule Star. The location address is mapped by default, but it can be removed from the sync if you prefer to manage those manually in Finalsite.

This article covers the new version of the Off-Feed Utility built for integrations running on Finalsites newer integration platform. This includes:All Veracross integrationsAll Blackbaud On integrationsSchedule Star All OpenApply integrationsAll Raisers Edge NXT integrationsAll Wonde integrations

This does NOT include:Finalsite Open and other datasheet integrations (Rediker, Blackbaud Education Edge, Powerschool, InResonance, Proof Group)Senior Systems

This tool is presently in a beta state, and must be enabled for your site independently. Please reach out to Support if you would like access to this tool so we can grant that permission and ensure your feeds are properly setup to use the tool.

All feedback during this beta period is welcomed as we look to improve this tool to make it useful and reliable for keeping clean data in Finalsite.

General Description

When using a data integration, it is common that a user will be removed from the source system. For example, a faculty member retiring, or a student (and their parents) transferring to a new school. Finalsite now offers a tool to be able to automate the archiving of users via an Off Feed Utility in Integrated Services Manager. Weve offered this in the past, but our new tool uses our new integration platform for better functionality and more reliable results.

How does the tool work?

The Off-Feed utility works by reviewing the last time we saw a user on the feed. As a prerequisite to using the tool, your feed(s) will need to be set for a nightly full refresh and the role(s) that the feed populates. This ensures that our platform should see everybody on the feed each 24 hour period. An additional prerequisite is that your feed needs to be set to identify which role (or roles) the feed populates. Either of these prerequisites can be set up for you by a support specialist via a support ticket or during your deployment.

To use the tool, you will want to navigate to Integrated Services Manager > Utilities > ESB Off Feed Utility. Here, youll be able to select the feed for comparison and see the results of users who are NOT on that feed, but are in the role(s) set to compare to and who also have an importID set from that feed. This means that users who may have been manually added to a role will not show up in the results when using the tool.

To determine who is off the feed, we include users who have NOT been seen on the feed in the last 48 hours. We determined 48 hours as an appropriate window as that would ensure 2 full refreshes have run. If there is an issue with a full refresh (e.g. a maintenance window for the target system, or unexpected outage of some form) the results could be dramatically wrong in the utility, so we wanted to add in a cushion to reduce the likelihood of that. In general, the results of the tool should not be huge (e.g. you should not see all your staff turn up in the results), so if you do notice something like this, please reach out to support to check the feed settings.What does archiving a user do?Archiving a user will cause 1 of two things to happen:If the user is ONLY in the role(s) that the Off Feed Utility is comparing for the feed, they will be removed from that role (or roles) and put in an Inactive roleIf the user is in other roles OTHER than the ones being compared by the utility, that user will be removed from all roles set to be populated by the feed, and left in any others.

By removing the relevant roles the user should lose access to portals as well as being removed from filters/lists that are targeting specific roles. It does not delete the user, so if they do show back up on the feed, they should be added back to the appropriate roles and removed from the Inactive role. For the BEST results, you want to ensure that mailing lists, page permissions, and group filters are all qualified with a role.

For example, if you intend to have a group dynamically populated with students in Grade 12:

DO qualify it with a Membership in Group Student filter:

DONT just use the Grade is ____ filter:

The first filter-set will exclude users in the Inactive role, the second filter-set will include Inactive role users.

If you wish to have your Inactive constituents purged from the system, please send a support ticket in requesting this. In the future, we may make that functionality available to site admins with the appropriate permissions.

Athletics Events

The tool can also be used to find off-feed athletics events from the Schedule Star integration (well be hoping to add support for this for Blackbaud and Veracross in Q1 2020). The same basic logic applies, where we identify events that have not been seen in 48 hours as off feed. Again, this will only include events that have a feedid associated with the feed being checked. This is to allow you to manage specific teams outside of the sync (or if you have multiple syncs) without cluttering up the results from this tool. The tool only searches within the time frame set in your feed which is typically 1 month back, 6 months forward, but is uniquely configurable per site.

Rather than archiving or deactivating events, the tool will give you the option to delete them as this is a less risky feature with athletics events than with users.

If you notice any concerning or inaccurate results, please reach out to support so we can investigate.

LinkedIn has a very restrictive API, so only company pages can be added at this time (not personal or school pages). In addition, you must connect a personal LinkedIn account on your Connected Social Accounts page that is an administrator for the company page, in order to display the company posts. So, you must "own" the LinkedIn company page you want to display.

To ensure that your Feeds product is populating correctly after changes in 2018 to some social media API policies, you'll need to connect certain social accounts using the Feeds moderation console. If you do not see the Feeds console as listed in step one below, please reach out to Support.

Below is a video walkthrough:

To add a new connection

If you receive an email or in-app notification that your social account connection has expired, you can refresh it from the "Your Social Connections"page by following these steps:

Let's say you want to connect an Instagram account in Feeds. Visit instagram.com and log your browser out of all Instagram accounts.This is an essential step.

Navigate to the left-side Modules menu in Composer and select Feeds from the menu. The popup window for the Feeds moderation console should appear.

Click the hamburger menu from the relevant Facebook help article on the right-hand side of the popup window, then click the Your Social Connections" link. This was previously called "Connected Social Accounts".

On the "Your Social Connections" screen, find your desired social platform such as Instagram. Click the green plus icon to log in with the username and password for the social account.When prompted, authorize the requested access.

The connection will be established. You can now add this Instagram account as a source via the "Social Media Sources" area of your Feeds dashboard.The successful connection should be listed in the"Your Social Connections" screen.Note: Connecting the account does not automatically also add it as a source.

Note:There is currently not a way to add more than one account on any platform except Instagram at this time. If you need to remove an account, you must delete all accounts and then re-add any accounts you would like to add.

If you need to add multiple Instagram sources, you must connect each account one at a time. Please use the steps above to connect the first account. Before returning to the Feeds console to connect the second account, make sure you are logged out of the first account on http://www.instagram.com -- if not, then you'll reconnect the first account again by accident.

The connection token for each account will expire after several months and needs to be reconnected using the steps below.If one of your connections has expired,it will be displayed in red text.

To refresh a connection

Let's say you want to refresh an expired Instagram connection in Feeds. Visit instagram.com and log your browser out of all Instagram accounts.This is an essential step.

Navigate to the left-side Modules menu in Composer and select Feeds from the menu. The popup window for the Feeds moderation console should appear.

Click the hamburger menu on the right-hand side of the popup window, then click the Your Social Connections link. This was previously called "Connected Social Accounts".

On the "Your Social Connections" screen, click the refresh double 'arrow' icon by Instagram. Feeds will refresh the connection for the Instagram account your browser is logged into.

If the red text does not go away and the connection still shows as expired, visit instagram.com and make sure your browser is logged into the corresponding account. Then try refreshing it again.

Note: Once the Instagram account is connected, your existing Instagram source in the Feeds module will refresh with the next scheduled sync of the feed. The sync occurs every 4 hours for "Starter" Feeds plans, or every 5 minutes for "Standard" and "Premium" plans.

Instagram

Please follow the steps above, which uses Instagram as an example.

Facebook

Facebook business pages may be added as a source without the need to first connect the account. Normal text posts and photo posts should show from the Facebook page. However, Facebook posts that contain a video do require that account to first be connected before the video post will show.

If youre connecting a Facebook account, you may be prompted to connect your Personal Account. Facebook requires all business pages be connected to a Personal Account. The below information is provided :

"You must have a Facebook account and a personal profile set up in order to create a Facebook Page, as every Page needs to have an admin in order to login and manage the Page, or have a role on the Page.

"However, when you create a Page from your personal account no one can see that you're the admin or that your personal account is associated with the Page."

LinkedIn

LinkedIn requires you to connect the account before it can be added as a source, and you must be an administrator of the company page you wish to add.LinkedIn has a very restrictive API, so only company pages can be added at this time (not personal or school pages) and there are a limited number of historical posts that will pull in from LinkedIn. After you have connected the account, then you can add it as a source to Feeds.

To mark down an absence, early dismissal or late arrival as an Attendance Admin user:

Log into your account and click "Attendance" in the Account Bar. You can also click the "Attendance" button from the LMS Dashboard.

The LMS Attendance page has twocolumns. On the left, Attendance Admins can enter daily attendance information for individual students. On the right, the Class Attendance data collected by teachers is shown in an Activity Stream-like column display.

Use the "Student's Last Name" field to find a particular student for editing, and then click on the student's full name when it pops up to create a new attendance record.

Select a date. You can enter future attendance information (for instance, if you know a student is going to be away on vacation for an entire week, you can enter all of those days at once). This information will be visible to teachers and already filled out in their screen when they take attendance on any of those days.

Choose the type of attendance notification (Absent, Late, Early Dismissal, Late and Early Dismissal), and set whether the notification is excused or unexcused.

Select a reason for the notification.

(Optional) Add a comment. Comments will be visible to teachers when they're reviewing Class Attendance.

Set whether this incident is "open" or "closed."

After saving the notification, a new entry will appear in the "Daily Attendance" column.

Attendance Admins can always see when an attendance notice was created, and by whom. The buttons to the right of the student's name can be used to edit the notice, or to view a summary of that particular student's attendance notices. To the right, the colored flag indicates the type of attendance notice, as well as whether or not the absence was excused. This information also appears on teachers' Class Attendance displays for each of their classes.

This change is due to API policy updates on Instagram's end and is affecting all platforms that connect with Instagram.

On 11 December 2018, Instagram updated its API Policy in which it deprecated some of its important endpoints. So, now its not possible to get posts on the basis of hashtags and locations through Standard Instagram account."

A lot of other major changes took place because of this updated Instagram API Policy. One such major change is that, from now on,no user information will be available with hashtag posts. As a result, Feeds can no longer access personally identifiable information, such as the profile image and username, with hashtag posts. Instead, the post will say An Instagram User as the username text.

In the left-hand page list of Composer, select the More Actions button to the right of the page you want to clone.

OR while on the desired page, select the More Actions button from the right side of the bottom toolbar.

Select the option "Clone Page."

Edit the page name, URL, and/or parent page for the cloned page.

Select "Clone."

Need to Submit a Ticket?

Have an Emergency?

Want to Give Us a Call?

Submit a ticket

From the Support navigation in Composer, click "Submit a ticket."

While logged into the Support Portal, you can also select "Submit a ticket" from the top navigation. Alternatively, you can send an email to [email protected].

Why do I have to sign in to submit a ticket?

Requiring login helps to ensure that the requests for your website respect the same internal workflows/authorizations you already have in place. It also allows you to view all your tickets at the same time.

Emergency ticket information

You can submit an emergency ticket as you would a ticket using either of the methods above.

If you cannot access the admin side of your website to log in, you can also email [email protected]. Please remember to include your name, your school/account name, a brief description of problem, and a phone number if you would like a callback.

Please reserve use of the emergency ticket procedures for issues such as website outage, loss of immediately necessary functionality, security/liability issue, or a critical display issue.

Support phone numbers

1-844-322-8109 (toll-free) add to contacts 1-703-574-2266 (outside North America) (44) 800 060 8857 (United Kingdom)

Please have your Customer ID available the first time you call. You can find it in the upper-right corner of the Support Portal account bar.

What to do when your site is down

US phone support is available Monday to Friday, 8:00am - 8:00pm Eastern Time (GMT -5 hours, -4 hours in DST).

UK phone support is available Monday to Friday, 9:00am - 5:00pm BST (GMT +1 hour).

Outside of normal business hours, you may submit a voicemail Support ticket.

More troubleshooting

Please see our article on "" for additional troubleshooting measures.

Feel free to use the search bar above for quicker access to articles!

General

Finding your Support Customer ID

Checking the Status of your Site

More...

Finalsite Dashboard

Google Analytics - a basic explanation

Dashboard Login FAQs

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Group Manager

Group visibility and setting Group permissions

Creating groups using Dynamic Filters

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Athletics Manager

Accessing Coach Mobile

Allowing Coaches to Post Game Results

More...

Calendar Manager

Creating Block Calendars

Adding a Finalsite calendar/feed to an iOS device

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Commerce Manager

Shipping / return / refund policies for merchant account vendors

Commerce order shipping options

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Composer

Composer video help

The Admin Users page

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Constituent Manager

Public Users

Creating a new request in Services Manager

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Downloads

Academic Classes datasheet

Athletic Team Icons

More...

eNotify

Troubleshoot: Gmail filtering eNotices as spam

Troubleshoot Recipients who are not receiving emails

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File Manager

Creating new folders

URLs for uploaded files

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Finalsite Learn

Archiving classes

Adding Additional Legends to Email Notifications

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LMS Manager

Setting the Calendar Tab

Viewing Reports as Parents and Students

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Forms Manager

Adding Fields to your Form

Best Practice: adding credit card fields to forms

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Integrated Services Manager

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Compliance with Finalsite

Can I autofill the subject line of a mailto: link?

More...

End Users on your Site

Integrations and Single Sign-ons

Testing the Google SSO

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iPhone App

Push messages

Setting up the iPhone app

More...

Multimedia Manager

Editing rights to Multimedia Manager channels

Supported multimedia file formats and types

More...

News Manager

Publishing a news post without an alert

Subscribing to text (SMS) alerts

More...

Page Manager

Creating mobile pages (Page Manager)

Preventing search engines from indexing specific pages (Page Manager)

More...

PagePops

PagePops not appearing for some users

PagePops in Composer

More...

Posts

Organizing content: Folders, Boards and Posts

Adding thumbnails to Boards and Posts

More...

Registration Manager

(VIDEO) Registration Manager

Displaying Registration Manager Events

More...

Site Configuration

Using Crisis Mode

Configuring Domain Names and DNS Records for your Site

More...

Admin users are created and managed in Constituent Manager. In this article, learn how to create an admin user and delete an admin user.

Create an admin user

Watch this video for a demonstration of how to create an admin user.

Start by going to the user's profile in Constituent Manager. If the user doesnt have a constituent profile, youll need to create one first.

Go to the user's "Account" tab and click the green "Create Admin Account" button.

To create a brand-new admin account, select Create New Account from the radio buttons.

Use the dropdown menu to choose an existing admin user group for this admin account to join.

Note: On some sites, this dropdown is pre-selected for the Faculty admin group. Remember to choose the correct group!

Admin user groups are set up in Site Manager > People > Admin Users. Each member of an admin user group has the same rights and privileges to edit the site and its properties.

If the user has a portal account, you can use the same username, or enter a username in the field. Use the radio buttons to either carry over the users existing password, or enter a new one. The email address field will be populated with the address from the users constituent profile, but you can change it if you want.

You can elect to send an email to the user containing the username and password for their new admin account, as well as instructions for logging in.

Click Create Admin Account to finish up. The new admin account will be created and visible on the Admin Users page.

Link an existing account

In some cases, an admin account may already exist in Admin Users, and it just needs to be linked to the constituent profile. For this, choose the Use Existing Account radio button at the top of the screen.

Click "Browse" to open a new window with a list of active site admins, and select an admin account from the list.

Again, you have the option to send the new admin an email with their username, password, and login instructions.

Delete an admin account

Admin accounts are deleted from Modules and Settings > People > Admin Users. Find the admin user group that contains the user you want to delete.

Select the "del" checkbox to the left of the user's name.

With the checkbox selected, scroll to the bottom of the screen and save the page. Any selected admin user accounts will be removed.

Google Search Console provides detailed information andallows site admins to control how their site is presented in Google search results.

One of the ways this is done by submitting a "sitemap" to the Search Console. The sitemap is an XML file that's generated by Composer. It provides Google with a detailed breakdown of all of the public pages on your site that you want to be indexed by Google, as well as how they relate to one another (that is, which pages are children of other pages, which ones are main section pages, etc.).

You may occasionally need to resubmit your sitemap in Google Search Consoleto draw Google's attention to pages that have changed or moved.This makes sure that Google always directs searchers to the right pages on your site.

Access Google Search Console (previously called Webmaster Tools) at https://search.google.com/search-console/welcome.

Log in using the credentials associated with your Google Analytics account.

Once you are logged in, click the main menu and use the dropdown arrow to select your website as the "Property." If you have many sites, use the search instead.

Google Support

If the site has not already been added, click on "Add property" and follow the instructions detailed in the article: Configuring Google Search Console.

From the property overview screen, click on "Sitemaps" in the left-hand navigation.

If there isn't an existing sitemap, use the "Add a new Sitemap" option to add one.

For Composer sites, usehttps://www.yoursite.com/fs/pages/sitemap.xml.

For Page Manager, usehttps://www.yoursite.com/xmlsitemap.cfm.

If your sitemap is already added, you can view the index coverage report by clicking on the icon on the right.

More from Google Help is available from.

File Manager and Multimedia Manager will continue to be used on your site, so there is no pressing need to migrate files that are already in your system. Links to these files will continue to function. If you have a file in one of these locations that you want to use in Posts or Composer, migrate that file individually. Consider your move to Resources as an opportunity to clean house and focus on the future of your website, rather than carrying over years worth of baggage that may or may not be useful to you anymore.

For instance, you may have a folder in File Manager with important documents for parents at the beginning of each school year. Some of those documents are reused year after year, while the school handbook gets updated each year. Migrate your evergreen documents that you need for next year, butdon'timport the entire folder with all the old handbooks youll never use again.

While most element types have their own dedicated settings, all Composer elements share some common settings, as well. The Share, Title, and Design settings are common to all element types.

Element settings can be found by hovering over an element and clicking the gear icon that appears at the upper-right corner.

Share

Enable the "Share" toggle to allow this customized element to be reused later on other site pages or banners. Any content you've added to this element will be preserved whenever it's used later. See Shared elements for more details.

Title

Set a name for this element. The toggle switch to the right of the title controls whether the element name is hidden or displayed above the element when it's viewed on a page or banner.

Design controls

Click on "+ Design" to view and edit these controls. Note that, in most cases, it's not necessary to adjust these options.

Custom Class

If your themes CSS file includes a class style declaration that you want to apply to this element, add the class selector here.

Background Image

Browse for an image in File Manager to display behind the element.

Header Content

Elements can include their own headers, displayed above the element content.

Note:This isn't a header like a banner that you'd apply to a page, but rather a separate content area above the main content section of the element.

Footer Content

Likewise, elements can include their own footer content sections.

At the top of your Pages panel, youll find your domain, your organizations site. You may have more than one domain, if you have more than one website to manage in Composer.

Underneath the domain are your sites main content pages in a tree structure.

Understand elements

Hover next to a page under which you would like to create a new Composer page. Click on the three-dot icon to activate the Action Menu and select New Page.

Give your page a name, and select the "Hide from navigation elements" checkbox if you want to keep it from appearing in any menus. Then click Save.

Once saved, you are ready to add elements to your page. Refer to our article to help you get started.

Finalsite now offers an integration with Raisers Edge NXT, built using the SKY API offered by Blackbaud. The integration will create and update users in FInalsite that are sourced from the Raisers Edge NXT system. This will sync hourly, and it offers features and functionality to tie into Finalsite's Messages and Workflows modules.

Data mapping

The data mapping for the integration is detailed here. We make some default mapping decisions, but the integration is highly customizable based on your specific needs. Well also work with you to ensure we filter the results appropriately so we are targeting only the appropriate constituents in the integration.

Deployment information

Configuring access in NXT

To gain access to your data, well need you to set up an application in Raisers Edge NXT. The process for adding this application is documented by Blackbaud.

Your deployment specialist will provide you with the ID of the application during the setup process. Once the application is added in your instance of NXT, we will provide you with a link that can be used to grant consent for the application so we can begin accessing your data. The consent needs to be granted by an administrator in Raisers Edge who has access to the constituent data that the integration will be targeting.

Once consent is granted, we will have the necessary access to begin configuring, testing, and eventually deploying the integration.

The integration will initially be configured on a clone site so that we can ensure the data is mapped in properly and functioning as desired before deploying to the live site. If you have existing data in Finalsite, there may need to be some work to rekey or otherwise clean the data up prior to live deployment. Your deployment specialist will discuss that process to ensure the necessary work is planned and executed as prudent for your site.

Filtering

As there is data in Raisers Edge that you may not want synchronized with Finalsite, we utilize the Constituent Code in Raisers Edge to target the appropriate constituents to pull in the feed. These codes (which are unique per Raisers Edge instance) need to be configured and utilized appropriately in NXT to ensure the sync works as expected.

Coming soon

Finalsite continues to work on additional features for the NXT integration. In the fourth quarter of 2019, we aim to add support for additional datapoints, including classOf information, additional contact information, and education history.

From there, we will be looking towards adding in giving history and data to facilitate tailored communication with our Workflows and Messages modules.

For sports like Golf and Cross Country (or even darts), a team wins by achieving thelowest score in a competition. By default, Athletics Manager awards a "Win" result to the team with the highest score in a match. This behavior can be adjusted on a per-sport basis.

To set a sport to show a victory for the lowest result, go to the Team Classification screen from the Athletics Manager Dashboard. In the list of sports, find the sport you want to update and hover over the name to reveal the fly-out menu, then click the pencil icon to open the "Edit Sport" window.

From the third dropdown menu, "Scoring," select "Low Score Wins."

Any team created for that sport (e.g., Middle School Golf, Upper School Golf, etc.) will inherit the "Low Score Wins" setting, and the results will display appropriately.

There are two ways to handle entering recap information for events with multiple teams (that are not tournaments).

If the game was scheduled as a regular Athletic event, you can select the "Other" option when entering result data. This will allow you to manually increment the number of wins, losses and ties for the team and enter custom data in the "Result" field. You can then use the "Recap" text area to provide further information about the match.

The other way isto create a separate Athletic event for each competing team and then use a common event name to make sure they all appear on the site with a consistent title. Use the "Custom Title" field when creating the events and give each event the same title. This way, each of the events will clearly display the proper name, and you can enter a separate result for each team after the match.

Troubleshooting:Athletics team recordisn'tcorrect.

Check each of the teams event properties to make sure it is marked Standard.

If it is marked Tournament, you will need to use the Other category within Results. This allows for multiple wins or losses to be recorded under a single event.

OR you can switch the the event type to Standard to record wins or losses.

Marketing automation can help prevent right-fit families from slipping through the cracks by keeping them informed and engaged throughout their school-selection process. If you plan on implementing an inbound marketing strategy, marketing automation is essential.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation allows schools to more effectively market to their multiple audiences on multiple channels by automating repetitive tasks. A marketing automation strategy includes both the technology for automation, as well as the plan for executing it.

Schools can use marketing automation to automate emails to specific groups to ensure they receive more relevant communications based on where they are in the funnel. Keep in mind that automated emails are not intended to replace other important communications, like newsletters or event invites. Rather, they are intended for smaller audiences with a specific goal in mind.

Automated workflows have two main goals:

Save you and your team time by automating emails you may otherwise plan to send manually

Increase engagement with your school to increase conversions (inquiries, applicants, enrollment, donations, etc.)

It is important to note that automated workflows are not a replacement for weekly or monthly newsletters, a blog subscription, or even important updates. They are intended to nurture current, prospective, and former families down a particular path towards conversion. (You can learn more about the basics of email automation in this blog post. )

Workflows can be used throughout all departments at your school, including admissions, marketing, development, and even athletics.

See our Best Practice Articles on workflows for Admissions, Marketing, and Development for additional examples.

The Moderation Console is used to curate your sources so that your website reflects a selection of social media posts rather than a full, unfiltered stream. To begin moderating, go to the Feeds moderation console and click Moderate and Filter.

The moderation options will appear to the left of your feed.

Public vs. Moderated posts

To begin, choose to look at either Public posts (the ones that users can see currently when they look at your feed) or Moderated posts (the posts that have been withheld from the public feed for some reason).

Bulk moderation

By default, Feeds will automatically sort incoming social media posts as either Public or Moderated, depending on the content of each post. You can activate the Send All Posts to Moderation feature to automatically send everything to moderation, however.

Turning on this feature will affect all subsequent posts, but it will not impact public posts that already exist.

Automatic filters

Automatic filters define how Feeds moderates posts. Filters are applied to all social media posts on all source accounts. Any post that meets all of the applied filter criteria will be passed through to the public post side and displayed in Feeds elements. Posts that do not meet the filter criteria will be routed to the moderation queue.

There are a number of filters available, and they can be turned on or off individually to match your schools moderation guidelines.

Blacklist

The blacklist automatically sends to moderation any post that contains the terms you add to it. Terms are case sensitive. Multiple terms are separated by commas.

Whitelist

When the whitelist is activated, only posts that contain whitelisted terms will be made public. Any posts that do not contain the specified terms will be moderated.

Terms are case sensitive. Multiple terms are separated by commas.

Note: Do not use the "@" or "#" symbols when using usernames or hashtags as filter terms; just use the text without the symbol.

Profanity filter

The profanity filter automatically moderates any post that includes offensive language.

The profanity filter cannot be updated manually with new filthy words, but it is already set to be fairly comprehensive (and to consider the staggering creativity of the internet at large).

Duplication filter

The duplication filter prevents multiple posts from different sources with the same content from appearing in the public feed (for example, if another school that you follow pushes the same content out to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, the duplication filter will allow one of those posts to appear publicly and moderate the others.)

Public posts

Manually moderating approved posts

You can view your public posts and manually select for moderation any that you want to remove from public view.

While viewing Public Posts, hover over a post and click the trashcan icon to send it to the moderation queue.

Pinning posts

Public posts can be Pinned so that they remain at the top of the feed when viewed on the website. Hover over a public post and click the Pin icon.

Annotating posts

You can add text to an existing public post. Hover over it and click the pencil icon.

Add your text to the window that pops up.

The post preview will update live to show how the edited post will appear. Note that you cannot delete any content from the original post, only add your own content to it.

Moderated posts

Post filters

When viewing the moderation queue, the black bar at the top of the screen lets you review individual posts according to which automatic filter they conflicted with.

Allshows all posts in the moderation queue.

Filtershows posts filtered due to blacklist/whitelist filters.

Profanityshows posts that tripped the profanity filter. (Note that, because the profanity filter is set to err on the side of caution, it can be helpful to check this filter occasionally to make sure that worthwhile posts havent been caught here!)

Rejectedshows posts that have been manually rejected by clicking the red Reject button on the post while its in the moderation queue.

Click on the name of a filter to show the posts that it caught. Click All to return to the full list of posts awaiting moderation.

Manually approving moderated posts

There should be red buttons to "Approve All" and "Reject All" posts. Selecting either will do so for all posts in the moderation queue.

To move an individual post from the moderation queue to the public feed, hover over it and click the red Approve button that appears. You can also delete the post by clicking the gray "Reject" button.

The FinalsiteiCal feed follows a standard spec for "floating" date and time.

We conform to Form#1 of t he 4.3.5 Date-Time standard specification for iCal feeds. (A specification is a document that functions as a recipe for a function or feature that can be used by multiple services. iCal feeds, for example, can be used by Google, Finalsite, iOS devices, Windows devices, Android phones, and many more. All of the various corporations which own and operate those platforms agree - in theory - to abide by the rules and procedures spelled out in the specification. In fact, usually the specifications are written in the first place by representatives of various companies and other interested parties coming together in a committee.)

What does "floating" date and timemean?

This means that the same hour and minute value will be held for an event being pulled in through an iCal feed regardless of which time zone is currently being observed. For example, if you have an event that is at 10:00AM - 11:00AM every day, then no matter which time zone the person is in who is using the iCal feed, the event will still appear at 10:00AM - 11:00AM.

Why is Google Calendar different?

Unfortunately, Google does not seem to be following the standard iCal specs for "floating" date and time.

When Google interprets these iCal feeds it tries to accommodate for time zone but cannot do this successfully, causing undesirable results. There have been others (outside of Finalsite) that have reported this same issue to Google but as it stands currently, Google has not changed their format to follow the standard 4.3.5 Form#1 iCal feed specification.

Where will this feed work?

This feed will work correctly in iCal, Yahoo, Outlook, and other calendar programs that support iCal.

What do I do if I still want to use Google Calendar with iCal Feeds?

If you are going to continue to use Google Calendar for pulling in iCal feeds then please be sure to use the "Google iCalURL" menu item that Finalsite provides, instead of the standard iCal URL.

Make sure that any children pictured in a gallery you choose to feature on the app have the correct permissions to be photographed. Make use of tags in Resources to ensure you are not posting photos of children without proper consent. For more information on whether you have rights to publish certain images, see Legal guidelines for using photos.

Resourcesaren'tjust pictures! Also select any galleries that contain documents youd like for parents to have convenient access to.

Chances are, you will see a greater number of hashtag posts listed on the Instagram or Twitter platforms than in the Feeds module.

If you're running a hashtag campaign, please be aware that Feeds will probably not be able to obtain all of the posts that use your hashtag. There are several reasons why, but these all come down to what is made available via the API of each social network.

Feeds can't obtain a hashtag post if:

There is any sort of privacy setting enabled for the poster's account.

The post hasn't been "indexed" by the social network for that hashtag.

The social network has prevented API access to a post for another reason beyond our control and knowledge.

Because of these factors, you will likely see a discrepancy between what's listed on the network itself, and what appears in the Feeds module.

Feeds is also unable to obtain hashtag posts from before you created your Feeds ID because of limitations by the social networks.

You can upload many different kinds of media to our Multimedia Manager. The following file types are permitted for upload.

Video: .mov, .mp4, .m4a, .m4v, .mpg/.mpeg, .wmv, .avi, .flv, .3gp, .3gpp, .3g2, .3gp2

Audio: .mp3

Image: .jpg, .jpeg, .png

Note: .SWF Flash files are no longer supported, as they cannot be played back on iPhones, iPads and other iOS devices.

If you have a file that is not in one of the above formats, you can try a free format conversion utility, such as:

Format Factory: http://www.formatoz.com/download.html

HandBrake: http://handbrake.fr/

Also, many video/image editing programs have the ability to save files in other formats.

Finalsite uses Cloudflare for DDoS protection. We limit the number of requests per second to protect your website against DDoS attacks. If you exceed that number, you may see the following message:

If you believe that you are seeing this message incorrectly, please submit a Support ticket and include the Ray ID as shown in the image.

Finalsite's dual-platform mobile app comes with the capability to send push messages to your app users, if they sign up for it. Sending a push notification is handled through Messages. This article outlines the steps needed to set up a mobile notification list, have users subscribe, and send messages to those users.

Step 1: Create a list

Creating a list for app notifications is just like creating a mailing list for emails, with the addition of the "Allow Mobile Notifications" checkbox.

This checkbox makes the list show up on the Notifications area of the mobile app.

Note: On the Privacy tab of the New List window, be sure to change permissions to Everyone or Constituents Only, as appropriate. Users will need to have the ability to sign up for this list.

Your list can also be used as a regular email mailing list, simplifying your communications to those who would prefer emails or app notification alerts.

Step 2: App users sign up for list

Once the list has been created with the "Allow Mobile Notifications" option selected, it appears in the Notifications area of the mobile app. This is accessible via the More screen.

Note:The Notifications link in the app only appears when you havehave at least one mailing list with Mobile Notifications enabled.

Users can enable the toggle next to any list from which they would like to receive notifications. The first time they select to receive notifications, they will receive a system message confirming this choice.

Notifications for their selected lists will appear on the Notifications screen. Once they have signed up for notifications, they can manage their subscription settings using the gear icon on the Notifications screen or in the Settings section of their device.

Step 3: Send to list

The number of mobile subscribers is available underneath the name of the mailing list, as well as on the Message Details screen before you send a message. No further details are available.

To send a mobile notification, simply create a new message.

Whether or not you have email subscribers on your list, it is required to set a subject and select a message template for your message. If you do have email subscribers, you can take this opportunity to set up a message with the same information as the mobile alert for those subscribers.

Save the email message and proceed to the Message Details screen. In the "Mobile Subscriber Notification" section, enter an optional subject and body content for the alert. Take note of the character count below the text editor -- messages longer than 160 characters may be truncated in the notification window.

Select the mobile notification list you wish to send the message to, then select a reply-to address for the email message. At this point, you may schedule your send, either to send immediately or at a designated time in the future.

Recipients will see the message as a notification on their phone, and tapping it will take them to the Notifications section of the mobile app. A log of messages sent to the list will be available from this screen.

The public-facing side of the app is a great way to distribute information to your community. However, there may be specific pieces of information that require an extra level of security.

For this data, providing a login will allow you, as an admin, to control access to additional information for only those who are members of your community. The following sections will appear differently to individuals who log into the app, depending on the settings.

Directory: Each role may be set to be visible only to constituents in certain roles, so users must be logged in to view those profiles. In addition, any information in the profile that is set to be role-specific will only show if a user is logged in. Here's a short article on where those profile settings live in Constituent Manager: Set directory profile data visibility.

Calendars: In the settings for each calendar, you can restrict that calendars visibility in the app to specific roles. If you have done so, then those calendars will only show to specific people who are logged in. To change these settings, go to Calendar Manager > Calendars and click the edit pencil next to the calendar. Adjust the radio buttons under the LMS/App Visibility section, and select the checkboxes for the roles you want to be able to view the calendar.

Posts: In the Board Settings for each board, there are privacy settings so that boards can be restricted by role or group. If these are set, posts from those boards in the Posts section of the app will only appear to those who are in that role or group and are logged in.

Resources: If you choose a private resource gallery to display, it will only display to those who have logged in and are a part of the role or group assigned privacy permissions.

To enable the login feature for your app, select the "Enable login" checkbox under the General Settings in the Mobile Apps module.

Once you have enabled login, select "Enable Login instructions on the Home Screen" to display a button on the home screen and prompt users to log in. These instructions will disappear once the user has logged in.

Finalsite's web application firewall (WAF) is used to filter out illegitimate or malicious web traffic from your website. While our team works to ensure that only illegitimate traffic is filtered, it is possible that legitimate end users may see the error page below.

If you encounter this error message when you are expecting to access page content, the web application firewall may be blocking your request.

Please submit a ticket to Finalsite Support, including the Cloudflare Ray ID and the URL for the page you were attempting to access, so we can investigate the issue. The Cloudflare Ray ID appears at the bottom of the page and is pointed out in the image above.

Exception calendars are a way to display holidays and other occasions when the school will be closed, as well as to instruct other calendars not to schedule recurring events on those days.

To create an exception calendar, create a new calendar in Calendar Manager and choose the Calendar Type Exception.

Create all-day events for days on which other events should not be scheduled, such as spring break or teacher work days. These will display as normal if you show the calendar on a page.

Going forward, when you schedule an event that repeats, youll see the exception calendar as an option to Avoid Dates on.

Select this calendar, and the event will not be scheduled on any date that the exception calendar has an event saved.

Note: The exception calendar does not work retroactively. If you add an event to the exception calendar after an event has already been scheduled on that day, the existing event will not be updated. To resolve the calendars, return to the existing event and click the Update button.

Each time you access a webpage or file through your web browser, the browser stores it in its memory, so that it doesn't need to keep retrieving the same data every time you access the page. This storage is known as your cache.

A cookie is a file created by the web browser that stores user-specific information about a particular site. These can be form selections, saved settings, a record of the last page you were on, etc.

On rare occasions, there can be issues caused by these features that cause your browser to behave erratically. Finalsite Support is excellent at recognizing occasions where this might have happened, and we will often ask you to clear your browser's cache and cookies as a troubleshooting step.

Clearing your cache and cookies

Hit Ctrl + Shift + Del on your keyboard. (If you are on a Mac, Cmd + Shift + Del.)

In the window, that appears, check off the options for "Cached images and Files" and "Cookies and other site data. The other boxes can remain unchecked.

Make sure that the time range is set to "the beginning of time" or "Everything".

Click Clear Browsing Data.

https://kb.iu.edu/d/ahic

Note: The option labels in the instructions above are specific for Google Chrome. Other browsers may have slightly different labels for these options, but the basic steps are the same for all browsers. See if you need specific instructions for a different browser.

You can display an RSS icon or an email subscription icon that users can click to subscribe to new Posts for specific boards.

To display an RSS or subscription icon for a board in a Posts element, you must first set a default post page for the board. If you do not already have a default landing page for the board, you must create one before adjusting the subscription settings. (You can always set the default post page to be hidden from site navigation if you don't want it to appear as a clickable link.)

Note: If a default board post page is deleted, any enabled subscriptions and/or RSS feeds will also be removed.

Enable RSS feeds and email subscriptions

To display RSS feed and email subscription links on Post elements, those options need to be enabled in the Board Settings in Posts.

Click on the three-dot Action Menu next to the board and select Settings. If a default board post page is set, you can select the checkboxes for Enable RSS and Enable Subscriptions at the bottom of this window.

Getting Started with Posts 8: Comment on posts

Display on Composer

Once the RSS and/or subscription checkboxes are enabled for the board, you can choose whether to show them on individual Composer Post elements set to display that board.

On a page that displays posts from the desired board, open the settings for the appropriate Post element and, in the "Controls" section, select the "Display RSS icon" checkbox. The RSS and subscription icons will appear on the page, above the Posts element.

The element will then read from the Board Settings for each board it displays to determine which icons appear. If all of the boards in the element have only RSS feed enabled, only that icon will appear. If both or none are selected, both or no icons will appear, respectively.

Seeing subscribers

Itisn'trequired to create an account to subscribe to a board. However, you do have to enter a name and email address, and its possible to see that information about your subscribers in Posts. Go to the three-dot Action Menu next to the board name, and click on Subscriptions. A popup with the email address, name, and date and time subscribed will be shown.

Itisn'tpossible to edit subscribers from this screen. For users to unsubscribe from email alerts, they should click Unsubscribe from this board button at the bottom of the emails they receive.

You can use the following Twitter content formats as sources in Feeds.

Username: Pulls in the tweets of any public user by entering in their Twitter username. You can find the username in the URL of the Twitter page. For example, the username of https://twitter.com/finalsite is "finalsite." Enter this into the field to pull in the Tweets from Finalsite.

Hashtag:Click the "Hashtag" option when adding a new Twitter source into Feeds and type in any hashtag (you do not need to include the # symbol). This will display posts from any public users who post with that hashtag. Please keep in mind that Feeds cannot obtain historical posts for your hashtag due to restrictions of the Twitter API, but it can obtain most new posts going forward.

List:Due to changes with the Twitter API in November 2019, list sources are no longer possible.

Search Term: If you would like to display posts based on a general search term, rather than posts that contain a specific hashtag, you can do this in Feeds. When adding a new Twitter source, select the "hashtag" option, then type an asterisk followed by your search term (for example:*finalsite).

This article refers to our legacy product, Page Manager. For the best Finalsite experience, we recommend using our newest product, Composer. To find out how to upgrade your site, talk to your Client Success Manager or learn more on our website.

Search engines such as Google use a "sitemap" to better understand your site's structure. A dynamic XML sitemap file has been built into your website for this purpose.

One good reason to provide a sitemap to Google is so that your site's structure will be reflected in site category links under your Google search entry.

Google Help

Log in to Google's Search Console.

Under the "Site Map" column on the Google Dashboard, click "add."

Enter http://www.yoursite.com/xmlsitemap.cfm into the field provided. (Substitute your school's address in place of www.yoursite.com.)

Click "Submit Sitemap."

Note: The reports may take several hours to update initially.

To find out more, refer to .

Use this datasheet template to fill out faculty data, then send it to Finalsite Support in a "Data Upload" ticket. We'll update your site's database to include this information.

Alternatively, follow the instructions in Upload constituent data to Constituent Manager to import the completed datasheet yourself.

How to use this datasheet

The first column of the datasheet is the ImportID. This code can be any combination of letters and numbers, as long as it is unique to the constituent.

The Username and Password columns will be used to generate portal logins for constituents. Usernames must be unique across all roles.

The rest of the columns in the datasheet correspond to profile fields in Constituent Manager. You may delete any columns that youwon'tbe using. If there are fields in your profile thataren'tincluded on the datasheet, you can make a new column for them, as long as the header matches the field name in Constituent Manager.

The Location and Department columns will create groups for the constituents in Group Manager, where you can manage the membership later. Be careful that the data in these columns is correct and consistent, so youdon'tcreate two different groups for Art Department and Arts Department.

Constituents can have up to four email addresses in their profiles: one each for home, school, work, and a generic email. Copy the email address from one of the other columns into the email_primary column to set this value in the constituent profile.

To add faculty photos to profiles, upload the image files to File Manager and take note of their file paths. Copy the relative file path for each photo (the part of each URL that starts after /uploaded/) intoImage_S (for small) and Image_L (for large).

Here are some options for correcting Google Maps location errors or inaccuracies:

A) If the error is minor, you can add a disclaimer or supplemental directions by going to Athletics Manager > Locations, select the location, and entering text in the Directions field:

B) For more severe location errors, you can report the problem to Google:

At the upper-right of the Google Maps screen, click "Help and Feedback"

Select "Report a data problem" from the dropdown menu that appears

Select the appropriate error, and optionally add in any clarifying details, then click "Submit."

Google will review and make the correction (assuming they agree).

When uploading image or video files to the Media Manager, a conversion takes place in order to accommodateboth the photo playerand the video player. The final output will modify your files tofit the dimensions of the players, either by scaling them down or scaling them up, to fit several standardized video sizes.

Which version end users will see depends on their device size - mobile users are shown smaller files by default that are sized to fit a phone screen and download more quickly. (Users who see a smaller video can always choose to watch a full-res version instead.) To ensure the best possible final output, please consider the following factors when sizing your files for upload.

Photo player

Generally speaking, use the largest file size you can when uploading your images; this will preserve as much data as possible when the images are resized. Source files should be at least 800 x 600 pixels for best results; 1024 x 768 or larger is recommended.An image resolution of at least 72 dpi is best.

If possible, upload images that use the RGB color space. This can be set in any advanced image editor, such as Photoshop. The CMYK color space is supported, but images that already use RGB will not need to be converted and will therefore retainmore information.

Images will be convertedinto four sizes (where N is whatever is needed to preserve the proportionof the original file).

If the image orientation is landscape (width greater than height):

Thumb: 100 x N

Mobile: 480 x N

Display: 1024 x N

Full size: 1920 x N

If image orientation is portrait (height greater than width):

Thumb: N x 56

Mobile: N x 270

Display: N x 576

Full size: N x 1080

If the full-size dimensions are larger than the source image, the display image will be used as both display and full size.

Video player

564 x 450 pixels (maximum)

You do not have to size your files to match these dimensions exactly, but you should try to use dimensions whose height-to-width ratio is at or near 1.3 to 1. Typically this is not a major concern, but if the dimensions are too far off from 1.3 to 1, the images/video can appear distorted after conversion.

For more information about editing images, see the "Resizing and Cropping Images" Finalsite Training video.

Adobe has announced that it will soon be discontinuing the Typekit Enterprise servicethat Finalsite was using to serve web fonts to our clients' sites.As a result, all licensing for these fonts must be transferred to your own Adobe Creative Cloud account for continued use onyour website.

What do I need to do?

Please see the list below for your options.

Transfer to an existing Creative Cloud account:If you already subscribe to a Creative Cloud account, we will need the username on your account to transfer the font licensing. Please use thebuttonbelow tocompletethe transfer process.

Create a new Creative Cloud account:If you do not have a Creative Cloud account, there are some inexpensive options available from Adobethat will allow you to license the fonts. Pleaseuse the below linkto review plan options.

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html

Scroll to the bottom selectInCopyfor the lowest price option.

from Adobe

More information about purchasing a Creative Cloud account is available in this video. Once you have purchased an account, verify it using the process detailed in this video.

After signing up for a plan, please use thebuttonbelow to completethe transfer process.

Remove Typekit fonts from your website:If you do not currently have a Creative Cloud account (and do not plan on purchasing one), we can consult with you on removing and replacing the fonts on your website.In most cases, this will involve a fair amount of design and development work to ensure the new font selections do not impact the functionality and layout of the site. Please consult with your Client Success Manager or open a ticket with our Support team to begin this process.

How do I know if I'm using Typekit?

Your organization should have received an email from Finalsite. If you did not, and you're curious if you might be using Typekit, you can navigate to your website and follow these steps.

Navigate to the homepage of your website (in Chrome, if possible).

Right-click on the screen and select "Inspect."

Select Command+F (Mac) or Control+F (PC) and type "typekit" into the search box that appears.

If "typekit" appears in the code, you are using Typekit and will need to follow the steps above.

If you do not see typekit appear but are concerned, please feel free to reach out to Support.

What Adobe Fonts are being used on my site and where are they being used?

To find out whatfonts are being used on your site, the above method of searching in the code for "typekit" will display all instances of each Adobe font. Thefont-family attribute will give you an idea of which fonts are being used.

To seewherethese fonts are being displayed, your site's Style Guide page (located under the Production branch) will have a preview of all your site fonts.

If you have any additional questions,please reach out to your Client Success Manager or Support.

How do I add my Adobe Fonts to my Creative Cloud account?

If you have or decide to create your own Creative Cloud account to continue using Adobe Fonts, you may follow the instructions to set them up for use on your website. Copy the code given andprovide it to your Project Manager (or your website developer).

When does this task need to be completed by?

To avoid any disruptions with your font, you will want to complete the above tasks before November 25, 2019.

What if we are starting a redesign soon?

If you are launching your brand new site before November 25th, you should be fine. If you are not sure or that date might change, then you will want to go through this process to ensure that the fonts on your current site look correct.

I filled out the form. What happens now?

You should receive an email confirmation that you have completed the form containing the information that you provided to us. We will then follow up with you via email when the Typekit has been transferred.

Who can I contact if I still have questions?

Please reach out to your Client Success Manager or Support if you have any additional questions.

Consistent site errors, long load times, or 503 "Service Unavailable" errors can be caused by a number of factors, including an issue at the Finalsite data center, a network connectivity problem at your school or the surrounding local area, a DNS setting error, or something else entirely. This article suggests how you can troubleshoot the problem to try and nail down the cause.

Finalsite Server Status

If you suspect that the data center is indeed down, the first thing to do is to check the Finalsite Server Status page for an update on whether or not the server hosting your site is currently up or down.

The information displayed on the Server Status page is updated by Finalsite based on information we get from our data center diagnostic monitors. Because the info displayed there is not automated, the page will give you a definitive answer about whether we're experiencing any issues at the data center. Furthermore, because we update that data, if you see a notice about your server cluster there that means we're aware of the issue and are already working on it.

While you're there, you can also subscribe to receive email, text and/or Atom/RSS notifications about any status updates. That way if there's ever an issue you can be notified automatically, instantaneously, as soon as we post an update (note that Finalsite will not be responsible if your colleagues begin assuming that you're psychic). To sign up, click "Subscribe to Updates" at the upper-left, choose the type of update(s) you want to receive, and enter your contact details.

The Status page is also where we post additional information about past server downtime incidents. if you have a question about why a server went down, check here for a post-mortem breakdown of what happened.

Site Availability Spot Check

If the Status page indicates that the server is up but you're still encountering errors, try Uptrends' Uptime Tool. We like Uptrends because it will test a site from multiple locations around the world and display all of the results, including the ping time (a general measure of how long it takes to display a page after a user's browser requests it). This can be useful to determine if there's some sort of local outage that's preventing you from accessing your site when there are no issues with the server.

DNS Settings Check

If Uptrends indicates that your site is up but you still cannot access it, run a check on the site's DNS settings using Pingdom Tools. This can tell you if there's a problem that's preventing your site's domain (yourschool.com) from pointing to the correct numerical IP addressthat specifies a server in the Finalsite data center. Be sure to leave the 'www.' prefix off of your address when entering your site's domain. This tool will indicate if there are discrepancies in your DNS configuration that might cause your site to be unavailable.

You can also try to access your school's site from a device that's not on your school's network. DNS issues are frequently localized to a specific network, so if your site is down from on-campus but up when viewed from another location, contact your IT support staff and let them know that the DNS configuration may need to be checked.

Contact Finalsite Support

If you've tried all of the above and still can not access your site, submit a support ticket to our team or give us a call at 1-844-322-8109.

RSS feeds can be used to keep your website constituents informed about news and other frequently-updated information from your school.

To subscribe to a new RSS feed for a blog, podcast, or other regularly updated web content, browse to the web site on which that content is located, then look for and click on the RSS icon:or .

This will bring up a new window with a list of feeds to subscribe to. With regards to news stories, users can elect to subscribe to All Categories (the "Main" feed URL in News Manager), or any number of individual categories. The XML button will provide users with the URL for the RSS feedto be used in any reader, while the My Yahoo button will add the feed to the user's My Yahoo homepage at my.yahoo.com.

If you receive an error message that contains the following message about a request being flagged or blocked, it is a part of a system in place to protect your website. When you click "Submit and Go back," it will report the issue and we will work to correct it. If you are concerned, please feel free to reach out to Support, but please include the error ID, identified by a red square in the image below.

An image of this message is listed below.

The text of the error message reads:

"This request has been flagged and blocked by our system.

"If we've made a mistake, (sorry!) you can regain access by submitting the form below. Once you click 'SUBMIT & GO BACK' we will be notified and will work to resolve the mistake as quickly as possible.

"For your reference, the error ID is XXXXXXXXXXXXX

"If you need any additional assistance, you may contact this websites' administrator.

"Please try again later.

"Comment (optional):

"Submit and go back

"Go Back"

You can add a "Nickname" field to constituent profiles in Constituent Manager. If this field is present and populated, site users will be able to search Constituent Directories by nickname.

Allowing users to control profile data visibility

Populate the field in Constitutent Manager:

Users will be able to see results returned when searching by nickname on a Constituent Directory page.

Adding the Nickname field to Constituent Manager

You may not see the Nickname field available to be filled out in Constituent Manager by default. If this is the case, a site admin can add the nickname field to constituent profiles in Constituent Manager.

First, open Constituent Manager, click "Settings", and then select "Constituent Roles."

Click on the role that you want to update with the nickname field.

In the "Profile Fields" tab, you will see a list of unused fields in yellow on the right which can be added to the existing profile fields on the left. Find the "Nickname" field, and click-and-drag it over to one of the profile sections on the left. Drop the "Nickname" field wherever you would like it to appear in the Profile section of Constituent Manager, then scroll down and click the red "Save Profile Fields" button to save your changes. Constituents in this role will now be able to fill out the nickname field in their profiles.

Nickname fields can be populated manually by an admin, or by individual users updating their own profiles; they can also be included on a datasheet upload to modify multiple profiles all at once. Download the Data upload template for Student and Parent Portals to populate a data sheet.

For more information on customizing directory page results, check out the Knowledge Base article.

Constituent Manager is the module that houses data about your people (constituents) organized into roles and/or groups.

A role is simply a bucket of constituents, such as Faculty and Staff, Students, Parents, or Alumni. The available roles are based on your contract. A group is a subsection of constituents organized using Group Manager and can be configured in a way that works best for your organization.

Constituent Manager articles

Data in Constituent Manager can be populated in three ways.

Integration: Single-directional import of your student information system data.

Datasheet upload: Complete the datasheet and upload (Support can help).

Manual entry: Manually enter data for each profile.

Once uploaded, the data in Constituent Manager can be used in many ways.

Display people information on your webpages (directory).

Create portal accounts for your people to log into an access-controlled page.

Create admin accounts for certain people to manage your website.

View subscriptions (e.g., eNotify, calendar) that an individual has signed up for.

Data from Constituent Manager can also be used in other modules.

Messages: Send a template to a group of people in Constituent Manager.

Posts: Allow a group of constituents to add posts to a specific board.

Resources: Allow a group of people to upload resources to Resources.

Take a look at our other for more info.