Getting Started
The Scholar Admin is now available in sandbox sites for easy testing and general experimentation. If you are a live client and decide to implement this feature in your production site, open a support ticket to have the Scholar Admin deployed to your production site. If you are an implementing client, your site will be delivered to you with the Scholar Admin.
Implementation of the Scholar Admin is designed to be easy and intuitive. The guide below allows you to set your site up without the help of a Terra Dotta implementation specialist. However, Administrative Services are always available to consult and/or help build your site to fit your business process.
Setting Up The Site
- Design the site look and feel: Define your site colors and logo. You can specify your specific logo and branded colors on this interface. See Scholar Admin: Site Settings for additional details.
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Determine your business process: This is a multi-step process that you will build around your business process and the types of scholars sponsored by your institution.
- Configure Content Specific to Your Process: The ISSS Solution allows you to design your content to supplement the default Scholar Admin content for the scholar application process. See Scholar Admin: Form Management for additional details.
- Review delivered Request types and perhaps add questions based on your business practice. See Scholar Admin: J-1 Request Settings and Scholar Admin: Enabling and Configuring J-1 Scholar Requests for additional details.
- Create any needed custom requests, see Scholar Admin: Creating Custom J-1 Scholar Requests for more information.
- Set up Approval Workflows to allow additional parties like the Dean of a school or HR to approve or be notified of foreign hires. See Scholar Admin: Setting Scholar Approval Workflows for additional details.
- Verify Email Templates: Verify and/or design your specific email templates. See Scholar Admin: Configuring Email Templates for additional details.
Setting Up Users
- Set up ISSS Admins: Ensure that ISSS Admins have been created within the Terra Dotta Facilitator Group. Once created, those Admins need to be set up within the Scholar Admin. See Scholar Admin: Add a User for details on how to assign ISSS Admin privileges.
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Set up Department Admin Users: Departmental users are your contacts in departments across campus who are submitting scholar sponsorship requests. Setting up department admin users is a two-step process:
- Departments and Departmental Admins can be handled en masse. This is recommended only for your initial set up. See Scholar Admin: Departmental User Bulk Upload Tool for more information.
- Manually set up the Department: Set up the departments that sponsor or may sponsor scholars across campus. See Scholar Admin: Add a Group for additional details. This step must be completed before you can add a department administrator to the department.
- Manually assign an Admin to the Department: This is the same process as assigning ISSS Admins to the Admin group, with minor differences in the permission settings. For more information, see Scholar Admin: Add a User.
Import H-1B Scholars
- Review and make decisions on your H-1B process. You'll need to configure who has access to each part of the H-1B process. See Scholar Admin: H-1B Request Settings.
- Import your current H-1B scholar list. This will enable you to receive alerts based on H-1B end date and facilitate the extension process when the time comes. For more information, see Scholar Admin: H-1B Data Import.
- New H-1B applications processed through the ISSS Solution will not need to be imported. All the scholar's data and USCIS forms will be attached to their profile for easy access. The Data Import should only need to be done once during implementation.
Import Existing J-1 Scholars
- Set your preferences for J-1 Requests. Similar to the H-1B documentation process, you'll need to configure what parties can see and initiate requests on behalf of J-1 Scholars. See Scholar Admin: J-1 Request Settings for details.
- Learn and understand the workflow to create a J-1 Exchange Visitor. See Creating a J-1 Scholar Workflow
- Review J-1 request processing, prior to importing your J-1 population, ensure that your requests are configured with the content you desire and any additional information you may need in your decision making process. See Scholar Admin: Processing J-1 Requests and Scholar Admin: Creating Custom J-1 Scholar Requests for additional information.
- Import your existing J-1 Scholar population. This will enable you to begin to manage their records solely from Terra Dotta ISSS: Scholar. Importing should be a one time action, after which records are only managed from Scholar and SEVIS Profile moving forward. See Scholar Admin: Import existing J-1 Scholars into Scholar Admin for additional details.
Tour the Views
See our KBs that explain how each user - the ISSS admin, the departmental admin, and the scholar - experiences the views and accesses the data within the Scholar Admin. We've designed them to be comprehensive quick references.
J-1 Scholar
Scholar Admin: Tour of Departmental Admin View For J-1 Scholar
Scholar Admin: Tour of J-1 Scholar View
Scholar Admin: Tour of ISSS View for J-1 Scholar
H-1B Scholar
Scholar Admin: Tour of Departmental Admin View For H-1B Scholar
Scholar Admin: Tour of ISSS View for H-1B Beneficiary
Scholar Admin: Tour of ISSS View for H-1B Beneficiary