The Prospect Inquiry feature provides Terra Dotta clients with a publicly accessible fillable form that interested site visitors can submit without first logging into the site. The office can capture contact information and basic areas of interest from prospective applicants. Once submitted, the information is stored in a ‘Prospect’ record/request and can be used to conduct marketing outreach to increase the number of actual applications started from those with initial interest. By streamlining the initial information gathering process the prospect inquiry feature will allow for more effective recruitment and applicant pipeline management. 

This tool is accessed by navigating to Profiles > Prospect Inquiry. A tally of all active prospects and prospect requests, as well as a tally for all prospects created in the last seven days, is displayed at the top of this page.

Please Note: The classic prospect inquiry feature is not compatible with Terra Dotta's new Site Builder. Once the new Site Builder is turned on, prospect inquiry functionality will no longer be available. For a powerful prospect inquiry alternative check out Terra Dotta's Engage solution. 

This article covers the following topics:

• Permissions
• Configuration Settings
• Public Landing Page
• Prospect Viewing and Editing
• Converting a Prospect
• Request Viewing and Editing
• FAQ
• Prospect Inquiry Video

Permissions

The following permissions are associated with Prospect Inquiry. An administrator will require these permissions in order to access the settings related to the Prospect Inquiry feature:

Profile Admin > Prospect Inquiry > Prospects (view)
Profile Admin > Prospect Inquiry > Prospects (edit)
Profile Admin > Prospect Inquiry > Prospects (add)
Profile Admin > Prospect Inquiry > Requests (view)
Profile Admin > Prospect Inquiry > Requests (edit)
Profile Admin > Prospect Inquiry > Settings

Configuration Settings

The configuration settings pertaining to the Prospect Inquiry tool can be accessed by navigating to Profiles > Prospect Inquiry > Settings. By default, an administrator will land on the General settings section. Note: This tab will only be available to administrators with the "Prospect Inquiry > Settings" permission. 



The following settings are available to be configured in the General section:

• Enable capture: This setting enables the public landing page for prospects, allowing site visitors to create their own prospect requests by submitting the prospect inquiry form (further details below).
• Enable email response: This setting will determine whether or not a contact email address field is displayed on the public prospect landing form for prospects to enter. This should be enabled if you wish to have prospects add an email address your office can use to contact them in response to their inquiry.
• Enable phone response: This setting will determine whether or not a contact mobile phone number field is displayed on the public prospect landing form for prospects to enter. This should be enabled if you wish to have prospects add a phone number your office can use to contact them in response to their inquiry.
• Terms and conditions: The WYSIWYG content entered here will be displayed at the bottom of the public prospect landing form and is intended to communicate privacy policies around the data submitted to the office. This is used to ensure that this important information is displayed to site visitors before they submit any sensitive data.
• Email notification for new requests: Entering an email address here will enable email notifications for new requests. An email will be generated and delivered to the provided address each time a new request is generated from the public landing page.

Note: If the “Enable capture” setting is enabled, either “Enable email response” or “Enable phone response” must also be enabled.  Upon submission a prospect will be required to enter their first and last name, and their email address or phone number.  All other information on the prospect form will be optional.

Other settings can be configured by clicking the “Prospect Inquiry” tab in the upper left area of the page. This provides a dropdown menu to navigate to these additional configuration options:

 

• On the Interests page, an administrator can view the site's list of areas of interest created for Prospects to select from when completing a request. New interests can be added to the list by clicking “Add Interest” in the top right. This allows administrators to learn about a prospect's interests and guide them towards a program that would best suit them based on their responses.
• The Fields page will display a list of applicant parameters that exist on the site. Site visitors will be asked to provide a response for any applicant parameters selected here when they complete a prospect request form. This allows the office to gather basic information that would be useful to office staff when attempting to convert this prospect to an applicant. Please note that the parameters used here must be set to be editable by applicants in the parameter settings.
• The Tags page displays a list of all application tags that exist on the site. Application tags selected here will be made available to administrators to apply to prospect records when viewing them. This will allow administrators to organize prospects and leave notes for other administrators.
• The Addresses page will display a list of all address types created on the site. A site visitor will be prompted to provide any addresses selected here when they complete a prospect request.
• The Questions page will display all question items that have been created on your site, sorted by question item folder. Any question items selected here will be displayed to site visitors when they complete a prospect request. Administrators can use this to gather any additional information that is not included in address types or parameters.

Public Landing Page

If the 'Enable Capture' setting has been enabled in Profile > Prospect Inquiry > Settings, the publicly accessible prospect landing page can be accessed by navigating to http://{sitedomain}/index.cfm?FuseAction=Prospects.Home. It is only possible to have one public landing page, and therefore only one Prospect Inquiry Form per site.  Use this URL to create a link or button to direct site visitors to the prospect request form.

For example, if your site URL is:
http://international.tdu.edu

The access URL for the prospect inquiry form would be:
http://international.edu.edu/index.cfm?FuseAction=Prospects.Home



A: Tips Text: Can be edited using text interface field #17198.

B: Prospect inquiry request form: This form is accessible by the direct URL noted previously.  Site visitors will usually access this page using a link or button placed somewhere on the client's main site. Section C will always appear as part of the form, but all the other sections will only appear if they have been configured to display at least one form option in them.

C: Contact information panel: This section will always appear on the public landing page. In this section, the site visitor is prompted to enter their name and contact information.
The display of email and mobile phone number fields is determined by the configuration settings in Profile > Prospect Inquiry > Settings > General. If Date of Birth and Gender fields are enabled under System Settings, they will also appear on the public prospect landing page.

D: Areas of interest panel: This panel will display all the list of interests created in Profile > Prospect Inquiry > Settings > Interests.

E: Profile information panel: This panel will display the applicant parameters that are selected in Profile > Prospect Inquiry > Settings > Fields and have the applicant parameter setting 'Applicant can edit' set to 'Yes'. Note that none of these fields are required to be completed before submission of the prospect form regardless of how the applicant parameter is actually configured.  Until the person creates a profile or becomes an applicant, this information is considered optional.  

F: Address information panel: This panel will display the address types that are selected in Profile > Prospect Inquiry > Settings > Addresses. Note that none of the addresses are required to be completed before submission of the prospect form regardless of how the address type is configured.  Until the person creates a profile or becomes an application, this information is considered optional.  

G: Additional information panel: This panel will display the most current version of the question items that are selected in Profile > Prospect Inquiry > Settings > Questions. Note that none of the question items are required to be completed before submission of the prospect form regardless of how the questions are configured.  

H: Terms of service panel: This panel will display the WYSIWYG content entered in Profile > Prospect Inquiry > Settings > General.

I: GDPR Consent Notice: Enabled in  Settings > System Features > Administrative and configured in  Settings > Account Info. If enabled, prospect  must provide consent for their data to be collected before being able to submit the form.

J. Send button: Submits the form. 

Upon submission of the prospect inquiry form, a prospect record is created and a request is logged. If the email address or phone number used matches that of an existing prospect, a new prospect will not be created but a new request will be logged and linked to the existing prospect.

Prospect Viewing and Editing

Once a prospect record and/or request has been created, it can be viewed and edited by administrators in Profile > Prospect Inquiry. Upon navigating to this page, an administrator will land on the 'Prospects' tab where, by default, all active site prospects can be viewed and edited. 



A. Options and Active dropdowns:

• If you end up with more than one prospect record for the same person, an admin can merge those records by checking the boxes next to the names, and then selecting 'Merge marked prospects' from the 'Options' dropdown list.
• You can batch email all marked prospects using the "Batch Marked Prospects" option under the 'Options' dropdown.
• You can batch deactivate all marked prospects using the "Batch Deactivate Prospects" option under the 'Options' dropdown. 
• You can switch to view Inactive prospects by clicking the ‘Active’ tab and choosing ‘Inactive.’ Prospects are made inactive when converted to a site profile, merged into another prospect, and deactivated by an administrator. Prospects will not become inactive without one of these actions. They can be made activate again by clicking the eye icon and reactivating them at the bottom of the page. 

​ B. Actions column:

• Edit pencil: Clicking the edit pencil to the right of a prospect's information will bring you to a page on which you can edit the information pertinent to their record (see screenshot below). This will look similar to the form the prospect completed on the public landing page.
• Eye icon: Clicking the eye icon will allow you to view all of the information collected for this prospect and access links to their active requests (see screenshot below).
  • The prospect's status is visible on this page. The 'status' of the prospect can be active, inactive, or converted. Converted prospects will also have a button to take the admin to the user's TDS profile to the right of the status along with the date on which the prospect was converted and by whom.
  • You can click a prospect's email address to open your device's messaging application and contact that prospect.  Note that this email will not be logged in the TD system as it will be sent directly through your email client.
  • An activity log of any actions taken with this prospect record can be found here.
  • You can apply any application tags enabled in Profile > Prospect Inquiry > Settings > Tags by clicking the "Add tag to application" dropdown.
  • In the 'Requests' panel at the bottom, you will see all requests submitted by that prospect and be able to click into each request by clicking the eye icon.
  • Using the buttons at the bottom of this page you can choose to deactivate this prospect, edit their information, or convert this record to a full site profile.

​
 

E. New Prospect Button: You can create a new prospect from here by clicking “New Prospect” in the top right. This will bring you to the same form a site visitor would see on the public landing page (see screenshot below).
 

Converting a Prospect

When you are ready to convert a prospect record to a full site profile, click the Convert button while viewing the prospect.  After doing so, you will be brought to a page where you can search your SIS/HR database for the prospect's information (if they're an internal user and your site is integrated) or create a non-integrated profile. Some clients with a deferred-fetch integration will not be able to create new profiles via the convert prospect tool. Please open a case if you have questions about how your integration will work with this tool.

Once the prospect has successfully been converted to a full profile, the prospect record will automatically change to a "Converted" status and will no longer appear in your activate prospects. Note: At this time, it is not possible to convert a user if they already have a profile on the site. You can make their prospect record 'inactive'. 

Once the user has a profile, an application can be created for this user under Applicants -> New Application.

When converting a user, all core data and applicant parameter data collected during the prospect phase will be transferred to the user record.  However, question item responses and areas of interest will not be transferred to the user's profile or applications.

Request Viewing and Editing

You can view your active requests by clicking the "Requests" tab on Profile -> Prospect Inquiry.  All question item responses will be visible on the request page, while core data and applicant parameter date is visible on the prospect record page.  Question item responses are visible via the request because a single user can have one prospect record, but various 'requests'.



A. Options dropdown:

• You can batch email any the prospects associated with any marked requests using the "Batch Email Marked" option under the 'Options' dropdown.
• You can batch export all information related to the marked requests into an Excel document using the "Export Marked Requests" option under the 'Options' dropdown.

B. Actions column:

• Clicking the edit pencil will bring you to a page on which you can view and edit the prospect's responses to the questions deployed on the request form.
• Clicking the eye icon will allow you to view all of the information pertinent to the request (see screenshot below). From here:
  • Clicking the email address provided will open your device's messaging application and allow you to contact the prospect who created this request.
  • You can edit responses to question items on the request form by clicking the "Edit" button.
  • You can leave an internal comment on this request using the comment field at the bottom of the page.

C. Display Filter:  The search bar on the right allows an admin to search the records by keyword.

D.  Existing user warning icon: A yellow exclamation mark appears to warn an administrator that a user profile may already exist in the system for the prospect associated with this request based on the contact information provided.

FAQ

Q: How can I query/report on prospect information?
A: At this time, reviewing prospect information is done by viewing/sorting the Prospect and Requests lists.  Request information can be exported in the 'Options' of the Requests screen using the "Export marked" option.

Q: How can I require prospects to submit certain parameters, addresses, or questions items on the prospect form?
A: The prospect inquiry is designed to increase engagement of users on the site. There are no submission requirements, other than name and contact (phone/email), prohibiting users from submitting a request. Additional information can be collected in follow-up with the prospect, through the standard profile and application tools in TDS.

Q: Can a prospect apply to a program?
A: Yes, prospects can still create profiles and applications. Q: Can I create tasks, workflow, or query watches with prospects? A: At this time, tasks, workflow, and query watches are not linked to the prospect feature.

Prospect Inquiry Video

Video Table of Contents:

• 0:00 - 1:17 - Functionality of Prospect Inquiry feature
• 1:18 - 8:28 - Configuration and Settings
• 8:29 - 10:33 - Accessing the Public Landing Page and Submitting the Prospect Inquiry Form (site visitor view)
• 10:34 - 15:07 - Prospect Viewing / Editing
• 15:08 - 17:03 - Request Viewing / Editing
• 17:04 - 19:03 - Converting Prospect Records