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FACT
Reference Guide for Advisors

See also FACT Advisor Guide (illustrated PDF)

What is Fact?

FACT stands for the Faculty-Advisor Communication Tool and is a new process to allow course instructors to report student progress to advisors and facilitate communication.

FACT consists of two applications:

  1. A faculty application that allows course instructors to review a list of their assigned courses/sections and the active roster for each. This tool allows faculty to create cases for their students and submit them to the appropriate advisor.
  2. An advisor application giving advisors the ability to review all student, faculty, course, enrollment, and case records from within salesforce.com. This guide will focus on the use of salesforce.com by the advising community.

What Is a Case?

Please see FACT case types.

What Is an Account?

Accounts are the main object in salesforce.com and represent people being tracked. For the FACT application, all students and faculty are accounts.

When reviewing a student, you will see degree information, photograph, athletic information, and other pertinent data.

Logging in to salesforce.com

  1. From a web browser, navigate to www.salesforce.com/login.jsp
  2. Enter your username and password. Your username is your Northeastern e-mail address (e.g. j.smith@neu.edu) and your password is your myNEU password.

Searching for Records

The salesforce.com site offers very powerful searching capabilities:

  • Students and Faculty: Search for students and faculty using a whole or partial name. For complete name, use the format “Last Name, First Name” (e.g. Smith, John). You can also search using NUID, e-mail address, or phone number.
  • Advisors: Primary, secondary, and other advisors are user records in salesforce.com. Search for users by whole or partial name, NUID, e-mail address, or phone number. For complete name, use the format “First Name Last Name” (e.g. John Smith).
  • Courses: Search for courses using key number, course number, course title, or department code.
  • Cases: Search for cases using the assigned case number.

Reviewing Data

Every underlined word in salesforce.com is a hyperlink to a particular record. Clicking on a student account name will navigate you to the student detail page where you can view the student photograph and other details. Clicking a case number will navigate you to the case detail page.

Receiving New Cases

When a course instructor submits a new case, it will automatically be assigned to the student’s primary advisor.

When a new case has been assigned to you, you will receive an e-mail alert. The e-mail will contain the high-level details of the case and a web link to the case record. Click the link, log in to salesforce.com, and review the case.

Working Cases

After reviewing the information on the case submitted by the course instructor, you can begin to work the case record. Many actions can be taken on a case:

  • Create Activities: From the Open-Activities-related list, click the New Task button to schedule a reminder or to-do. Tasks are scheduled for specific dates but are not bound by time. Click the New Event button to schedule meetings or conference calls. Events have a start time and a duration. Activities can be used to help manage your time and provide visibility of important milestones to other advisors.
  • Edit the Case: After meeting with the student, edit the case record to capture your recommendations and comments that should be made visible to the course instructor.
  • Create Case Comments: Case comments are an excellent way to keep a running history of notes on the case record. These notes are not visible to faculty.

Reassigning Cases

Some cases should be reassigned to a secondary or specialty advisor. Owners of cases can manually reassign their cases.

On the case detail page, click the Change hyperlink next to your name in the Case Owner field. Type in the advisor name or search using the magnifying glass icon.

Ensure you check the “Send Notification
E-mail” checkbox to alert the new owner of the new assignment.

Closing Cases

After you have met with the student and feel that the case has been addressed and resolved, you can close the case. All cases should eventually be closed.

Click the Close Case button on the case record. This will navigate you to a new entry screen. Select “Closed” in the Status field.

Optionally, review your selections made in the Advisor Feedback section and make any modifications. You may also make updates to the Advisor-Communication-to-Faculty text field. Remember that this text is visible to the course instructor who initiated the case.

Finally, you may chose to enter an additional entry into the Case-Comments-related list using the Internal Comments field. These comments are not visible to course instructors.

Click “Save” to complete the process. The case record will be updated and marked with a date/time closed.

FACT Help
For technical questions or issues, please contact the IS Service Desk
Email: help@neu.edu
Phone: 617.373.HELP (617.373.4357)

FACT home page

 

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