26/11/2007

New Portfolio Development System Features

We are pleased to announce the release of another set of new features for the Career Cruising Portfolio Development System.

1. Report-Based Messaging

This feature enables advisors and administrators to send messages to students based on the interests and activities saved in their Portfolio. The Report-Based Messaging option has been added to over a dozen reports in the Career Advisor Management System (CAMS), including Careers of Interest, Schools of Interest, Career Cluster/Pathway Interests, Post-Secondary Goals, Extracurricular Activities, and more.

For example, if advisors want to remind students interested in attending a particular college of an upcoming campus visit, they can send an announcement to those students directly from the Schools of Interest report. To access this feature, select the career, activity, school, etc. from the related report in CAMS to view the list of students who have included it in their Portfolio, then simply click on the Send Message link and enter the message to be sent.

2. Upload School Documents

Advisors and administrators can upload documents to the Portfolio Homepage to make them available to students. If students need an individual copy of any of the files, they can download it and save the copy to the My Files section of their Portfolio. This will be a great way to give students access to handbooks and other school documents, publicize events, distribute forms, and make available any additional information advisors want to have easily accessible to students.

3. New Promote/Graduate Students Feature

To help simplify the management of student information, we have introduced a new, user-friendly tool for promoting and graduating students. In addition, we have added an activity log to ensure that users know when this feature was used. This streamlined process, along with some of the options added in September, will make it quicker and easier for schools to keep their student lists up to date.

4. Customization and Exporting of Completion Standards Reports

Earlier this year, we added the option to customize Portfolio reports based on a variety of criteria, including grade, gender, and assigned advisor. We have now expanded this customization function to include the Portfolio Completion Standards Reports. You can now generate reports on completion status for specific groups of students and export those results as Excel or text files.