Branch administrators have the ability to determine their branch's process(es) for organization registrations and renewals. To access your org registration process and settings, select the Manage view from your switchboard and select your administrative branch. Open up the organization tool drawer and look for your Branch Tools.
1) When creating your org registration form, don’t duplicate questions already asked in the Basic Profile.
Engage is hard-coded to collect data like Organization Name, Acronym, Summary, Description, Social Media Links, and Contact Information when users start the registration process. Your additional fields and form(s) should focus on any additional information you would want to know about your orgs. Repeating questions might be confusing or frustrating to your users!
2) Use Additional Fields to collect information you would want publicly visible on your organization portals’ home pages, or that you want to keep hidden for administrative purposes.
Engage allows you to make Additional Field questions public on the portal’s homepage. Consider asking questions like meeting days, meeting time, membership requirements, or the organization’s statement of purpose using organization registration additional fields. Making that information public on the portals’ homepage allows uninvolved students to gain more insight about the organization before joining.
You can also use organization additional fields to create internal or admin use only fields. You can hide these fields from students, allowing administrators a space to leave internal comments about the organization in the organization's profile.
3) Build Rostering requirements into your processes.
Don't forget you can utilize the organization registration process to ensure organization rosters and Position information are up to date! This process is a great time to ensure every organization has the appropriate number of officers and has retained a minimum organization membership. You can even separate out rostering requirements for each organization type you work with. Read more about configuring roster requirements for org types.
Don't forget to add the "Roster" step into your registration process to collect this information!
4) Don't forget about the helpful Registration Progress report.
The Registration Progress report provides a list of organizations with access to a specific registration and the progress of each organization’s submission (approved, pending, denied, in progress, or not started), along with contact information for the organization's primary contact. Utilize this report throughout your registration process to actively communicate with organizations and to keep an updated internal list of how your organizations are progressing.
5) Be strategic about the forms you integrate with the process.
Remember that in the organization registration process, you can integrate one or more forms that users will be asked to fill out. This can be a strategic time to ensure organization officers remain up-to-date on policies, update any agreements, or easily complete multiple forms they would otherwise have to complete separately!
Here are some of our favorite examples of forms our Engage campuses have included in organization registration:
- Involvement Fair Registration Form
- Hazing Policy Compliance Form
- Meeting Room/Location Registration
- Sign-ups for Student Leader Training
- If organization officers must attend a training session, utilize a form to have each organization sign up for the training times they would like to attend.
- Student Leader Training Quiz
- Some campuses will choose to integrate a form that acts as a quiz to ensure the incoming officer has reviewed certain materials or watched required videos. The quiz is a great way to hold student leaders accountable.
- Advisor Agreement Upload
- If you have an additional form that needs to be completed by an advisor or someone else outside of the organization, you can link this agreement in the instructions of an additional form, and then have users upload the signed agreement when they submit the form.
- Campus-Specific instructions for Registration Steps
- Some campuses like to provide specific instructions for how users should complete various steps in the registration process. For example, a campus may have instructions for how to complete the Roster section of the process, or you might want to ask each organization to only associate with 3 categories during category selection. Whatever your specific process, you can easily create a form to provide additional instructions for a step. Then, order your steps appropriately by placing the form containing instructions before the step that requires users to carry out the action!