We often have more than one student from a family apply at the same time. This means that applicants need to create a new application for each child. This then creates more than user for the one parent. Is there a way to stop this?
Adam,
Good question, and sadly, this is something Gibbon does not do too well. There are two different scenarios here:
- Siblings applications at different times - one student already has a place in the school, and the parents already have accounts. Instead of using the public application form, they should log in and apply from People > Application Form. The sibling automatically goes into the family this way.
- Sibling applications at the same time - parents use the public application form, and you end up with multiple parent accounts and families. The only thing to do is merge the students into one family, and then remove the surplus accounts and families.
This is something that needs improving, and I have put it as item 1 in the Gibbon v13 Todo list:
Thanks,
Ross
Something that might be piggy-backed onto this if we are looking at streamlining applications:
New applicants may come to schools in a variety of forms. For example, they may:
- Ask a question / make an inquiry
- Sign up for a school tour or admission event
- Go straight to applying
It would be interesting to further develop easier ways for applicants to come on board. Getting a name and an email would be enough to start an account, which is what those enquiring or signing up for an admission event would be willing to leave.
Would be great if applicants could, over the course of their enquiry / application experience, add just the details they need to as they go along in the process.
Something we could look into, perhaps a more functional admissions module…?
Andrew
Andrew,
This is a good suggestion, and I will keep it in mind when we look at the sibling issue above, as the whole form might need a rethink. Hmmm…let me ponder.
Ross
Some inspiration:
Open Apply: https://www.openapply.com/features
This is probably what my admission lot would love to replicate. Problem was it cost a bit and had poor to no integration with backend systems after admissions.
Adam, Andrew, thanks to some amazing dedication by @skuipers this, as of the commit below, now a functioning thing in v13:
https://github.com/GibbonEdu/core/commit/2e86fdd1671986503f92e50f77da46b716f3d73f
It’ll be put through its paces as we do our final tests, and then will be included in the v13 release on January 20th. It is not backwards compatible to v12.
The openapply stuff looks amazing. One day! Certainly this is a step in the right direction in terms of ease of management and use.
Ross