Thank you to everyone who participated in our survey(s). As a CAS, we are continually working to disseminate information to benefit the higher education profession. We will continue to do so the best we can and appreciate your help answering these hot topic questions.
We are excited to share the results from our two previous surveys. See what your peer institutions are doing in terms of test requirements during the pandemic as well as Fall 2021 orientation and recruitment events.
We remain grateful for your continued interest in participating in our two-question, anonymous surveys. We are skipping one this issue because we recently sent out a survey to all CAS users titled COVID-19 Fall 2021 Impact on Higher Education. We do hope you participated if you received the link.
This survey is now closed, and we will publish the results in our next issue.
WHAT’S NEW?
New CAS Releases
CAS Configuration Portal: Drag-and-Drop Reorder Functionality for Either/Or Questions
The drag-and-drop reorder functionality is now available when reordering Either/Or question responses in the Configuration Portal; this is like the functionality for reordering multiple choice question answer options. This enhancement improves user experience, as you no longer need to enter answer options in the exact order you want them displayed in. This will also ensure that your exports are not impacted if you reorder such response choices.
CAS Configuration Portal: Designation Promotion Date Recording in Prelaunch Environment
Once a program is ready to go live in the application, Account Managers and Client Success Managers at Liaison promote your programs from the prelaunch environment to the production (i.e., live) environment. A new Promoted Date column in the Organizations table within the prelaunch environment now includes which date the program was promoted so that you can easily identify which of your programs the Liaison team has approved and promoted to the production environment.
WebAdMIT: Kira Assessment URL Field in Export Manager
As you may be aware, the CAS application allows you to link Kira Assessments if you already have an account with Kira Talent and want to make it available to all applicants via the application. We have now expanded this feature so that you can now extract the Kira Assessment URL field through the Export Manager in WebAdMIT.
Admissions by Liaison Enhancements
We continue to make improvements to our Admissions by Liaison platform. A lot of the recent enhancements have been focused on improving the export capabilities on Admissions instances. You can find details from our most recent releases here.
Status page for Incident Updates
Earlier this month we launched a new Status Page to communicate incidents, scheduled maintenance/down time, etc. Subscribers to the Status Page will receive timely updates related to all CAS portals, WebAdMIT (including Configuration Portal), and our APIs. If you haven’t already subscribed, visit the status page website and click the blue box in the top right to enter your information. If you do not wish to subscribe, we encourage you to bookmark the status page below for easy reference.
https://status.www.liaisonedu.com/
Liaison User Conference Round-up
Thousands of CAS, WebAdMIT and Admissions by Liaison users attended our virtual Liaison User Conference last month. The conference, which took place over 2 days, featured thought leadership sessions as well as sessions focused on all of Liaison’s products including SlideRoom, TargetX, Othot, EMP and Analytics.
If you were unable to make it to the conference or missed something you were interested in attending, you can now access all recordings here.
Mark your calendars for the 2022 Liaison User Conference! The conference is scheduled to take place in-person the week of July 25, 2022, in Boston, MA. In the meantime, we hope you found our 2021 Virtual User Conference productive for those of you who were able to participate.
Admissions by Liaison Webinar Recording
On August 18, we hosted a webinar for Admissions by Liaison users that focused on managing multiple CAS cycles within their instances. This is especially timely as we get ready to launch the 2021-2022 CAS cycle on September 9, 2021. If this webinar is relevant to you and your team, but you could not attend, you can now access the recording.
Preparing for the 2021-2022 Cycle Launch
Whether you are participating in BusinessCAS, EngineeringCAS, and/or GradCAS for the first time or rolling over your programs to a new cycle, providing prospective students an easy way to locate your CAS application is extremely important. Review our best practices below to make sure you’re ready for go-live.
Create Easy Access on Institutional Website: The fewer clicks an applicant must go through to land on the CAS application, the better. Make “Apply Now” front and center on your website, so it is easy to locate. Consider making the link available on main landing pages such as:
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the university home page
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the graduate admissions landing page
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the departmental page
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the program page
Also, conduct user testing with student workers or others unfamiliar with your website layout to determine how easy/difficult it is to access your application. If they have trouble navigating to the application, it is likely prospective students will as well.
Use Appropriate Redirects to the CAS Application: BusinessCAS, EngineeringCAS, and GradCAS give you several choices for redirecting students to the CAS application.
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Whenever possible, we encourage you to use our digital and printable, fully customizable “Apply” button on your websites.
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Application login page: If you direct students to the application login pages, it is important to note that CAS has a different URL for each CAS application cycle. This means that there will be two URLs, one for each cycle, between September through the following March each year. Using the application cycle-specific URL allows you to provide deep links to your programs. However, you will need to update these cycle-specific links wherever you use them on your website at the start or close of each CAS application cycle.
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Application landing page: If you usually have application terms open in overlapping CAS cycles and do not want to update these links on your website, direct students to our landing pages so they can select the cycle they are applying to.