Technolutions Slate

Customized On-line Applications

Multi-media Ready
Allow your applicants to upload audio, video, photos, illustrations, technical design files, and other documents to a digital portfolio. These documents will be automatically converted into a standardized format enabling the applicant to see exactly what you'll be evaluating.

Reminders and Progress Reports
Display time- and progress-sensitive reminders to applicants directly in the on-line application. Target your outreach efforts to applicants using percent-completed data pulled into your reports.

Updated Interface
We regularly update the interface to reduce keystrokes and clicks, making your day-to-day tasks faster and easier. The interfaces take advantage of the latest web technologies, providing you with the most robust interface possible.

Branded Identity
We incorporate your university's identity into all of the publicly-available pages, including enabling the application to run under your dot-edu instead of some third-party URL. We also integrate with any central authentication or single sign-on services that your university may use, to provide a seamless, secure experience.

Accelerates Outreach & Recruitment

Integrated CRM
Track all communications and activities with prospects, including e-mails (automatically captured went sent from within Slate or when using our Outlook plug-in), telephone calls, event registrations, inquiry form submissions, and all other touches.

Electronic Campaigns
We've beefed up the capabilities of Deliver to allow time-released campaigns, geographic- and interest-targeting, and multi-media. Reports enable you to track the the immediate and deferred efficacy of your communications.

Hosted Chats
Chats may be hosted for any group, including admitted students, applicants, and website guests. We support moderated and un-moderated chats, integration with applicant identity systems, audio and video simulcasts, and synchronized PowerPoint presentations. These services, similar to what you would find with on-line conference services, are available at no cost to you. That's right: there are absolutely no session, guest, or bandwidth charges.

Event Registration & Travel Tools
Keep track of your travels, organize events into trips, get driving directions, print itineraries, and print postcard announcements, name badges, and flyers. Send electronic invites (e-vites) to inquiries and prospects in the area. If you'll be on the road this summer and fall, these tools will help keep you organized.

On-line Datasets
Use on-line datasets to load in and collaboratively manage spreadsheets and other databases. For example, keep track of college counselors, university contacts, and any other databases or spreadsheets you may currently maintain. These databases are isolated from the rest of your data, but you may use the same tools to query against this data that you use for your other data.

Organizes The File Room

Digital Imaging
We've developed many tools that will enable you to scan or fax in any documents that you're still receiving by mail. They'll be instantly loaded and available for assignment to an applicant's file. This will give you a complete digital copy of all application materials. If you're going paperless, you'll be able to discard the mail and work off your digital copy. We've enhanced the tools available for applicants to submit their documents electronically, including a fax-to-file system that adds paper documents to their file without the need for a scanner.

Instant Search
Query against the database in real-time, with most queries running in less than a second. Using the web-based query editor, build queries by selecting the columns you want and adding the filters. There's no need to know anything about the underlying database structure, or to use JOINs or other such devices. While adjusting the query, it instantly will tell you how many records will be returned, and you can get a live preview of that data at any time.

Charts and Summary Reports
Select any existing query (or create a new one), filter it to include only those applicants you want to evaluate, select your groups (e.g. ethnicity, sex), and instantly receive charts and summarized data. Interact with the real-time summarized data and "drill down" to view details. Save these reports for future reporting, and snapshot reports to save a moment-in-time copy of the data.

Transforms Application Review

Virtual File Bins
Group your applications into virtual file bins to organize your applications by status, decision, department or degree program, or any other virtual representation of your real-world process.

On-line Reading
Read complete applications on-line and securely add your comments, rankings, and ratings, all without resorting to paper. Our on-line reader is web-based, so you may access it from anywhere, from any browser, and no special software is required (not even Adobe Acrobat). We've created an applicant version of our reader so that applicants may preview their applications without needing to use a PDF viewer.

Projection Ready
Switch into projector mode to display and interact with applications and digital portfolios on the big screen, perfect for committee meetings and collaborative review.

Guarantees You Peace of Mind

Secure Hosting
Technolutions maintains private, dedicated servers located in two data centers in the northeast. Both are modern data centers with the following industry-standard offerings: Class A commercial space with raised floors; dedicated environmental control systems; uninterruptible power with emergency generator backups; redundant links to major Internet backbones; secured facility and machine room access; Cisco firewalls for network border security; off-site nightly backups and failovers to other site; and 24x7 facility, network, and machine monitoring.

Integrated Support
We've integrated our support resources right into Slate, including user-editable documentation and support ticket tracking, giving you absolute transparency into the status of your requests.

Maintenance Windows
We issue updates to our servers on Sundays in an effort to minimize any service interruption. Downtime, when necessary, is usually limited to a few seconds. We understand that any downtime, including any non-essential changes to the system, can be disruptive at certain times during the year, and our update system will hold back non-essential releases during your operationally-important dates.

High Performance, High Availability
We regularly add servers and computational capacity to bring you real-time data with ever-increasing performance. Queries execute immediately, and tools help you preview the impact of filters before submitting the query for execution.

Record Versioning
We'll hold onto a copy of past versions of records, and your updated application will support multiple address, phone, and e-mail records, enabling you to hold onto stale addresses.

Persistent Backups
We'll send your backups to secure storage facilities on both coasts, where these backups will be indefinitely stored. If ever you need to pull data that was deleted, we'll have permanently-archived copies. If you have an institutional or departmental data retention policy that you want to enforce, we can help you to adjust this backup process to meet your data retention requirements.

Backup Shipping
Your IT group can download, at a regularly scheduled interval, a complete backup copy of your database and all application files for secure storage on your campus.

Help Us Help You

Go Green, Save Green
Save money and the environment by going green with Slate. If you're not already doing so, consider the following cost- and environmentally-conscious solutions: (1) use on-line decisions and forego the need to mail paper letters; (2) use your on-line event registration data to determine where you travel this year; (3) use Deliver to send electronic mail campaigns instead of paying for postage; (4) collect enrollment deposits on-line and save in bounced check fees and human resource costs; (5) instead of calling applicants long distance, send e-mails through Slate; (6) use dataset summary statistics to determine which prospect lists to purchase again; (7) read applications on-line instead of printing them; and (8) request that students submit transcripts electronically saving paper and processing costs, and only require official transcripts upon enrollment.

Cost

Solutions vary by the size of the admissions staff and its applicant pool. Our rates are fixed for the duration of the contract and are not contingent upon the number of applications received, simplifying your budgeting and planning.