- 11 Feb 2025
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Creating Application Periods
- Updated 11 Feb 2025
- 3 minute read
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📚 Part of the series Application Building Phase 1: Initial setup
The first step in the initial setup phase of your Slate application is creating application periods.
This applies whether you’ll be importing applications from a third-party, using Slate-hosted applications, or both.
What is an application period?
In Slate parlance, the application’s “period” just means active or inactive.
They are closely interrelated with rounds, which we’ll cover in the next article.
Historical applications can be imported to rounds associated with an inactive period, if necessary.
📝 Note
If your Slate for Admissions database was provisioned after January 2024, it comes pre-configured with two periods: Active and Inactive.
See Configuring your 4-year model database or Configuring your 2-year model database for more information about pre-configured objects in your database.
Creating application periods
To create an active application period:
Select Database from the main navigation.
Select Application Periods.
Select Insert. A popup appears.
Configure the following settings:
Status: Active
Name: Enter a name for your application period, for example:
Active
Allow Multiple: Do not allow multiple applications
Application/Status Page: Enable application and status page
Select Save.
Inactive
.
Result
You’ve created an active application period for the current application cycle that restricts the applicant to a single application per period.
You’ve also created an inactive application period that serves as a receptacle for all previous cycles’ applications.
Your requirements may differ from the settings we’ve selected here. See the full list of settings to understand if your setting selections should differ.
Application period setting descriptions
Status
Required
Set the status to
Active
when it is time for the period to receive applications.In general, all prior and future periods should be set to
Inactive
.
Folder
Optional
Keep your records organized by putting them in a folder.
Select
Other
to create a new folder.
Year
Optional
Specifies the year to which applicants apply.
For example, the period year
2022
may include the enrollment terms Fall 2022 and Spring 2023.The period year only reflects the academic year and cycle if your admission process includes hard deadlines and a downtime when no applications are created.
If you have a rolling admission process or import applications, the period year will usually not serve any critical purpose.
Name
Required
A student-facing value in the Slate-hosted application
Name the period after the application. For example, “Slate University Application.”
Period Key
Optional
An uncommon setting, primarily used to delineate between multiple active applications.
Your database should have only one active application period at a time.
Period Path
Optional
Like period key, period paths have uncommon use cases.
This setting can be used to override certain shared application files for a particular period.
Export Value
Optional
Lets you set an export value for the application period, typically a short value or code used by external systems like an SIS upon the consumption of application data from Slate.
📖 Further reading: Translation Codes
Allow Multiple
Optional
Applicable only to Slate-hosted applications
Selecting
Allow multiple applications
allows an applicant to submit more than one application in this particular period.📝 Note: This setting must be set toAllow multiple applications
if you want to allow applicants to submit multiple applications within the same round.
Application/Status Page
Optional
Enables or disables the application status page for applications associated with this period.
📝 Note: Disabling this setting will also disable any Slate-hosted applications associated with the period.
Custom Status Portal
Optional
If your database has a custom status portal, you can associate this period with that custom portal here to override the standard Slate application status portal.
📖 Further reading: Learn how to make a custom applicant status portal.
➡️ Up next: Creating application rounds
Periods and rounds work in conjunction. Applications can only be created directly by selecting a round associated with an active period.
Next, we’ll create the rounds, or application types, that your applicants will select from at the outset of their application process.
📚 Next article in this series: Creating application rounds