Student Success Implementation Strategies

The clean, functional design of Slate ensures that users do not need technical expertise to maximize its powerful capabilities. The intuitive interface and straightforward systems simplify training needs and empower users to stand up their business processes quickly. It is helpful to understand a few important elements of the Slate implementation process before beginning the Slate Certified - Fundamentals of Slate for Student Success course in the Learning Lab.

The best way to learn about Slate is to use it - the sooner staff access and use the Slate administrator interface, the sooner their comfort level with Slate will grow! While we encourage your staff to build in the Production Environment of Slate, know that easily accessible in the Database Tool is the Test Environment, the Clean Slate Environment and the Learning Lab Environment to use as “sandboxes”. Use those areas to try out tools, then build and test processes; however, keep in mind that only in the Test Environment, which is a replica of your Production Environment, will there be actual data to manipulate without affecting LIVE records.

Time commitment

Make a commitment to building a strong knowledge of all basic functionality in your first year. Focusing on Slate tools allows Slate Captains to move through the implementation as efficiently as possible. Slate is process-built, allowing individual institutions to customize every step of their operations; however, many institutions start an implementation thinking that their multi-step process must be replicated precisely in Slate. Captains should know that the more they learn about the Slate tools, the faster they’ll realize that those historical processes may be translated into Slate more simply (these processes are easily identifiable when the answer to the question: “Why do we do this?” is: “Because we’ve always done it this way”).

The time required to implement Slate depends on the project timeframe and the resources you allocate throughout the implementation. In general, the more aggressive the timeframe, the more time Slate Captains need to devote to Slate.

When to "go live"

One notable difference between Slate and other systems is that Slate does not typically have one systemwide “go live” date. Slate is designed to “go live” gradually as items within your project plan are completed. For example, when communications and person records are set, these may “go live” before the event management and appointment scheduling process is ready to launch.

A sample Slate “go live” schedule may look like this: