Slate was tailor-made to process applications:

• 👩‍🎓 Applicant-friendly: Designed with users in mind, Slate offers an intuitive, mobile-optimized interface, easy document uploads, and real-time status checks.

• 🏠 Self-hosted: The Slate-hosted application streamlines and hyper-personalizes your application process. You can also import applications from external sources.

• ✨ AI-enabled: Use Slate AI to analyze application materials, perform calculations on transcripts, and more.

This video provides an overview of the features available in the Slate-hosted application. It is comprehensive: feel free to jump around using the timestamps in the accordion below.

Building an application in Slate in three phases

There are three main phases to building the Slate application:

• Phase I: Initial setup: Create Slate objects that store application data.

• Phase II: Application Structure: Build out and test the applicant experience.

• Phase III: Checklists, Automations, & The Status Page: Configure the automations that keep your application humming along.

Each of these phases has a complement of how-to articles, linked in the checklist that follows.

Follow each step in the following checklist to set up, test, and launch your application process in Slate.

Phase I: Core components

In this phase, you establish the fundamental data structures on which your application will run. You’ll also prepare Slate to receive external applications, test scores, and payments.

📝 Steps one through five apply to both imported applications and the Slate-hosted application.

1. Read Introduction to Periods and Rounds.

2. Create periods. A period must be active in order to use the application editor.

3. Create rounds. Rounds should be inactive until ready to go live.

4. Create application-scoped fields, person-scoped fields where necessary, and prompts for prompt-based fields.

5. Create the materials to be collected as part of the application.

6. Configure Slate to import external applications and test scores by adding source formats from the Source Format Library. Create custom source formats as necessary.

7. Configure your database to accept payments.

With these foundational elements in place, you can move on to crafting the applicant’s experience.

Phase II: Application structure

In the second application building phase, you create the interface that applicants use to complete your application.

You’ll also test the application from the user’s perspective and set up submission requirements.

1. Read Introduction to Application Structure.

2. Learn how to manipulate the overall structure of the application with the Application Editor.

3. Create custom application pages to either replace default pages or add new ones.

4. Learn how to test the application by impersonating an applicant.

5. Create submission requirements.

6. Create system email notifications. (Not applicable if only importing applications; create notification emails manually).

Phase III: Checklists, automations, & the status page

Lastly, you configure the application checklist, set up the rules that automate the hard stuff for you, and flesh out the applicant status portal.

1. Create checklist items and assign fulfillment requirements.

2. Organize all checklist items into checklist groups.

3. Create checklist rules to assign items in checklist groups.

4. Add and activate application status rules from the Slate Template Library; adjust as needed.

5. Use Application Editor to modify the Slate delivered status page or create custom status portal using the Portal Editor (Optional).

   • The status page settings pertain to a Slate-delivered status page only. If using a custom status portal, edits can be made directly to the status portal using the Portal Editor.

6. Build payment rules where appropriate.

➡️ First up: Introduction to application periods and rounds

Your first step in building your Slate application is understanding how periods and rounds shape your application structure.

📚 First article in this series: Application periods and rounds