Getting Started

Who: Staff, faculty, Tutoring Center Coordinators, and Administrations can use Notes to document information about a student that may not be specific to an appointment or visit.

 

What: Notes offer an additional mechanism to jot down information about a student, collaborate across Care Units, and create a record of information provided directly to the student. Unlike summary reports, notes are not tied to specific appointments, nor are they formatted for specific Care Units.

 

Creating a Note

Advisors can add notes when needed to students’ home accounts. These notes can offer further information for students or future advisors that work with the students.

 

Some items that can be placed in advisor notes include attachments such as educational plans not done in advising appointments, notes from email exchanges, petitions, etc.

 

1. To create a note, enter the student's name or student ID in the Quick Search box to pull up their account.
2. Once the student menu is pulled up, go to staff alerts located on the right-hand side. Advisors can select the second item, “Add a Note on this Student.”

You will notice that this window is smaller than the Appointment Summary Report window. This form of advising documentation is much more simplified, asking only for the note with attachment options. The “Note Reason” and “Note URL” do not need to be filled to be saved.

 

FERPA and Notes

The same professionalism and discernment required of Advising Summary Reports applies to your use of the Notes functionality, including compliance with FERPA guidelines. Furthermore, we recommend limited use of the Notes functionality, as details regarding an interaction with a student should generally be associated with a date of the exchange, which can only be captured in an Advising Summary report.

The Note field provides space for you to record details not associated with any advising exchange interaction.

 

The Note feature allows users to add attachments.

 

SF State leadership requires that Notes are made visible to the student. We believe in extreme transparency with our students.

 

Once the Save Note button is hit, the form closes automatically and can now be accessed along with the other students advising reports.

For additional assistance, contact navigator@sfsu.edu.