We are excited to help you and your team begin using Collaboratory to strategically manage and leverage community engagement data. Setting up Collaboratory with intention is essential for ensuring long-term success on your campus.
To get started preparing your Collaboratory for use, please refer to the information below, all of which is covered in the Module 1 Onboarding video. This information will guide you through the initial steps of setting up your Collaboratory with foundational information that is essential for successful use. By following this process, you'll be well-positioned to make the most of Collaboratory!
Grant Administrator and Moderator Permissions in Collaboratory
Each institution must identify at least one core administrator for Collaboratory who will oversee the strategic implementation of the tool and use of the data. Collaboratory core administrators are often community engagement professionals (CEPs) positioned within engagement-focused centers or offices. Collaboratory administrators are encouraged to identify the following individuals who will assist their efforts:
Senior Leadership
Upper-level leaders who support the strategic utilization of Collaboratory and its data across campus. Senior leaders serve primarily as advocates for the effort and consumers of the data.
Co-administrators
Assist with the day-to-day use of Collaboratory and the data. Often co-administrators are graduate students who report to the core administrator, other CEPs who work in engagement-focused units, and/or are engaged faculty/staff
Data Liaisons
Individuals within key units, across campus, who will facilitate the data entry and/or use of Collaboratory data for their specific unit
Core administrators are encouraged to grant administrator or moderator permissions to the campus individuals they have identified to assist their use of Collaboratory. For more detailed information about the differences between an individual roles (e.g., member, moderator, administrator) and permissions in Collaboratory see here.
NOTE: The core administrator must be the first to grant administrator/moderator permissions to their teammates. Once others are given administrator permissions, they can then change permissions of other individuals.
To grant adminstrator/moderator permissions, hover over the navigation pane on the left-hand side of your Collaboratory and click on "Content".
This will open your Administrative Content space where you may take action on all Collaboratory content. Select "Members" at the top of the table to view a full list of all members who have either logged into your Collaboratory and/or been imported.
HEADS UP! An individual must first log into Collaboratory to appear in your Members table and allow you to grant them administrator/moderator permissions. If they have not yet logged in, you can invite them to do so by selecting the green "Invite Faculty/Staff" button at the top right corner of the screen.
Find the member you wish to edit (either via keyword search or updating the table headers) and click on it to expand the sub-row. Select the down arrow next to the member's role in the right-hand column of the table and click the desired role. You may return at any time to promote or demote members.
Customize your Homepage
Your institution's Collaboratory homepage is customizable, allowing administrators to provide contact information, logos/graphics, and unique framing language that will be visible to both visitors and members of your institution.
To customize your homepage, hover over the navigation pane on the left-hand side of your Collaboratory and click on "Settings".
This will open the settings page, from which any administrator may adjust the settings for your entire Collaboratory portal. The settings are organized by three tabs at the top of the page, Profile, Appearance, and Access.
Profile
Add or edit your institution's name, abbreviation, description, and contact information.
Be sure to review any information that may have been pre-populated for you.
This data will populate information on your Collaboratory homepage and provide main contact information that is included in all emails and alerts your institution's Collaboratory members receive.
Appearance
Select images for the logo and banner that is displayed on the homepage.
For best quality, note the 4:1 aspect ratio of the horizontal banner.
Crop your images as necessary within the built in asset manager. For additional information about using the asset manager, see here.
Set the custom colors for your reports dashboard. Collaboratory administrators may select up to five specific colors to brand their reports by inputting the unique hex color codes that match their institutional branding. Note: the reports default to Collaboratory colors until updated.
Access
Control messaging and visibility settings for your Collaboratory with radio on/off dials.
Silence all Email Alerts: Stop all outbound email alerts that are normally sent to Administrators, faculty, staff, students, and community organizations. To understand what email alerts are sent, and when see here.
Silencing emails is most helpful during onboarding when Administrators are pre-populating content prior to launching Collaboratory at their institution.
While alerts are silenced (i.e., the feature is enabled), no emails will be sent to faculty/staff, students, or community organizations and these emails will not accumulate for sending once alerts are re-enabled. For this reason, consider what alerts will need to be sent manually through other means for any content that was created while this setting was enabled.
HEADS UP! By default, this feature is disabled, meaning email alerts will be sent. To temporarily silence all email alerts, toggle your preference to "Emails held".
Map-based Activity Information: Collaboratory's search feature includes a map-based search results view that geolocates activities and community organizations. Administrators may choose to disable this view (e.g., because their institution has another map tool they are using), so that search results are only provided in a list view. By default, the map-based search display is enabled.
Private Collaboratory: By default, many aspects of your Collaboratory are publicly available and accessible by members of the general public. Enabling this setting will make the entirety of your Collaboratory private and accessible only to logged-in members from your institution. Email notifications will not be sent to community partners identified on activities if this setting is enabled.
What's Next?
The next step to ensuring your Collaboratory is ready for use is to pre-populate required, foundational information (specific to your institution), to support data entry. Though institutions may choose to manually enter this information one-by-one, it is strongly encouraged that they more efficiently bulk import lists (via csv file) of this data into their Collaboratory. This data includes:
Institutional units (e.g., schools, departments, centers, offices)
Community Partners (e.g., nonprofits, businesses, schools)
Courses/Sections
Members (e.g., faculty and staff)
HEADS UP! Preparing your data for bulk import requires a coordinated effort among members of an institution's Collaboratory administrative team.
Please reference Collaboratory's collection of how-to bulk import articles to assist your team with the bulk import process.