New Application Launch Checklist

Before you launch your application or form to the public, we recommend you complete this launch checklist to ensure your site is ready to go!

1.  🎨 Branding + org settings 

• Logo and primary color
• Family support contact information for your organization
• New account message/pop-up
• Account lookup
• Determine primary landing URL that will be linked from your organization's website (default to phone or email, signup or login)

2. 🏫 Schools list 

• Can add schools individually (if over 10 schools, work with your CS rep to import this list as a csv/spreadsheet)
• Toggle on/off (Active/Inactive) schools as needed -- note that this will turn off a school across all enrollment periods (if you want to turn off a school for only a given enrollment period, you'll do that below)

3. 🎓 Grades available on the application form under the enrollment period

• Can add grades available to be applied to for each school individually (if over 10 schools, work with your CS rep to import this list as a csv/spreadsheet)
• If you don't want a school to be available at all for this enrollment period, do not assign any grade levels to it

4. 📋Determine application questions, flow and logic

• Work with your CS rep to determine how the first version of your application form will get into Avela (depends on the Avela package purchased and complexity of your form)
• Please pay attention to
  • Eligibility questions, that determine what schools/programs are available to select from
  • Conditional questions, that show up based on the answers to previous questions
  • School-specific questions, that show up based on the list of schools/programs selected by the parent
  • Gathering information needed for any lottery priorities
  • Hyperlinks out to other websites
  • Verifications
  • Internal-only questions
  • Any geographic-based eligibility/tags (e.g., zoned school)

5. ✨ Glossary of statuses/sub-statuses

6. 💬 Status descriptions

7. 🔔 Automatic messages and toggle on the desired messages

• We recommend all clients use the 'Form submitted' message.
• If desired, you can edit and toggle on 'Form started',  'Form deleted' (by parent), 'Form canceled' (by admin), and/or 'Form verified' messages
• The offer/waitlist period messages can typically wait until closer to your lottery or placement process begins. At that point, you may want to consider school-specific messages.

8. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Test application form flow as a parent/guardian, paying special attention to the following:

• Onboarding/account verification flow
• Which fields are required
• Test any conditional logic
• Test all hyperlinks
• Date of birth-grade restrictions
• Test in any key non-English languages that your community will be heavily using

9. 🔍 Test application form flow as an admin, paying special attention to the following:

• Tags
• Verifications
• Internal-only questions

10. 👥 Team members and permissions

• Can add team members individually (if over 10 team members, work with your CS rep to import this list as a csv/spreadsheet)
• Determine both the role assigned and the school(s), if relevant
• If setting up custom role/team permissions (depends on the Avela package purchased), work with your CS rep to determine those teams and set up and test them.

11. (Recommended) 🚀 Launch email to school admins, potentially covering the following content:

• Timeline of when form opens and closes
• Instructions for setting up admin notifications
• Link to Avela helpdesk: help.avela.org