Managing Individual students and organizations with HEDA package for universities.

If you are an university or a college trying to evaluate the HEDA package or installed it, one of the common questions is how do i manage my students who dont work for a company and organizations whom my university wants to have a relationship with. The challenge is how do I keep the students separate from the organization contacts and still some how link them if the student works for multiple companies. My post here would help you to identify the right strategies and prevent major problems later.

  1. Use separate record types for Students and Organizations.
  2. Use affilations to manage relationships
  3.  Things to consider for data merge
  4. Things to consider for data migration.

Use separate record types for Students and Organizations.

The default HEDA model has 2 record types for accounts namely the academic account and organization record type. So when you create a student record who does not work for a company, if you give the company name blank, HEDA will create a contact and account with the student name with academic account record type. If you want to create an organization, create an account with organization record type. This will help you to differentiate between the 2 account record types easily. Here are things you need to consider.

  1. Make sure that the record types are enabled for the user profile otherwise they will not show up when you create students and organizations.
  2. Use affilations to manage relationships
  3. If you want your grad and undergrad to just create students, just enable academic contact record type for the users on the profile.

Managing Students with HEDA screenshot

HEDAB2CStudentImage

B2B Accounts with HEDA

B2BHEDAOrganizationScreenshot

 

Using Affiliations to manage relationships

If the student later joins a company, you can use affiliations object to manage the relationship. In this scenario, you would create an affiliation record which would link the contact and the account. You can use role picklist to define the role which the student has with the organization. If an organization has another relationship with an organization like a foundation linked to an account, you can create an affiliation relationship between the accounts.

B2CHEDAAffiliations

Things to consider for data merge

If you have duplicate student records when you try to merge them, there will be a possibility of creating duplicate affiliations on the student record.  This would also happen if you merge 2 organizations as well, there is also a possibility on creating duplicate affiliations as well. To avoid this, the following things have to be considered.

  1. Before you merge your student contacts, make sure you merge the duplicate affiliation records first and then merge the contacts.
  2. When you merge the accounts, also merge the affiliation records first and then the parent account record.

Things to consider for data migration

If you have a SIS system like Banner and would like to migrate the student records to HEDA,  here are things which you should consider on preparing the data.

  1. For students who dont have a company, blank out the company name column which would help in creating contacts with administrative account record type.
  2. If you have an employment history of students who work for multiple companies, you would have to create an affiliation record for each record in the employment history.
  3. In a scenario, if you have to load organizations, load the organizations first and then the contacts.

So using the above strategic choices, you can easily manage individual students and students who work for organizations. To summarize here are the key takeaways

  1. Use administrative account for individual students and organization record type for organizations.
  2. Use affilations to manage the relationships between students who work for multiple companies.
  3. When you do data merging, always merge the child records first like affilaitions and then accounts.

Please feel free to post your comments and email me at buyan@eigenx.com for further questions.

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buyan47

Author: buyan47

Hi there! My name is Buyan Thyagarajan. I am a Salesforce consultant specializing in Higher Education, Manufacturing and Marketing Automation. My blogs will help you to maximize your Salesforce CRM investments, prevent problems beforehand and make the right decisions. If you need to talk to me right away, you can email me at buyan47@gmail.com or call me at 302-438-4097

2 thoughts on “Managing Individual students and organizations with HEDA package for universities.

  1. Hi Buyan,
    When representing B2B Accounts in HEDA and using the standard Account-Contact model to represent this. In additional to adding the contact with the B2B Account, would you still create an affiliation with the B2B Account to give the 360 degree view of the contact?

    1. Hi Simi,
      Sorry for the delay on this. For B2B accounts, If you are using it for tracking continuing educational programs, I would create affiliations and store program of interest field on the affiliation. If you are using it for grants, donations, and internship programs, I would use opportunities for the accounts and not affiliation. So affiliation can be used for academic programs and for non-academic programs, use opportunities. I am very sorry for the delayed response on this.
      Buyan

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