You've Got Questions - We've Got Answers
We asked members to email [email protected] with all their upgrade-related questions. We're pleased to share those questions and answers with you now and will continue to update this page with new information. Keep an eye out for our monthly upgrade newsletter and go ahead and bookmark this page for quick and easy reference!
As always, thank you for the opportunity to serve you!
- Your friends at Parchment
1. When will we be notified of the upgrade timing to the new Parchment Award - Transcript Services platform?
We’ll be upgrading members to Parchment Award Transcript Services on a rolling basis between April 1st and December 31st, 2022.
We are preparing to upgrade schools in waves, based on similar configurations. Once your school is cleared for the upgrade, we will notify you and work to find a mutually agreeable day to conduct a quick training workshop and schedule a go-live time. Our goal will be to offer a 4-6 week window (after notification) to assure the agreed-upon upgrade will not overlap or interfere with any busy moments on campus.
For more details and updates, keep an eye on our monthly newsletters and our blog (for which you can register here).
Once your school is cleared for the upgrade by our Product Team, we will provide a 4-6 week window of time to conduct the upgrade. Our intent is that you choose the best date for your school, within the window of time allotted, to ensure the best experience for your team.
The remaining 10% will consist primarily of training and a few other quick activities, such as updating your website links and content to align with the new Parchment Award Transcript Service experience. But don’t worry - we’ll provide clear instructions, updated suggested content, on-demand information, new documentation, and more.
In most cases, we do not anticipate IT involvement will be necessary on your end, however, there will be exceptions to the rule with the most common being schools using the SSO feature. As a reminder, SSO allows students to log in to your portal, then get securely passed over to us. We estimate the majority of this task will be to repoint the connection, a straightforward task someone familiar with your setup should have no trouble with.
We will let you know if you are in this population ahead of time and provide documentation and assistance if needed.
4. What is the timeline for implementing from start to finish?
Just like most upgrades, it really is about the look and feel of the user interface (UI) changing, so please don’t lose sleep over this! We’ve focused on anticipating what users need to do and worked to make sure elements are intuitive, easy to access, and use. You can expect new branding, changes to button locations and links, etc., however, much of your familiar process will stay the same.
Once we reach out to you and notify you that your institution has been cleared for upgrade, we’ll provide you with a 4-6 week window of time to schedule and participate in a one-hour training and one-hour testing session before flipping things on. All sessions will be recorded for future reference. So far, this has proven to be more than sufficient for the hundreds of schools that have already gone through this cycle of upgrades.
Please note, that after you’ve been upgraded, your Account Executive will conduct a post-live call to answer any follow-up questions you may have once you actually start interacting with students and orders. The goal being to ensure you, your team, and your students have a positive experience. Your AE will also provide quick access to continued training to deepen your expertise on the product over time and be logging enhancement requests for consideration in future upgrades.
5. What does training entail?
Great question. When we get together for training via a screen share we will be conducting a full end-to-end training - including what the learner experiences when they order, what you will do behind the scenes to process orders, and how to conduct exception handling (i.e. holds, cancellations, etc..).
We will be encouraging you to invite all of the functional folks who conduct daily processing so they can see how it works and ask questions until they gain enough familiarity with the service to feel comfortable turning it on. We will also record these sessions for future reference.
Our goal is to not be one of those companies that just surprises you overnight with a huge change to look and feel… Instead, we’re focused on communicating early (and often), providing ample training, and delivering high levels of system performance before, throughout, and after!
As part of the upgrade, we will be providing a full host of training materials. First, we will provide you with a recording of your actual training for future reference. Before we turn you on, we will also provide an updated user guide and access to Parchment Learn, which is full of video tutorials for all of the basic processes a functional user might need to conduct on a regular basis. We will also highlight how to access the knowledge base within the Support Portal, which provides access to additional materials on commonly asked questions and issues.
After you go-live, your Account Executive will conduct a post-live call to ensure you and your students are having a positive experience. Your AE will be available to answer any questions you may have and quick access to continued training to deepen your expertise on the product over time.