Student Notes
Add notes to a student's record, decide who else may read them, and read the notes others have shared with you. This page is for everyone who works with students: registrar staff, advisors, academic administrators and instructors.
Who can use notes
Anyone who can open a student's record can add a note to it and read the notes they are allowed to see. Which students that covers depends on the role you are acting as:
| Acting as | Students |
|---|---|
| Registrar | Every student |
| Advisor | Your advisees |
| Academic Administrator | Students in the programs your unit covers |
| Faculty | Students enrolled in a section you teach, in a term that has not ended. Instructors get the notes only, not the rest of the record |
Your administrator decides exactly which roles have the Notes tab and for which students, so your access may differ from this table.
Where to find notes
- On the student record. Open the student and choose the Notes tab.
- From the Grade Roster. Instructors, who cannot open the full record, click the notes icon on a student's row in the Class Roster view of the Grade Roster. It opens a Student Notes page for that student. If you can also open the record, an Open student record button takes you there.
- From a notification. The bell and the email both link straight to the note.
The Notes tab lists the notes you can see, newest first, with the date, subject, category, author (and the role they wrote it under) and who it is Visible to. A dot marks notes you have not opened, a padlock marks private notes, and a paperclip marks notes with attachments. When there are notes in more than one category, a filter narrows the list to one. Click a note to read it.
Adding a note
- On the Notes tab, click Add note
- Enter a Subject and choose a Category: General, Advising, Academic Concern, Conduct, Records or Financial
- Optionally choose a Term the note relates to
- Write the Note. Formatting, lists, links and tables are kept
- Optionally click Attach files. The number of files, their size and the allowed types are shown under Attachments
- Under Who can see this note, choose the audience (below)
- Click Save note
Notes are permanent
A saved note cannot be edited or deleted, by you or anyone else. To correct one, add another note. You can retract a note, which hides it from the people it was shared with.
Choosing who can see a note
You and the registrar can always see your note (unless it is private; see below). Beyond that, choose Roles that may read it:
- Each role reaches only people who can already see this student. Choosing Advisor shares the note with the student's own advisors, not with every advisor; choosing Academic Administrator reaches those whose unit covers the student's program.
- People read a note under the role it was shared with. Someone who is both an advisor and an instructor sees an advisor-only note while acting as an advisor. If a link to a note says it is not available, switch roles and try again.
- The student is one of the choices. A note shared with the student appears on their My Notes page, attachments included, and the composer warns you before you save.
- Leave the list empty and nobody else sees it apart from you and the registrar.
Everyone newly reached is notified once, by the bell and by email. The notification says who wrote a note and about which student, and links to it. It never contains the note itself.
Private notes
Turn on Private: only me to keep a note to yourself. A private note has no roles, and the registrar cannot see it in the ordinary way: they can open it only by giving a reason, which is logged (see Revealing private notes).
After saving: sharing more, or retracting
Open your note and use the buttons at the bottom. Only the author has them.
- Share with more adds roles to the audience. You can add roles but never remove them, and the people newly reached are notified. For a private note, tick Make this private note shared first. A shared note cannot be made private again.
- Retract hides the note from everyone it was shared with, the student included. You and the registrar still see it, marked Retracted with who retracted it and when. This cannot be undone.
The notification bell
The bell at the top of every page shows a red count of your unread notifications. Click it to see the latest 20; click one to go to the note it is about, which also marks it read. Mark all read clears the count. Opening a note from the Notes tab marks it read too.
The bell is a general inbox: other kinds of notification may appear in it in future.
Revealing private notes
Registrar staff with the reveal permission see a Show private notes (N) button on the Notes tab, where N is the number of private notes on this student they cannot otherwise see.
- Click Show private notes
- Enter a Reason (at least 5 characters)
- Click Show and log
The private notes are shown to you for 30 minutes, and a tag says until when. Hide private notes closes them sooner. Every reveal is recorded with your reason, and the Access log button lists who opened this student's private notes, when and why.
You cannot reveal private notes while impersonating another user, and impersonating a note's author does not show you their private notes.