How Wisr Works Overview

Welcome to the Wisr Admin Help site!

This site exists to help you and your team understand how to use Wisr and expand usage on campus. Throughout this site, you will find technical know-how articles for your use.

Help Site Categories

This tool is organized by categories most relevant to your Wisr experience and to help focus your efforts and position you and your team for success. Each category has an overview article, like this one, to acclimate you to various topics in that category.

Starter Categories:

For new Wisr administrators, we recommend starting with three initial categories:

How Wisr Works – You're already here! This is the highest-level overview of Wisr and how it works without diving deep into the technical weeds.

Customizing Wisr – Once you are familiar with how Wisr works, begin learning about configuration and customization within your site.

Operating Wisr – The most in-depth resource for the day-to-day operation of your Wisr site. This category takes each product area covered in ‘How Wisr Works’ and goes a level deeper.

How Wisr Works Overview

The purpose of this Overview article is to give you and your team a high-level understanding of the who, what, and why of Wisr and how each component of our software works together.

What is Wisr

At our core, Wisr is a tool that facilitates connections and empowers your members to build authentic and lasting relationships within the campus community. Our software is highly customizable and has been implemented to support several different campus initiatives from admitted student communities, to peer-to-peer first-year experience sites, to student and alumni career programs.

Designing your site to fit your program or network is essential to success. To start things off, we need to go over some important terminology.

• Site
  • Wisr calls each of its unique portals a Site. Your site is where you configure who will participate and how they will interact with your program and each other. Each site has its own:
    • Domain and Login
    • Member Types
    • Custom Fields
    • Communities
  • Sites are connected to an institution to standardize academic information and allow easier program expansion if multiple sites are needed by the same school.
• Members
  • Everyone who joins your site is a Member. This includes your students, faculty/staff, campus partners, alumni, parents, etc. Member Types are configurable and pre-defined by your team. Many site features, such as member Goals, Volunteer Items, Next Steps, and community visibility rely heavily on one’s Member Type.
  • For a deeper dive on Member Types, click here.
• Goals, Volunteer Items, and Next Steps
  • Members raise their hand in the site both in how they are looking for support (Goals) as well as how they are able to give help (Volunteer Items). Goals provide actionable Next Steps, and map to corresponding Volunteer Items. These tools are critical for members as they navigate recommended members and use the member search tool to find connections.
  • For a deeper dive on Goals and Volunteer Items, click here.
• Connections
  • Community building centers around forming connections. In Wisr, 1-1 connections can be made organically by members finding each other, or strategically through outreach from your ambassadors.
  • For a deeper dive on the ways members connect, click here.
• Communities
  • Communities are a subset of your site, designed to bring specific members together. Each community contains:
    • Members list
    • Community leader role
    • Discussion board
    • Events
    • Files
  • Communities have an extensive set of features and applications, which are explored in its own article category, available here.

 How is Wisr Used on Campus?

•Prospective and admitted students

We work with admissions teams to incorporate technology and peer connections in yield and summer melt strategies. These programs leverage current students as peer mentors to connect with admitted students, share their authentic campus experience, and act as the first line of defense for everyday admissions questions.

•Career exploration/student-alumni networks

We often see career services and alumni relations offices teaming up to create and run student-alumni networking sites focused on career exploration and mentorship. In these sites industry-specific communities, internship/job shadow opportunities, and auto-recommended member connections tend to drive engagement. Cross-campus collaborations can be powerful here as career services programming focuses on student engagement and alumni relations can drive alumni sign-ups.

•Alumni networks

Alumni Association sites are a way advancement and alumni teams modernize their alumni directory and build connections within wide-spread alumni bases. Regional communities offer an online component for regional chapter programming and tend to see high engagement. Industry-specific communities and related events also drive conversation in these sites.

Who Is Wisr?

• Veteran entrepreneurs Kate Volzer, John Knific, and Kris Ciccarello founded Wisr in 2016 to bridge the growing rift between college education and successful job placement. Wisr was acquired in 2021 by EAB. Today, Wisr is an education technology company that specializes in building affinity between prospective students and colleges. The innovative Wisr platform allows schools to create vibrant, virtual communities that meet the needs of today's students and parents.

Again, Welcome to Wisr! Our partner success team is here to support you and your team as you learn how to use and thrive in Wisr. Take a look through the Admin Help Site to become comfortable with the product and if you have any questions do not hesitate to reach out to our partner success team at adminsupport@wisr.io

As a next step, we recommend reading the referenced articles above in the ‘ How Wisr Works’ category. When you are ready to dig into the specifics of day to day operation of your site, visit the Operating Wisr Overview.