Congratulations on choosing AdvisorTrac! This FAQ is designed to assist you in the process of purchasing and obtaining your copy of AdvisorTrac, then provide instructions for installing AdvisorTrac on your campus, and finally, setting up your AdvisorTrac to meet your needs.
AdvisorTrac is $2495. Acceptable forms of payment are purchase order, check, and major credit card. We also recommend that you purchase a maintenance package to cover your training and technical support needs. Three levels of annual maintenance are available to provide your campus with support. For details on purchase and maintenance, please see the information page on Pricing.
Upon receipt of an acceptable form of payment, your AdvisorTrac installation CD and User Guide will be shipped free to you within the next five business days.
Insert the AdvisorTrac CD into your computer. The computer should automatically run the setup program from the CD. If the setup program does not automatically run, open the CD and locate the setup program. On a Windows system, execute the application called 'setup.exe'. On a Macintosh system, simply run the 'setup' feature. The installer will default the location on the root hard drive. The computer does not need to restart after installation.
To complete the setup, you need your Product ID, Server ID and Installation code to run the program for the first time. After installation, the AdvisorTrac web server application will start automatically. For detailed installation instructions, please go to our FAQ03-0001.
Users access AdvisorTrac through an http connection to the server. On the server computer, the webserver and database application AdvisorTrac.exe must be running. From another computer on the network, connect to the application by opening a web browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape, FireFox) and typing http://ServerIPAddress/AdvisorTrac/default.html. ServerIPAddress is the IP address of the server computer (ex. 63.224.138.143).
From the default page, users are prompted for a username and password to proceed. The username and password prevent unauthorized access. To login for the first time, the username is admin and the password is also admin. The first thing you should do is change the username and password after you login. Go to Search For Administrators, then click on admin to open the user account. Change the Account (Login) from admin to another username and change the password as well. After making the changes, click Save and go back to the Main Menu. You may need to login again after changing your username and password.
After you have installed AdvisorTrac, online training is available to maintenance subscribers. Training sessions generally last from one hour to an hour and a half. Silver level subscribers may receive a single online session. Gold level subscribers may receive two online training sessions. Platinum level subscribers are entitiled to unlimited online training sessions. Additional training is available for Gold and Silver subscribers at $95 an hour.
Basic areas of training include Preferences, Admin accounts, Student worker accounts, Advisor accounts, Scheduling, and signing students in and out of the center.
After installation, you will want to review and edit the Preferences to set the system for your unique needs. The Preferences are 14 pages of information and settings available to the system Administrator to customize AdvisorTrac for your center(s).
The Preferences are detailed in the beginning of the User Guide. There are question mark buttons next to a majority of the preferences that may be clicked to receive additional info about the preference. Your first online training session will cover the preferences in more detail.
After setting the preferences, you will want to setup the other AdvisorTrac users with their access privileges and account restrictions. There are many levels of access available: Full Administrators, Partial Administrators, Student workers, Advisors, and Students. For each user, you may specify unique privileges to that individual.
Users are created from the Administrator Main Menu. Under the Search For column, select the type of user you wish to create. Then perform a search for the user you are about to create to ensure that you are not creating duplicates. In the upper right corner of the user listing screen, click the link New Record to establish a new record and account for that individual.
The various user accounts are discussed in detail in the User Guide.
AdvisorTrac Log Listing
In order to track the student visits, we must record when the student arrives and when the student leaves. This is done through a Log Listing screen. As an administrator, the Log Listing link appears under Main Features on the left side of the Main Menu. When a student arrives for tutoring, they sign in at a front desk or a sign-in station. When a student signs in, we may want to ask which center they are signing into and the subject and reason for the visit.
As a student signs out, we have an opportunity to gather more information from either the student or from the advisor. When a student signs out, we may ask them which advisor they worked with or generate some custom questions.
In the case where your center works with students on an appointment basis, you will first want to designate available times for your tutors. After creating availabilities for the advisors, you may book appointments with the advisors and students.