Displaying 'inactive students' in default search bar

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Rabi Yonzon

• 31 July 2019 05:04

Currently, when we search a student on the top right corner search bar, by default it only searches current students, however sometimes we need to find a student that is actually inactive, at the moment this requires the additional process of going into the search section and un-selecting the 'inactive students' box. Can we change the default settings so that when we search students on the top right search bar it also includes inactive students by default? Or could we have a setting option to allow this as an option? 

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• Official comment

  

  Rod Staines

  • 10 August 2020 05:50

  Hi Andrew,

  Thanks for your reply.

  We choose not to include inactive contacts in the main navigation menu for performance reasons. We currently have greater than 10 million contacts in the database. 

  As for the checkboxes to be selected/not selected by default on the contact search page, this is definitely a new a feature request that already exists in the Ideas Forum. The request is essentially for options and defaults to be unique to each user. There are no immediate plans to implement a change, but it's something we will continue to keep in mind during usability reviews and improvements.

  You're also correct about that tooltip. It's incorrect with what it states. Some clients think the email address should stay and others think it should be removed during the deactivation process. The original idea for 'deactivate' a contact was that the contact was 'uncontactable' and therefore the information was useless and as part of deactivating we removed the contact details. We've obviously "fixed" this over the years and now the tooltip is incorrect. I will create a task to remove the information in the tooltip in a coming release.

  I know this information doesn't immediately help you, but hopefully provides you with some greater context. I was just checking to ensure you're not deactivating contacts to reduce 'Active Learner' counts for billing purposes, because contact status doesn't affect billing.

  Cheers,
  Rod.

   

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  Andrew Rowland

  • 06 August 2020 00:42

  We have a similar issue now that we have started deactivating students. We would rather not have inactive students in the top right search bar, but at least be able to customize whether the main search page searches for inactive students by default or not (so whether the 'exclude inactive students' option is checked by default or not). 

  But yes, being able to customize whether the top search bar includes inactive students or not would also be useful. 

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  Rod Staines

  • 06 August 2020 01:48

  Hi Andrew,

  Can I ask why you are deactivating student contacts?

  Kind regards,
  Rod.

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  Andrew Rowland

  • 10 August 2020 01:27

  Hi Rod,

  We have just recently started deactivating student contacts for students that have either finished their course(s) with us, or have withdrawn/cancelled, or have been inactive for multiple years (who are also cancelled as part of that process). Previously we have left these contacts as active, however we have found searching using the main navigation bar to be unwieldy due to the large number of contacts in our system, many of which do not need to be active. 

  We have especially started doing this since deactivating a contact no longer removes the contacts email address (despite the tooltip on the contact update page still saying that it does so). 

  Thanks,

  Andrew

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