Introduction to Penji Pathways

Pathways is a communications tool leveraging email, text, and mobile app to drive recipients into taking action. A single communication is called a "Post", and there are three kinds of Posts:

1. Message
2. Event
3. Task

Item 1, "Messages", are a simple mass communication via email, text, or app to a list of recipients. You can use Pathways for this purpose and stop there if you'd like. Simple!

That said, Pathways can also serve as a task and event management system. Items 2 and 3, Events and Tasks, are also a mass communication via email, text, and app, but those communications then link recipients to a "Post Details" page that provides more information. See below for a visualization of the flow:

As you can see, for Events and Tasks, the communication drives students to the Post Details page. The Post Details page provides more information, with a better and more consistent design, than might be possible in a simple email or text. Finally, individual Post Details pages can be accessed via the student "Posts Board".

For an example of this full Communication -> Post Details -> External URL workflow, see the following 90-second video:

The Student Posts Board

As your unit and other units on campus add students to posts, those students can view these upcoming posts on their Posts Board. See below for some real Posts that UGA's first-year-experience and orientation group laid out for their Freshman.

The posts shown above are from two different office, Welcome UGA and OVPI. The posts shown are what I saw as a "student" user - they were all assigned to me. I could click into each and view their Post Details. Finally, each post had a communication scheduled along with it, so I eventually got emails and texts for each of these posts as time passed. 

In this way, while Pathways can be thought of as a simple bulk messaging tool, you can also use it to assign tasks and publicize events to a student, and treat it as a dynamic University Calendar that many units can help to populate.

How to Use Pathways

In your admin panel, you'll find a tab called Posts. Clicking on it reveals a button to "+ Create Post" and a table to view Posts that have previously been sent or are scheduled.

Clicking create post reveals a form. The following bullets walk through key considerations for each item:

Post Basics

1. Title: This serves as the subject line of the email. If you are selecting Kind = Event or Task, then the title also shows up as the title of the Post when viewed in Penji.
2. Kind: As described above, Events and Tasks have an associated Post Details page, while Message is a simple bulk communication.
3. Required: This will add a Required tag to the post and "Action Required" to the communications.
4. Send Date: When your communications will send
5. Due Date / Event Date: For Tasks and Events only, this date is displayed in Post Details.

Communication

1. Email: The contents of the email.
   • Skip adding a salutation as "Hi {first_name}," will be added to the top of each email automatically.
   • For Events and Tasks, there is a second field called button label. For these kinds of posts, there is a button automatically placed at the bottom of the email that links them to the Post Details. The Button Label allows you to set the text on that button (e.g. "Learn More" or "Sign Up Here").
2. Text Message: What should the text say?
3. Push Notification: What should the notification sent through the Penji mobile app say? This is usually the same as the text message.

Post Details

You are building a page with more information about your Event or Task. Click "Add Content" to add blocks to this page. Block types consist of:

1. Text: Add a chunk of text to the page. Common ideas are a heading that says "Why this matters" and another that says "What to do"... but include whatever you want.
2. Actions: A key part of posts, these actions are buttons that students will click to take whatever the desired action is. For a post called "Schedule your Fall Advising Appointment", the action would likely be "Schedule Your Appointment" and link to an external Calendly URL, for example. An event might link to a RSVP page; an informational post might link to one or more external web pages.
3. Embedded Video: Include a video if you'd like.

Student List

Click "Download Template CSV" and build a list of students in that format. We recommend saving this on your computer for future posts. A couple of notes:

• Email, first name, and last name are required
• SSO ID is optional but helpful if students might have multiple emails
• Phone Number can be blank, but they won't receive texts without it

We recommend adding just yourself to posts at first. You can go and view them as students will see. Once you are satisfied, you can upload the real list of students.

Sending Your Post

Click submit. Once submitted, you can view your post on the Posts tab table and click into it for a preview. The communications will now send at the scheduled time to whatever students are added! So make sure you are happy with everything before adding the real students because once done, it will send at the scheduled time.

When you click into the post from the admin panel > posts > select a specific post, you can see a preview of your post and other details. 

Reviewing Data

Penji collects the following:

1. Email opens
2. Email clicks*
3. Text clicks*
4. Post Views*
5. Action Clicks*

*These items are only collected if Kind = Event or Task

We display this data in customized data dashboards that we will deliver to you individually. If you haven't gotten your dashboard yet, please let us know and we'll send one over.