This article provides an overview of how to manage student connections at your institution with links to supporting resources.
Topics:
- How student accounts are created
- Customize your institutions request message
- How to approve a student request
- How to manually connect a student with an existing account
- How to create an account for a student
- Duplicate student accounts
How student accounts are created
Students and alumni access Handshake via their user account, which is either imported by your institution or manually created.
When student accounts are imported, they are automatically connected with your institution's instance on Handshake.
Note: this is the recommended workflow for creating multiple student accounts in the system. For additional information, refer to Importing Student Data.
Outside of that process, a student or alum can manually create their own account and request to connect with your institution. To learn more about this, check out How Students & Alumni Can Request to Access Handshake.
Customize your institutions request message
When approving a student's request to connect with your institution, you will want to ensure they are either an incoming student, active student, or alum.
To expedite this process, your institution may create a custom message for new student account requests. This message will appear when a student registers for a new account and chooses to connect with your institution.
Possible things to include within this message:
- requirements to connect
- specific instructions
- any additional information needed to be approved
For more information creating custom messages, refer to How to Customize a Student's User Request.
How to manually approve a student request
If a student creates an account, they may not be connected to your institution automatically, depending on the school settings and the email address used during signup. Student account requests have to be manually reviewed in Handshake if your institution:
- has not selected to auto-approve student requests with their .edu address
- has opted in to auto-approve student requests, but the account is created with an email domain other than the specified .edu address
Follow the steps in How to Process Student & Alumni Connection Requests to connect them.
If your institution is interested in the auto-approve setting, refer to School Settings: Details, specifically the Configuration section.
For information on student notifications during the request process, check out Notifications for Students Requesting to Join a School.
How to manually connect a student with an existing account
If a student has an account in Handshake already, but they are not connected to your institution, or if you previously rejected their request, you will need to manually add them. For more information on this workflow, refer to Add an Existing Student Account to Your Institution.
If a student has an account that is already connected to another institution, and they need to be transferred to yours, submit a ticket to the Handshake Support Team for further assistance.
Additional information on students with an existing account can be found in Managing Students Already in Handshake but Not Connected to Your School.
How to create an account for a student
In the event a students account hasn’t yet been created, and you have permission to create the account on their behalf, you can follow the process outlined in Create a Student Account Associated with Your Career Services Account.
Note: this is not an ideal process, and is only recommended for adding 1-2 students at a time as the process is time-intensive.
Duplicate student accounts
If you’ve imported student accounts into Handshake and the student then creates their own account with a different email address, follow the steps in Managing Duplicate Student Accounts to ensure the student is only connected to one account at your institution.