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Branches allow various departments, divisions, or areas of university life to operate independently within the system, running processes like the event submission processes and organization registration separately. Admin branches can also be overseen by different administrative users, allowing staff on campus to independently control various features within the site.

The Division of Student Affairs currently operates two Branches within the Owl Life System:

• Departments Branch
• Student Engagement Branch

Students can use Owl Life to generate a record of their involvement to document experiences gained outside the classroom. This document is called the Co-Curricular Transcript, and can be used when applying for grad school, provide speaking points for job interviews, to showcase your students' leadership experience, etc.

When creating events, you have the option to allow students to include their participation on their Co-Curricular Transcript. Students have the ability to remove experiences from their CCT.

A community administrator is defined as any user who has access to the Admin view when opening up the Owl Life Switchboard. Community administrative tools allow you to manage users and organizations in your community, export reports, and oversee your community’s involvement. Community admins are also able to see and manage sensitive information about each user in the community. 

There are two types of community administrators in Owl Life. All-Access Community Administrators have access to every tool in the Admin view and are also able to manage every administrative branch and organization in the community. Limited Community Administrators have access to the Admin view in the Switchboard but may not see every tool. For example, a limited community admin may only be able to manage one specific dropdown menu, such as users or paths, in the community Admin view.

The Events tool allows you to manage your organization's events from one central location. Within the Division of Student Affairs, the Events tool is used to track interactions and experiences between students and DSA Departments, Offices, and Units.

Operating within this context, the Events tool is used to capture student attendance at traditional event experiences (e.g. guest speakers, programs on the campus Green, and workshops) and student visits to our various departments and centers throughout the Division (such as Center Check-Ins or Office Visits). Ultimately, our goal is to capture as many of the interactions we have with students within the Owl Life system as possible.

Event categories act as tags that allow us to classify and filter events in ways that are relevant to our campus community. Events can be tagged with multiple categories.

Event categories also provide additional options for administrators, such as the ability to create "hidden" categories that can be used as administrative-use-only tags for events. Many campuses will use hidden event categories to support their Co-Curricular Paths or will tag events according to report data they may want to pull at the end of the semester or the end of the year.

Within Division of Student Affairs, all Departments/Offices have specific Admin Event Categories that apply to Programs and Check-In Events, as well as DSA level Event Categories.

Creating a paperless office or organization is simple in Owl Life - take all your forms online using the Form builder. The Forms tool can be used for a variety of purposes and the easy-to-use tools in Owl Life make it easy to move many of your current paper-based processes into your site. Owl Life offers you convenient methods to host forms with personalized access, logic and reviewer options.

Managers have access to edit and alter settings of organization pages. These users do not manage any administrative functionality but have control over the content and rosters of their organization pages. Organization managers can be assigned "All Access" or "Limited Access" to granularly define which tools are able to be accessed within the organization’s page.

Membership refers to users who have “joined” an organizations Owl Life page. Within the context of DSA Departments and Offices, memberships should be understood as users who are “following” a Department or Office. Users who have joined a DSA Department’s page have easier access to that Department’s Owl Life page from the Owl Life homepage. Additionally, Owl Life page managers are able to send messages to their members.

Users can join an organization in one of two ways:

• Selecting the blue Join button on the Department’s Owl Life page (if this function has been enabled for that Department) or
• Through accepting an invitation initiated by the Department to invite the user to join the organization.

Please see Community Access.

Owl Life uses Message Relays or simply Relays to allow you to send a rich-text email message to many people based on their involvement data in Owl Life.

Managers with "All Access" to the Messaging function have the ability to message the members of their organization. From this area messages can be composed and delivered to various combinations of organization members and officers. There are two criteria that student leaders can use to define the message recipients:

Positions (e.g. Primary Contact, Member, Student Assistant, etc.)
Members (e.g. specific people within the organization)
By using these criteria, a Manager can send a message to those holding certain [positions] and/or these specific [members]. For example, all Student Assistants within a Department or Office.

The News tool allows you to keep your members up-to-date on all of your latest news. With a format similar to a blog, members can view a quick summary of the most recent news or drill down to view the full contents of each post. To view News in your organization, navigate to your organization's public page and scroll until you see News posts listed.

Organization Types allow us to classify our organizations/departments based on how we want them to behave within the system. Organization types allow for more administrative control, including the ability to add restrictions to tools, assign specific position templates, or customize the re-registration process.

Co-Curricular Paths guide students through a flexible series of events, organization involvement, and experiences towards meaningful achievements we design. Paths can vary in scale from very brief and simple to far more complex with nuanced scaffolding.

Position Templates give administrators a consistent way to manage who holds various positions within the organizations they oversee. Position Templates represent roles like President, Captain, Advisor, Student Assistant, Coordinator, Assistant Director, or Director. The Positions feature also allows for streamlined and efficient messaging based on the Position a user holds. You can also assign different position templates to different Organization Types within the system.

Owl Life provides the Division of Student Affairs access to a rich array of reports about student engagement, departmental programming, and student demographic data. Access to reports varies based on the Community Access permissions a DSA employee has been granted. To access Owl Life system reporting, a user must have at least a Limited Community Access level. Access to Student-Level/User data is restricted to those with Full Community Access.

The Roster tool allows you to manage your organization’s membership with ease and efficiency. Within the Roster tool, you have access to:

• View the Professional and Student Staff associated with your office, Student Leaders of Departmental initiatives, and your members.
• Access to Messaging tool, see Messaging in the Owl Life Glossary.
• Manage positions within our organization page, such as professional staff, student staff, and student leaders.
• Invite students to join your organization.
• End memberships
• Approve Membership Requests

Depending on the type of organization you manage, you may have the ability to track service hours that you would like to associate with your department/unit. These service hours can be included on the co-curricular involvement record of students, allowing them to showcase their involvement in an organization or in the community. 
This function is not connected to the VKSU system or the Student Leadership and Service department.

Owl Life has the ability to capture student attendance via a Blackboard Card Reader that is able to pull data from a student’s KSU ID Card via an RFID chip. Blackboard card readers must be formatted prior to use in order to properly pull information from the KSU ID Card. For assistance with ordering and formatting Blackboard card readers, please contact Strategic Planning, Assessment, and Analysis.