Top 10 Lottery Features and Workflows for SchoolMint Customers Migrating to Enroll – SchoolMint Enroll

Learn key lottery features and best practices for your first lottery season in Enroll.

What's included in this article?

Mark Applications as Eligible
Mark Priorities as Eligible
Confirm data elements that drive your lottery process
Review Lottery Design
Assign and Edit Email/Text Templates for Lottery Notifications
Set Cutoff Numbers
Review Lottery Settings: Global/Program and Post-Lottery
Review Run Lottery Features
Run mock lotteries in Sandbox
Export your original lottery results

Mark Applications as Eligible for the Lottery

In Enroll, any applications that should be included in your lottery must be marked as Eligible.

The concept of an eligibility status for an application was not used in the prior SchoolMint system, instead each application was assigned an Application Type of "Open Enrollment" to be included in the lottery. Any applications with a status of In Processing or Ineligible will be excluded from lottery runs.

To mark an individual application as Eligible, use the pencil/edit icon for each application to review all details relevant to your process before marking it as Eligible.

To mark applications as Eligible in bulk, use the checkboxes to the left of each application to select multiple applications, then use the Bulk Action dropdown > Update Application Status.

As you review and set the eligibility status for applications, the checkbox will change colors: Green for Eligible, Yellow for In Processing and Red for Ineligible.

If you prefer to skip the eligibility step entirely and have all applications be assigned a default status of Eligible upon submission, you may make this configuration request to Technical Support or your Customer Experience Manager.

Mark Priorities as Eligible on an Application

In Enroll, automatic priorities are built to be system-assigned to an application based on an expected answer in your application form. Automatic priorities will always be assigned a status of Eligible upon submission if the application meets the criteria.

The priorities assigned to an application can be viewed in the Applications table or within an individual application.

A best practice for automatic priorities such as Sibling Attending, Employee Child, etc. is to create a Saved/Dynamic View to display the application data from the form (employee name, employee id, sibling name, sibling school, etc.) to compare with your SIS to confirm that the answer provided by the family is deserving of the automatic priority.

The lottery preparation step of reviewing and marking priorities as Eligible or Ineligible for each application replaces the Validate Priority “Approve/Deny” functionality from your prior SchoolMint enrollment system.
In Enroll, marking a priority as Ineligible will remove the priority from the application, thereby impacting lottery placement during the lottery run. Making a priority ineligible is different from marking the entire application as ineligible (which excludes it from the lottery run).
Similarly, removing a priority from a waitlisted application will change the waitlist position if you are using settings to keep applications together by priority groups on your waitlist.

You may also create priorities that are manually set by an admin to Eligible or Ineligible within each application during the application review process.

Another new option in Enroll is the ability to enable an Override functionality for automatic priorities (screenshot above with Override slider). The Override action takes place within each application and allows you to slide the Override bar to unlock the automatic priority assignment and change its status (i.e from Eligible <> Ineligible). Be sure to leave the slide enabled (green) and Save the application to keep your changes.

Confirm data elements that drive your lottery process

If you only allow eligible applications into the lottery that were submitted within a certain timeframe (your open enrollment period), use the Submission Date Range quick filters to note the number # of eligible applications you expect to run through the lottery.

This best practices ensures that your number of pre-lottery eligible applications matches the number of applications processed in your lottery run.

Application Ranking Best Practice:

If your application process gives families the option of submitting applications to multiple programs/schools and ranking them, create a Saved/Dynamic View to confirm that all applications have a rank assigned.

Review your Lottery Design

A lottery design must be assigned on the Lottery Settings tab for each Program that will run a lottery or manage a waitlist (Settings > Schools/Programs > Manage Programs > Pencil icon > Lottery Settings tab).

As always, confirm that your lottery design is using the appropriate lottery priorities, sub-lotteries, weights or quotas per your policy (Settings > Manage Lotteries > Lottery Designs > Edit).

Assign and Edit your Email/Text Templates for Lottery Notifications

Email/text templates must be assigned to each Program that will run a lottery or manage a waitlist (Settings > Schools/Programs > Manage Programs > Pencil icon > Lottery Settings tab). Use the dropdown menus to view your lottery notification options.

Then, customize the content for your lottery email templates, including translations. Field variables are available to further personalize your communications. Settings > Content/Letters > Email and Text Templates.

You also have the option to send families one consolidated email per student that contains all lottery results, i.e. if the student applied to multiple programs. Please reach out to Technical Support or your Customer Experience Manager to enable this lottery notification option.

Set Cutoff Numbers

Cutoff numbers for your lottery are the equivalent of the Open Seat Setup in your prior SchoolMint enrollment system. The cutoff numbers represent the number of seats you intend to fill per grade via the lottery and/or waitlist management. Found under Settings > Manage Lotteries > Lottery Cutoff Numbers > use filters to select your Program(s).

Lottery Groups - this new-to-you optional feature allows you to enter cutoff numbers for a custom group within a grade level. Rather than managing one offered/waitlist for an entire grade, lottery groups gives you the ability to configure multiple groups with cutoff numbers within a grade for offer/waitlist management.
Example: Male/Female within a grade, English Speakers/NonEnglish Speakers within a grade. Please reach out to Technical Support or your Customer Experience Manager to enable the lottery groups option.

Review Lottery Settings: Global / Program Settings and Post-Lottery Settings

You now have the ability to control critical settings related to your lottery!

Use the gear icon in the top right of your screen to navigate to Settings > Manage Lotteries > Lottery Settings > Global or By Form Process. You also have the ability to set Program-Specific Lottery settings if your lottery policy dictates.

Show/hide results on Guardian Dashboard
Show/hide waitlist numbers on Guardian Dashboard
Allow Guardians to accept/decline seats from Guardian Dashboard
Place Multiples (twins, triplets, etc.) together during lottery
Auto-decline a student’s other applications on Offered Lists once a seat is accepted
Auto-decline (Offer Expiration) and reminder settings
Always Keep Lottery Lists Grouped by Lottery Design: When enabled, this important setting keeps your lottery lists ordered by priority group per your lottery design. Please reach out to Technical Support or your Customer Experience Manager to enable this lottery setting.
Post Lottery settings:
- AutoRollup: When enabled, if an applicant on the offered list declines a seat, the system will move the next waitlisted student up to the offered list (respecting your cutoff number) and auto-send an offer notification to the family. In your prior SchoolMint system, an admin needed to manually offer an available seat.
  - Important Note: AutoRollup will not occur if you are also using the auto-decline (offer expiration) feature.
- Auto-add eligible applications to lottery list after initial lottery is run. This post-lottery setting will move an application immediately to the next available position on your waiting list once you mark it as eligible. The exact placement where this post-lottery application will land depends if you are keeping your lottery lists grouped by priority (based on your lottery design) or not.
  - Important note: if you are not honoring the priority group on post-lottery applications, the order in which you (your admin team) mark an application as eligible will determine the order it is placed on the waiting list. In your prior SchoolMint enrollment system, late applications that did not honor priorities were added/ordered in date/time submission order.

Review Features on the Run Lottery Page

In Enroll, the Lottery Eligible Date Range is equivalent to your Open Enrollment period. Applications that you want to be included in the Lottery Run must be marked as Eligible and must have a submitted date that falls within the range you specify.

This article outlines how to configure your Enroll lottery run to match the legacy SchoolMint lottery logic.

The Sorting mechanism will dictate how the system will order applications within sub-lotteries of your lottery design: Random (this was the only option available in your prior SchoolMint system) or one of the Date Submitted options

Important Note: Always check the box: Save Waiting List if you want to generate a waitlist from your lottery run (either a single lottery run or multiple lottery runs). This is an important difference from your prior SchoolMint system that would automatically create a waitlist for every lottery!

Use the Multiple Lotteries checkbox called Merge Waitlist if you are running more than one lottery and want to merge a second round of applicants into their respective priority groups.

Select Grades to be run in the lottery: All or only specific grades.

Select Placement Order: Lower grades first, higher grades first or random order.

Run Mock Lotteries in Sandbox

We highly recommend running mock lotteries in your Sandbox site at least one month prior to your actual lottery date to ensure a smooth and accurate live lottery.

This is a very important precaution to ensure that all lottery priorities and settings are working as expected and that a member of your team knows how to run the lottery with confidence and ease!

You may run a mock lottery in your sandbox as many times as needed by submitting a request to Technical Support to refresh your sandbox site with data from your production site.

When reviewing lottery results/lists, be sure to confirm:

Accurate priority placements per your lottery design
Accurate number of seats have been offered (according to cutoff numbers entered and/or priority quotas)
Accurate sibling placements/movements are occurring
Test what happens when seats are accepted/declined as an admin and by logging in as a parent; ensure that what happens is expected behavior
Test moving students from waiting to offered to ensure what happens is expected behavior (and to get comfortable with adjusting lottery placements)
Test marking post-lottery applications as eligible to confirm their placement based on your settings

Important note: communications will not be sent out from your sandbox site, but you can check the Communication Logs to confirm what would have been sent out from the live site.

Export your Original Lottery Results

Once you have run a lottery, we recommend that you use the Export Lists button to export, download, and save your lottery results on your organization's drive for future reference. In your prior SchoolMint system, a link to the original lottery result by grade was available on the Lottery Dashboard.

As always, we encourage you to Test, Test, Test for a successful lottery season!