Understand Student Statuses

A student's status says where they are in your program this year. Each program year has its own status, so the same person can be Active one year and Served the next.

The Statuses

• Pending: the student applied but has not been reviewed yet. Every new application starts here.
• Active: accepted into the program for this year but not yet Served.
• Served: has received services this year. Two or more contacts in the current program year move a Pending or Active student here automatically; staff can also set it by hand. Most engaged participants are at Served.
• Reportable: counted in this year's APR. Only Reportable students appear in the Annual Performance Report.
• Inactive: not an active student in your program this year. Use it for someone who registered but never got started, who stopped coming partway through, or who you can no longer reach, so they stop counting as live work. It records where they stand with you, not why, and it says nothing about whether they qualify, which is what Rejected is for.
• Rejected: applied but not accepted into the program.

How a Student Moves Through Them

Most students follow the same path:

1. They apply, and the record is created as Pending.
2. You review and accept them, and set them to Active.
3. You log contacts, or they attend an event (an event logs one contact per attendee for each contact type it records, so an event with two types gives each attendee two contacts). The second contact dated in the current program year moves them to Served automatically. A contact backdated into a past year does not change this year's status.
4. As you answer their end-of-year outcome questions, TRIOPilot can move them to Reportable automatically. See the next section. You can also move them to Reportable yourself when you log the contacts or the event that finish their year: check Also mark these students Reportable above the save button (see Log a Contact and Record an Event).

The automation moves students forward, and it never touches an Inactive or a Rejected record. The one way back: when an admin deletes an event or removes an attendee, or someone deletes a contact or moves an event's or a contact's date out of the current program year, a student those contacts moved to Served goes back to their earlier status if fewer than 2 contacts are left this program year and no one set them to Served by hand (see Record an Event and Log a Contact). Every automatic move, forward or back, adds an entry to the student's activity feed that says so. Logging a contact on an Inactive student does not bring them back on its own, because marking someone Inactive is your decision to reverse, not TRIOPilot's. Also mark these students Reportable on Log Contact and Log Event never moves an Inactive or Rejected student either: they get their contacts, the confirmation names them, and you change them on their profiles if you need to. You can move a student yourself at any time.

When TRIOPilot Sets Reportable for You

Once every outcome question showing on the student's profile has an answer, TRIOPilot moves a Pending, Active or Served student to Reportable for the program year those answers are in (on the profile, the year you are viewing, normally the current one; from Log Contact or a document upload, the current program year):

• Any answer counts, including No and Unknown. It is about completeness, not about a particular result.
• Which questions show depends on the student's educational status at entry. If the outcomes card says "There are no APR outcomes for this student," there is nothing to complete and no automatic promotion, so set Reportable yourself.
• Uploading a document tagged to an objective fills the matching outcome for you, so an upload can trigger the promotion too. See Upload and Download Documents.
• The automation watches four fields: HS Diploma / GED Received, FAFSA or Other Financial Aid Completed, Applied to Postsecondary, and Enrolled in Postsecondary. These are the EOC outcome fields. Talent Search, Upward Bound, UBMS, SSS, McNair and VUB record outcomes in the profile's APR Outcomes panel, which TRIOPilot does not watch, so in those programs you set Reportable yourself.

Assign an Advisor Before Activating

On the profile, TRIOPilot will not let you set a student to Active until an advisor is assigned. It refuses the change and shows: "An advisor must be assigned before activating this student." (If your program uses different words for advisor or student, the message uses yours.)

Quick ways to assign one:

• Click Assign to Me under the status steps. Advisors and admins see that button whenever nobody is assigned yet.
• To assign someone else, click the pencil on the Assigned Advisor field and pick a name.
• In bulk: on the Students list, tick the checkboxes, choose Assign Advisor in the bar that appears (on a phone, under More), and pick a name. It applies as soon as you pick.

One catch: Set Status in the bulk bar does not run this check, so assign advisors first if you are activating a group.

Changing a Status

• On the profile, click a step on the status stepper at the top of the page, just under the Log Contact button (Pending, Active, Served, Reportable). The steps always apply to the student's latest program year, which is normally the current one. If the student is Inactive or Rejected the steps turn gray and stop responding, because those two are not points on that path. Choose Return to the Flow underneath and the steps wake up so you can pick the one you want. You can also edit the Status field itself, which sits in the Status & Education card on the year's Details tab unless your admin has rearranged the profile layout.
• On the Students list, tick one or more checkboxes, choose Set Status in the bar that appears, and pick a status (advisors and admins can by default; an assistant can once your admin grants Bulk Edit in Settings, on the Team tab). It applies to the whole selection as soon as you pick it, in the program year the list is showing.
• On Log Contact or Log Event, check Also mark these students Reportable above the save button. The contacts save first, then the students you chose become Reportable for the current program year. A confirmation lists who changes before anything is saved, and it names anyone who is not Served yet. It never moves a Rejected or Inactive student, and it shows only while the date is in the current program year. You see the box only if your role can use Set Status on the Students list.

The Two Off-Ramps: Inactive and Rejected

Two statuses sit outside the path above, and they mean different things. Rejected is about eligibility: they applied and were not accepted. Inactive is about engagement: they registered and then stopped taking part. Keep them apart, because "did not qualify" and "never took part" are different facts about your program.

Neither one is counted in your APR, and neither counts toward an advisor's caseload.

Marking Someone Rejected

1. On the profile, edit the Status field and choose Rejected. It is a one-at-a-time decision: Rejected is not one of the status steps, and the Set Status menu in the bulk bar does not offer it.
2. Once the status is Rejected, a Rejection Reason field appears on the profile. Record why: Immigration status or Ineligible.
3. Changed your mind? Choose Return to the Flow under the status steps, then click the step you want.

Marking Someone Inactive

Edit the Status field on the profile and choose Inactive, the same way you would set Rejected. There is no reason field to fill in: the status already says what happened. Unlike Rejected, the Set Status menu in the bulk bar on the Students list does offer Inactive, which is usually how you will use it, by ticking a batch of people who never got started, or who stopped coming, and setting them all at once.

To find them again later, use the Inactive tab on the Students list. Because Inactive students are not rolled into a new program year (except, for Upward Bound, UBMS, SSS, McNair, and VUB, a record that holds an APR cohort year), they stay in the year you marked them: after a rollover, set the Program Year picker to that year or to All Years to see them.

EOC programs do not use rollover. On every other program, rollover gives a student a record in the new year only when your admin ticks their status to roll, with two exceptions for Upward Bound, UBMS, SSS, McNair, and VUB: every Reportable record rolls whatever is ticked (unless your program's federal rule drops it, or your admin rolls one enrollment cohort and the student is outside it), and an Inactive or Rejected record that holds an APR cohort year rolls (below). Nothing is ticked until your admin chooses, so a student your program keeps Served on purpose stays where they are unless Served is ticked. Inactive and Rejected students can never be ticked, so they stay in the year you marked them and do not come back each new year as Pending. The exception: for Upward Bound, UBMS, SSS, McNair and VUB, an Inactive or Rejected record that holds an APR cohort year rolls with its status unchanged, after your admin confirms it. Rollover never starts anyone in the new year as Served, and by default the rejection reason starts blank in a new year. Rollover is optional. For the status each rolled student starts with, see Roll Students Into a New Program Year.

Viewing a Different Program Year

The profile shows one year at a time. The Program Year dropdown, to the right of the tabs, switches which year you are viewing: the Details tab is renamed for that year and shows that year's cards, and the activity feed follows along. Editing the Status field there changes that year's status. The status steps at the top do not follow the dropdown: they always apply to the student's latest program year. For more on per-year data, see Update a Student's Record.

Why Reportable Is Separate

The APR counts Reportable students only, never everyone who applied. Inactive and Rejected students are never in it, so the report holds only the participants you intend to file. When you are ready, see Run Your APR.

If you try to change a student's status to Inactive or Rejected, and that student was Served or Reportable this program year, TRIOPilot asks you to confirm the change first. It explains that marking them Inactive or Rejected removes them from this year's federal report, and when you change several students at once it also lists their names. This applies whether you are updating one student's profile or changing status for several students at once. If you are changing status for a group and some students need this confirmation, you can skip just those students and update everyone else, or confirm the change for everyone.