For educational institutions, managing the details of thousands of members of staff, students, and alumni can be a minefield, and that’s before we even begin to talk about support and training services.

Salesforce is a powerful tool for streamlining many of the processes within any business; but, with the added power of the apps mentioned on this list, schools, colleges, and universities can automate and simplify much of the admissions, student support, and financial aid processes that sit at the heart of what their institution does.

There are many unique problems that need to be solved within the education sector to ensure that schools can offer their students the best experience. Finding the right tool for each problem is a big task, which is why we’ve rounded up the best Salesforce AppExchange apps for the most common and most intensive problems. With the help of these apps, your institution will increase enrolment, offer better staff training and student support services, revolutionize funding and donation management, and skyrocket student satisfaction scores. In addition, your institution can harness those all-important business performance analytics to make sure your progress is exponential.

TargetX Recruitment Suite

The TargetX Recruitment Suite is geared towards schools, colleges, and universities looking to attract the right prospective applicants and onboard the right students. With the help of the TargetX Recruitment CRM, institutions can increase the number of applications they receive, simplify their enrolment process, and attract new prospects with an intuitive experience. TargetX has been providing effective and student-centric technology for the higher education sector for over 20 years, using holistic techniques for training and support, and ultimately creating the most popular pre-built recruitment and admissions solution.

How can TargetX help your institution?

• Offer prospective students a personalized experience at every level
• Recruitment Suite is designed first and foremost for use on mobile devices
• Streamline application and on-site registration processes
• Data can be accessed across systems for a unified admissions team
• Includes email, online app, SMS messaging, events management, and workflow automation
• Student portal and mobile community for students to socialize and find roommates
• Branded templates for printed materials
• Track student engagement throughout the recruitment process

Pricing

Pricing for TargetX Recruitment Suite begins at $10,000 USD per company per year but is tailored to the size of your school and your unique requirements. The price includes all subsequent updates, implementation, training, and support.

Find out more about TargetX on LinkedIn and the TargetX website. You can download the app on the AppExchange.

Affinaquest

Affinaquest allows non-profit organizations and educational institutions to manage all their campaigns and prospects from within the Salesforce user interface. The system is fuelled by business intelligence derived from your own analytics, so you can reliably track fundraising and donor data and develop winning campaigns. In 2020, Affinquest was named the Sales Partner of the Year (ISV Education AMER) for Salesforce.

How can Affinaquest help your institution?

• Biographic and demographic data is stored for intelligent marketing and can be displayed on user-friendly dashboards
• Gifting ability built into your Salesforce Org
• Manage campaign budgets, expenses, designations, and appeals
• Track the actions of your prospective leads through your Salesforce CRM
• Merges together volunteer management, community management, email marketing, events management, and online giving
• Easily scale hundreds of campaigns to appeal to your entire community of donors
• The interface works just as well on a mobile device as it does on a desktop computer
• Countless resources and a support network to help you make sure Affinaquest works for you

Pricing

Affinaquest pricing starts at $54,000 USD per company per year.

Find out more about Affinaquest on LinkedIn and the Affinaquest website. You can download the app on the AppExchange.

Causeview Advancement for Higher Education

Causeview takes the pre-existing Education Data Architecture of Salesforce, and turns it into a full-functioning platform for managing gifts, donations, and donor information. Easily view all donation history alongside the information of individual donors, nurture a trusting relationship, and issue personalized, genuine messages of thanks. Intuitive reports and dashboards will help you set up successful events and marketing campaigns, encouraging interaction from your most valued donors, as well as new leads.

How can Causeview help your institution?

• Digitize the entire donation process, and automate all time-intensive manual tasks
• Payments can be reconciled and processed from any device at any time
• Set up one-time and recurring donations, as well as split gifts
• Automatic receipt generation, to be sent digitally to the donor or printed and sent in the post
• Manage any failed payments and expired payment details
• Quickly edit and update online donation portals, and event and volunteer registration
• Plan events and marketing campaigns to encourage donations

Pricing

Causeview licenses start at $60 USD per user per month, billed annually, with a minimum of three users per subscription.

Find out more about Causeview on LinkedIn and the Causeview website. You can download the app on the AppExchange.

RIO Education Student Information System

Streamline your student administration and compliance reporting with the RIO Education Student Information System, native to Salesforce. Students and staff alike can benefit from real-time updates, support, schedules, and results, ensuring everyone has access to the information they need, thus eliminating wasted admin time. RIO is the ultimate unifying experience for all students and staff members.

How can RIO help your institution?

• Intuitive and user-friendly portal for all students and faculty members
• Students have direct digital access to their class schedules, applications, course completion status, and results
• Teachers and lecturers can manage their teaching sessions, training, and grading, and view timetable updates and changes
• Administrators can schedule courses using the Graphical Class Scheduler
• Compliance is automated
• View all interactions with individuals throughout their relationship with your institution
• Connect RIO Education to any other Salesforce system
• Automatically generate certificates and transcripts

Pricing

Pricing for RIO starts at $1 USD per student per year, $1,000 USD per student admin per year, and $150 per teacher/faculty per year, depending on your usage.

Find out more about RIO on LinkedIn and the RIO Education. You can download the app on the AppExchange.

CoPilot

College Forward believes that everyone should be able to obtain the degree that they want. It pairs together graduates with students in near-peer coaching programs to encourage success. CoPilot works in accordance with its creator’s vision, bringing together each individual student’s vital academic, financial, and social data throughout their time at high school or college. Faculty administrators can then utilize this data to help increase graduation rates through the College Forward program. With the help of CoPilot and College Forward, students are 2.5 times more like to complete their degree, and 90% more likely to enroll in college after high school graduation.

How can CoPilot help your institution?

• Highlights students that need support and track financial aid and scholarships
• Review all applications and their current status alongside all student interactions
• View all student data within the Salesforce UI
• Connect with individual students via text message to check in after interviews and offer support at crucial times
• Data is easily edited on both mobile devices and desktops
• One-on-one coaching available from the CoPilot team for new users

Pricing

CoPilot is priced at $10,200 USD per company per year, based on a 10-user minimum. Reduced pricing is available based on the total user count.

Find out more about CoPilot on LinkedIn and the College Forward website. You can download the app on the AppExchange.

Regent Award

Regent Education aims to make the process of identifying at-risk students in need of support, and issuing the necessary financial aid, simpler and more successful. With Regent Award, the time it takes to disburse aid is hugely reduced, thanks to intuitive automation and assessment of potential future at-risk indicators in a student’s profile from the moment they apply. The Regent mission is to help ensure students have the support they need to graduate and achieve their dreams.

How can Regent Award help your institution?

• Disburse aid and support faster where and when it’s needed
• Highlight key financial indicators from enrolment
• Priority rank students for certain aid rewards, enabling proactive outreach
• Quickly create action plans to help any student whose aid has been blocked
• Log all student interactions for future review, alongside student records and financial aid insights
• Highlight any academic issues that may have a knock-on effect on the financial situation
• The customisable rule set to suit the privacy policies of your individual institution

Pricing

The Regent Award application prices start at $9,500 USD per institution per year.

Find out more about Regent Award on LinkedIn and the Regent Education website. You can download the app on the AppExchange.

Blufy Student & School Management Platform

Blufy offers schools, universities, and enrichment centers a system that can manage all of their institution’s operations. Processes within every department, from student management to finance, can be automated to improve productivity and efficiency of admin; while valuable insights help to uncover trends in business performance and guide students and staff alike towards success. Staff, students, and even parents can be provided with the information they need in the form of an easy-to-use branded mobile app, so resources, schedules, and finances are as clear and easy to understand as possible.

How can Blufy help your institution?

• Build and cultivate transparent relationships with staff and students with effective marketing campaigns and communication channels
• Capture inquiries and applications directly from your website
• Centralized database of student and staff profiles and all relevant contacts
• Manage courses and enrolments, including eligibility criteria, student applications, fee structures, and available payment plans
• Improve communication and collaboration between teams with advanced data sharing and task management systems
• Schedule course classes and track assessments, grades, and progression
• Track teacher/staff details, from holiday allocation to monthly salary payments
• Keep tabs on physical resources on campus
• Automate financial management and forecast revenue
• Custom dashboards for viewing overall business and team performance
• Quick auto-generated document templates, and automated follow-ups, for all correspondence with staff and students, from enrolment to assessment grading

Pricing

Blufy starts at $100 USD per user per month, depending on your chosen edition and user type.

Find out more about Blufy on LinkedIn and the Blufy website. You can download the app on the AppExchange.

Learnsmarter LMS

The Learnsmarter LMS application works alongside many pre-existing Salesforce objects, like Trailhead and myTrailhead, to provide an end-to-end solution to delivering training/education and recording participants’ progress. The online portal is designed to show only the necessary items to each user, whether they are a student or a member of staff, letting them know how they are progressing, what they have scheduled, and what they need to do next. As well as tracking Trailhead modules, you can set up your own modules and even record self-guided or in-person study offline.

How can Learnsmarter LMS help your institution?

• Set up online training and learning programs
• Assign training leaders to each class
• Track attendance, grades, and progress in helpful reports
• Manage both online and in-person training/learning sessions
• Track the availability of staff and resources
• Connect with Chatter and email to keep everyone informed and facilitate communication between students and staff
• Connect with Salesforce surveys to gain user insights
• Every user has their own dashboard, tailored to their needs, to be viewed within Salesforce or your institution’s intranet
• Customize the design of your dashboards with the Lightning App Builder, and devise your own workflows
• Supports mobile devices

Pricing

Pricing quotes for Learnsmarter LMS are devised based on specific use cases; but, licenses start at $3 USD per user per month, with discounts available for non-profit organisations.

Find out more about Learnsmarter on LinkedIn and the Learnsmarter website. You can download the app on the AppExchange.

VisitDays Enrolment Solution

VisitDays is designed specifically for helping colleges and universities make the most of their open days. By offering campus visits that exceed all expectations and impress prospective students, your institution can increase visitor numbers, and, by extension, enrolment rates. VisitDays works by facilitating valuable communication between your institution and the students themselves, creating effective plans for communication, and gathering invaluable data using artificial intelligence to secure those students most likely to enroll.

How can VisitDays help your institution?

• Customized solutions to improve conversions from campus visitors to students
• Actionable data insights that can help you improve the experience you offer (VisitDays surveys have a 60% organic completion rate)
• Provide live chat and online content for interested students
• Branded virtual experiences and fairs for attendees who can’t make physical events
• Host alumni institutional training and conferences, as well as online services for current students

Pricing

The VisitDays Salesforce application costs just 0.99$ USD per institution, as a one-time fee, but requires a VisitDays subscription (free for the first 100 sign-ups).

Find out more about VisitDays on LinkedIn and the VisitDays website. You can download the app on the AppExchange.

Summary

With our knowledge of the Salesforce CRM and its potential to help streamline the services of institutions just like yours, we can help you implement any of the apps mentioned above with your Salesforce Org and make sure it delivers everything you hoped for.

Alternatively, if you have an idea for an app that hasn’t yet been developed, or are in the process of developing an ISV app, we can help with this too. Contact MagicFuse now.

FAQ

1. What is Salesforce used for in education?

   Salesforce is used in education to manage student data, improve student engagement, and facilitate collaboration between educators and students.

2. Is Salesforce EDA free?

   Yes, Salesforce EDA (Education Data Architecture) is free for eligible non-profit organizations that are using Salesforce.org's Nonprofit Success Pack. EDA provides a framework for managing education-related data in Salesforce and includes some pre-built data models, workflows, and reports.

3. What is the difference between EDA and education cloud?

   Salesforce Education Cloud is a suite of applications for education organizations. It is a paid product that is available for both non-profit and for-profit education organizations. At the same time, EDA is a data model used in conjunction with Education Cloud or other Salesforce products. It provides a framework for managing education-related data, including student records, enrollment, and program data, but does not include all the features and functionality of Education Cloud.