FAQs

Depending on your role at the university, you will receive training through live instructor-led (ILT) / virtual instructor led (VILT) courses, eLearnings, videos, resource guides, job aids, standard operating procedures (SOP), and/or Salesforce-specific resources (like imbedded application guidance or link-outs to the Salesforce-specific training site, Trailhead). 

Training will be provided for all staff and faculty users of Patriot Connect Student Success. Live, instructor-led training (ILT) courses will be available both in-person and virtually and will begin in mid-April and continue through mid-May. Sessions will vary by role and topic, with multiple date and time options to accommodate different schedules. Once the schedule is finalized, end-users can register for ILTs via MasonLeaps. Note: Depending on your role at the university, you may not need to participate in any live training and therefore might not interact with training resources until April 2025 or later.

Training will start in mid-April and continue through mid-May. Depending on your role at the university, you may not need to participate in any live training at that time and therefore might not interact with training resources until April 2025 or later. 

Training is highly encouraged to understand how to use Patriot Connect and ultimately be able to support students, who will be using Patriot Connect as their primary method of scheduling appointments. Depending on your role at the university, attending training will be crucial to your day-to-day activities after go-live. 

A communication and marketing plan will dictate how students learn about when and how to use Patriot Connect. The student experience site is designed to be intuitive and user-friendly, requiring minimal formal training. Job aids, eLearnings, and videos will be available to students for additional support, however. These materials will also be available to relevant faculty and staff that need the information themselves or need to reiterate learning objectives/guidance to students. We are not recommending delivering instructor-led/live training to students given the audience size (40,000+).

We are excited about all the opportunities this implementation brings and know that we’ll need strong training and development options to ensure a successful transition. This will be one of our primary areas of focus as we leverage tools available through Salesforce for training, including free resources available via Salesforce Trailhead, as well as building our own in-house customized training resources.

Students will be required to use Patriot Connect to engage with key areas like academic advising, student success coaching, and other student services offices to make appointments and follow through on referrals to critical services.

Faculty and staff involved in key student services such as coaching, advising, and student support—which involve appointments and referrals—along with enrollment management services, will be required to use Patriot Connect to document and manage their interactions with students.

The expectation is for faculty and staff participating in Patriot Connect to use the platform when taking and conducting appointments with students. Patriot Connect should be used to document appointments and interactions, as it supports consistent advising practices and enhances student success by providing a unified platform for tracking communications and referrals, helping reduce the “Mason shuffle.”

As part of the strategy to create a more connected student experience, Graduate Education (schools and colleges) will use Patriot Connect for advising similar to their undergraduate counterparts. This ensures that graduate students have access to the same streamlined support and mentoring resources as undergraduate students, enhancing consistency across the university.

The key users of Patriot Connect Student Success will be students, advisors, and student success coaches. Other users who will be impacted include the student support services community and current users of Navigate. See the Faculty and Staff tab for a comprehensive list of Participating Units.

Patriot Connect Student Success will officially be available for participating student support services on April 30, 2025. The Patriot Connect team is collaborating closely with affected units and stakeholders. Those units and stakeholders will receive training and updates on when to start using Patriot Connect through various communication channels such as project email updates, change champions, and guidance from unit leaders.

Colleges and schools should ensure they have Patriot Connect change champions identified and encourage use by their faculty and staff for student advising interactions/appointments. Colleges and schools can also update their departmental websites where appropriate to direct students to Patriot Connect (connect.gmu.edu) to schedule appointments with their academic advisors. By consistently utilizing Patriot Connect, we can facilitate a more connected student experience, create a complete engagement record for the student, and eliminate the “Mason shuffle!”

Patriot Connect change champions help drive changes associated with the implementation of Patriot Connect within their respective groups. They do this by helping to facilitate rapid two-way communication between the project team and stakeholders, providing support for their teams and units, and by building awareness and understanding of the Patriot Connect platform and its implementation. They also share project updates, encourage end-user adoption, support cultural changes, gather feedback, address concerns, and monitor possible risks and issues. Change champions also leverage their unit-specific experience to enable effective coaching and empowerment of impacted individuals.

You will log in via single sign-on (SSO), similar to how you access existing university platforms (i.e., Banner (Patriot Web)). Once live, the URL will be connect.gmu.edu.

Patriot Connect will enable the ability to create, save, run, and export reports. There will be trainings for those who need to know how to create and view reports.

The list of units available for referrals in Release 1: Student Success focuses on student success and includes advising, student success coaching, career services, and learning services. See the Faculty and Staff tab for a comprehensive list of Participating Units.

You will have access to all student records, including interaction summaries created by other staff/faculty (provided the interaction summary is marked “public,” which we encourage). You can locate a student’s account in Patriot Connect using the global search feature and entering their personal details, such as name, G-Number, or email address.

Yes, there are role-based permissions and hierarchies built into the system. For example, student staff will have a different permission set and will be able to see limited information about their peers in the system.

Yes, for staff and faculty who are available to have appointments scheduled with them, bi-directional calendar sync between your Patriot Connect and Outlook calendars is enabled by default. This will reflect your availability consistently across both Patriot Connect and Outlook, streamlining scheduling and improving efficiency. Please note users will be able to see the full details of their own calendar events inside Patriot Connect, but other users will not be able to see meeting details. To others, events scheduled within your Outlook calendar will appear only as blocked or “busy” in Patriot Connect.

Yes, business end users will be able to create marketing campaigns within Patriot Connect and utilize either Marketing Cloud or Distributed Marketing to send communications and manage campaigns based on their permissions.

No, a plug-in extension for Outlook will be available. This feature allows you to log emails to a student’s account without needing to switch to Patriot Connect.

Yes, students will have the ability to opt-out of receiving email communication. If a student opts-out of email communication, this information will be visible in the student’s contact details. SMS opt-out details/options are currently being finalized and will be communicated out once confirmed.

Yes, Vonage will be synced with Patriot Connect in Release 2, which will be available in 2026.

Yes, all relevant data from Navigate will be moved into Patriot Connect. We will communicate more information about how stakeholders can expect to see and use this data as we approach go live.

Yes, we will identify all data needing to migrate from the current systems to Patriot Connect. We will be migrating data from the current Navigate system as well as our current Salesforce TargetX Orgs, in accordance with a detailed, vetted, and thorough schedule and transition plan.

Event management functionality will be integrated with the Patriot Connect platform, but it does not come with the native Education Cloud product. The program team is in the process of identifying a 3rd party event management tool for Patriot Connect. The event management tool will replace Salesforce TargetX functionality as part of Release 2: Recruitment and Admissions.

Production data will be migrated very close to the target go-live date, to ensure data accuracy. This data will include TargetX data (including Campaigns) and will be migrated to similar tables (objects) within the Patriot Connect platform.

While Navigate is a stand-alone tool, Patriot Connect will support student success, recruitment and admissions, events management (as it relates to recruiting and orientation), and mass communications through a single, integrated tool. Leveraging this unified platform with centralized student data will provide a holistic view of each student and enable personalized, optimized student support services from application to graduation.

Banner (PatriotWeb), George Mason’s Student Information System, is the source of truth; all student record information will flow from Banner into Patriot Connect.

Patriot Connect is George Mason University’s new primary system of engagement for the student journey, designed to integrate and modernize our technology platforms and create a more connected and efficient experience for students, faculty, and staff. Starting at the beginning of the student journey, Patriot Connect will serve as a centralized online tool for students, offering support from application to graduation. Patriot Connect will enable students to receive personalized communications, schedule appointments, and access essential student support services including academic advising, student success coaching, and learning services. In the second release of Patriot connect capabilities, coming in 2026, all application and admissions will be handled within the platform. By replacing disconnected platforms like TargetX and Navigate, Patriot Connect aims to eliminate redundancies and streamline processes, enhancing data accuracy and user accessibility across the university.

Salesforce is a constituent relationship management (CRM) system that hosts and powers Patriot Connect. Salesforce is a cloud-based platform designed to manage and analyze interactions and data. George Mason University is using Salesforce Education Cloud (a version of Salesforce tailored for the Education industry) to improve student success and recruitment and admissions, paired with Salesforce Marketing Cloud to optimize our campaigns and engagement efforts.

Patriot Connect is George Mason University’s dedicated platform built for student engagement, powered by Salesforce Education Cloud. While there are other instances of Salesforce at the university, Patriot Connect specifically uses Salesforce Education Cloud to create a connected student experience based on key student activities and services.

The Patriot Connect Program Management Team encourages you to share your thoughts and feedback through our Let’s Connect Form. For specific questions or concerns, please contact your Patriot Connect Change Champion.

As part of two planned releases, George Mason will phase in two Patriot Connect tools, Student Success and Recruitment and Admissions.

Release 1: Student Success will replace Navigate and will be released on April 30, 2025. Training will be delivered to end users ahead of the release.

Release 2: Recruitment and Admissions will replace Salesforce TargetX and is tentatively planned for release in 2026 and will follow a phased user activation approach with three waves: February 2026; July 2026; and October 2026.

The program team is carefully considering the transition timeline to minimize disruption, especially during busy periods. Patriot Connect will be available for students to begin scheduling appointments with participating student support service communities starting May 1. To accommodate current and graduating students as they complete their semester, Navigate will remain available during a transition period until late May. More information about close-out dates will be available as we approach go-live.

The decision-making process for Patriot Connect is led by the Salesforce Executive Committee with representation from units affected by the implementation of Patriot Connect. The Patriot Connect program management team provides the day-to-day management of the program and product team with input from subject matter experts as well as the Salesforce CoE in the development of the Patriot Connect requirements.

The CoE was created to represent the interests and requirements of units around the university. This body determines how we collect and prioritize new features and enhancements for Salesforce, how we build these items, and how we effectively manage the subsequent change these items present to our user base. Members of the CoE include technical, process, industry, strategic, and business unit subject matter experts across all university business units (sometimes called Product Owners), and business unit leaders, all working in collaborative partnership for a seamless and streamlined user experience.