FAQs

Patriot Connect is part of George Mason University’s initiative to integrate and modernize our technology platforms, creating a more connected and efficient experience for students, faculty, and staff. By replacing existing 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 cloud-based platform designed to manage and analyze interactions and data. George Mason University is using Salesforce Education Cloud to improve student success and recruitment, 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, developed on Salesforce Education Cloud; and 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 or email the Patriot Connect Program Management Team.

There are multiple phases to the project, but just two releases.

Release 1: Student Success will be released in late April 2025/early May 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 late winter 2025/spring 2026. Note: the timeline is currently under development.

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 change champions identified and encourage the use and adoption by their faculty and staff for student advising interactions/appointments. By consistently utilizing Patriot Connect we can create a more connected student experience, create a complete engagement record for the student, and eliminate the Mason shuffle!

Students will be required to use Patriot Connect to engage with key student services like academic advising, success coaching, and other student services offices in order to make appointments and initiate referrals to helpful services.

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

Patriot Connect Change Champions help to drive changes associated with the implementation of Patriot Connect within their respective groups. Change Champions will help to facilitate rapid two-way communication between the project team and stakeholders. They will provide support for their teams and units by building awareness and understanding, sharing project updates, empowering end users, supporting cultural changes, gathering feedback, addressing any concerns, and monitoring possible risks and issues. Change Champions will also leverage their unit-specific experience to enable effective coaching and empowerment of impacted individuals.

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.

Depending on your role at the university, you may receive training through Web-Based Training (WBT)​, Instructor-Led (ILT) / ​Virtual Instructor Led (VILT)​, Videos, Reference Guides and Standard Operating Procedures, and Salesforce-specific resources (like imbedded application guidance or link-outs to the Salesforce-specific training site, Trailhead). 

Keeping the winter break period and academic calendar in mind, the Patriot Connect training team will create the training curriculum in Winter 2024. The curriculum is scheduled to be available for Release 1 end user training in March 2025. 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” until Winter 2025 or later.

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 training resources.

Training will start in March 2025. Depending on your role at the university, you may not need to participate in any live training and therefore might not interact with “training” until April or later.  

Training is highly encouraged to understand how to use Patriot Connect. Depending on your role at the university, attending training will be crucial to your day-to-day activities after Go Live.  

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

We will export and move all relevant data from Navigate into Patriot Connect. We will communicate more information about how stakeholders can expect to see and use this data at a future date.

Yes, we will identify all data needing to migrate from the current systems to the new system. 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 required in the Patriot Connect platform, but it does not come with the native Education Cloud product. We are seeking 3rd party event management tools to install and utilize. More updates on this to come.

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

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.