Target the right students
Not every message is for every student. Targeting is how a single cohort's feed can carry both "everyone" content and content meant only for, say, first-in-family students at one campus, without cluttering everyone else's view. Get it right and the right people see the right thing. Get it wrong and an item either reaches no one or the whole cohort.
The reliable way to check targeting is not to reason it out, it is to look. This guide builds an audience, points content at it, and verifies the result before anything goes live.
Audience facets combine with AND, so every tag you add makes the group smaller. Tag both a campus and a program and a student must match both to see the item. An over-tagged item is the usual reason something is missing for people you expected.
Walk through it
- Understand the tags you have
There are two kinds. Synced facets (program, campus, year level, cohort) come from your student records and are read-only. Your own tags, like first-in-family or commencing, are segments you create for groups the records do not describe. See targeting with tags for how they differ and how students can self-select some of them.
- Build an audience
Decide who the content is actually for and assemble the tags that describe them. Combine a synced facet with one of your own where you need to: campus plus first-in-family, for example. Resist adding a tag "to be safe"; each one removes students, and the goal is the smallest set that is exactly right.
- Target the content to it
When you author the item, apply those tags so only matching students see it. Leave a facet untagged and it stays open across that facet. No tags at all means the whole cohort (within the item's week scope) sees it.
- Verify the student count in the cohort browser
Open the cohort browser and filter by the same tags. The count tells you whether the audience is the size you expected. A count of zero, or far smaller than you thought, almost always means the tags combined more narrowly than intended. Scan the names the filter returns: a student who should qualify but is missing, or one who should not be there but is, points straight at a tag that is off.
- Set which features apply per cohort
Targeting decides who sees an item; features per cohort decides whether the surface exists for that cohort at all. If events or resources are switched off for a cohort, content for them will not appear regardless of how it is tagged. Confirm the surface is on before you chase a targeting bug.
- Double-check targeting before publishing
Publishing is the commit point. Once you publish, matched students see it. So the verification happens before, not after. Confirm the count, confirm each item's audience label reads the way you intended, confirm the right cohort is active in the sidebar, then publish. See draft to publish for the status flow.
Quick checklist
Before you publish a targeted item:
Common questions
If I don't tag an item, who sees it?
The whole cohort, within the item's week scope. Tags only narrow from there, so no tag means everyone. That is the right answer for cohort-wide content and the wrong one for anything meant for a specific group.
The student count looks too small. What happened?
Usually too many tags. Because facets combine with AND, adding a campus and a program means a student must match both. Remove the tags you do not strictly need and re-check the count in the cohort browser to confirm.
I targeted it correctly but a cohort still can't see it. Why?
Check whether the feature is switched on for that cohort. Targeting controls who sees an item, but features per cohort controls whether the surface renders at all. A disabled feature hides the content server-side no matter how it is tagged.
Related
The fastest answer is usually one question away.