Prospects visit your Unibuddy Chat platform to ask Ambassadors all kinds of questions - from which clubs or societies are available, to more economical ways of managing a reading list. We know that there may be times when an Ambassador just doesn't know the answer - and this is OK!
The Research log allows your Ambassadors to manually add additional time spent on Unibuddy that is not automatically captured in their time spent calculations. This could include time spent researching answers, monitoring your Community, or any other tasks not automatically tracked within their Time sheet.
We recommend that Ambassadors agree in advance any time they manually input into their Research log.
❔ Why would an ambassador add Research Time?
The option to add Research Time means that Ambassadors can still be fairly rewarded for, or give an accurate representation of, the time they dedicate to ensuring that they can answer prospect questions, either on your Chat platform, or within your Community.
Whilst we recommend that you offer guidance to Ambassadors on the kinds of questions they shouldn't try to answer - usually admissions, visa, or fee/finance queries - they will sometimes need to investigate a prospect question on your web pages, social media, or other university-related content.
They will also add Research Time to reflect the time they spent participating within you Community either on desktop, or within the app - but which didn't involve typing messages. Time Spent in Community is automatically tracked and logged in their Time Sheet within the Unibuddy Ambassador app - but only for typing and sending messages in groups, DMs, or creating and posting Polls or Updates. Simply monitoring your Community does not record in their Time Sheet - but they can add Research Time to reflect time spent doing this.
Please note: Time spent participating in Community on desktop is not tracked and logged in Ambassador Time sheets.
Also, if your Ambassadors create any longer-form video content outside of the Unibuddy Ambassador app (uploading to YouTube and then submitting via the App or their Dashboard), they can add the time they spent filming these under their Research log.
🙋🏽♀️ How do ambassadors add Research Time?
Ambassadors add their research time in the browser version of the Ambassador Dashboard
They can navigate to Time > Add Research Time
They will be prompted to create a title for the research - to concisely explain what it was for, and add the date that this took place
They will then add the time spent, and they also have the option to add a description
Best practice is for you to advise ambassadors that they should always add a description for their research time, so you can accurately track the work that your ambassadors are doing.
👀 Where do admins see Research Time spent?
This is displayed in your University Dashboard
Go to Buddies > Timesheet
You can filter by Active or Inactive, if need be
Each Ambassador will have the number of hours and/or minutes they have spent on research time, under the Research column