CougarConnect: Getting Started and FAQ

When you log into the system for the first time ever, you will be asked to complete your profile by answering a few questions. After this first log in, you won’t have any additional questions to complete, you can simply log in and begin using the system.

As a student, you can find lots of different co-curricular (meaning outside of the classroom) opportunities to make friends, attend events, join clubs, share your opinions, and much more.

When you first log into CougarConnect, there will first be a search bar and some notifications right at the top of the page. Next there will be a section for all events and recommended events. The recommended events are events that the system is recommending for you in particular based on potential interests. Next, is a section labeled “Up Next For You”. If you have RSVP’ed to an event, that event will appear in this section. After that is Memberships, which lists any organizations that you have joined. Next, you’ll have ‘Latest News’ on the left and ‘Paths’ and ‘Campus Links’ on the right. Latest News is a list of news posts from organizations you belong to and other organizations as well. Under the ‘Paths’ section, you can quickly open up any paths you’re enrolled in.

We call each club or department site a “Page”. When you’re on CougarConnect looking for a club to join or for information about a department, you’ll actually use the tab called ‘Organizations’. This can be a little tricky because often when we think of organizations, we think of just clubs or honor societies. But, on CougarConnect, everything is called an Organization. That’s why, we often refer to the different sites for departments, clubs, programs, etc. as ‘Pages’. This helps people remember that although they can find many clubs on CougarConnect, they can find many other things too. The other reason why we call these sites ‘Pages’ is because CougarConnect acts a lot like other social media sites, especially Facebook. For example, when you join an organization on CougarConnect, it’s a lot like liking a page on Facebook or hitting the follow button on an Instagram account. When you join an organization on CougarConnect, any events that organization is hosting will appear on your personalized homepage and any posted news articles they send out will also appear on your home screen. 

Your User Drawer has many different features for you. You can open your user drawer by selecting the circle icon on the upper right of the screen. It will have your first initial or photo depending on if you added a photo. The first tool appears on the top left of your user drawer. The QR code that is on the upper left is your personal event code. If you ever attend a CSCC event and they offer event check-in by scanning your QR code, the only thing you have to do is pull up CougarConnect and open your User Drawer to get your QR code. On the upper right is a pencil icon which you will select if you want to update your user profile information such as your privacy settings, preferred name, or profile picture. 
 

• Paths: View your progress in your co-curricular paths and self-complete any available path items.
• Event History: View past events you have attended, mark yourself as an attendee at select events, and leave reflections on your event attendance.
• Memberships: View your current and past memberships, leave reflections on memberships, and submit past membership requests.
• Experiences: Submit new experience requests and check the progress of experience submissions. When you submit an experience, it will automatically be added to your Co-Curricular Transcript (see below).
• Co-Curricular Transcript: View, customize, and save your Co-Curricular Transcript which is a running list of the organizations you belong to, the events you’ve attended, and things like service or professional development hours. You can customize your transcript to reflect every experience (even ones outside CSCC!) or just the experiences you want to include. The Co-Curricular Transcript makes a great addition to things like job, internship and scholarship applications. Fill yours out today!
• My Submissions: Finish incomplete submissions and check the status of event, form, and registration submissions.
• My Downloads: Access any downloads you have requested.
• Get Ready to Vote: Use this tool to head over to TurboVote where you can register to vote, make a voting plan, and even get reminders to vote. 

This site can be used by faculty, staff, and students alike as a way to connect with one another. It can be used to post events, follow a Co-Curricular Path, find student groups, locate support groups, search mentorship programs, volunteer for activities, host job fairs, display visiting vendors, and to create general form inquiries to be sent out to the CSCC community.

Yes and no. You do not have to log in to search the CougarConnect site. A log in credential is only required to RSVP for an event. Certain forms can be submitted without a log in credential, which is dependent upon the audience for which the form was created.

If you are responsible for building content on a page/organization, there are a few simple steps you will follow every time you want to access what we call “Edit Mode” where you can edit and add information to your page. First, make sure to log in using your CSCC credentials then go to the page you would like to edit or add content to. Next, select the ‘Manage Organization’ button on the upper right side of this page. *If you do not see the ‘Manage Organization’ button and you think you should, please double check that you are logged in and if the button is still not accessible for you, then please contact studentengagement@cscc.edu and we will work with you to remedy that.

Once you select the ‘Manage Organization’ button, move your cursor up to the left side of the page. At the top left of the page, there will be 3 horizontal lines and a little arrow symbol. This button opens and lists different options. At the top, there will be 5-6 options (Home, Events, Organizations, News, Forms, and maybe Admin). These options are used when you’re viewing the content on CougarConnect as an audience member. Any options that appear below these ones will be the pages that you have admin access to. Roughly in the middle of the sidebar, it should list the name of the page that you just hit the ‘Manage Organization’ button for. You’ll want to hover your mouse over the little gear icon that is next to this page name. This gear icon opens that page’s tool drawer and lists the admin tools that are available. Anytime you’re on your page and want to access a different tool, just make sure you’re in the manage/edit side of the page and go back to the sidebar and the gear icon. 

Recommended size is 300x300 pixels.

The event picture upload allows you to resize any image into a defined rectangle.

Log in to CougarConnect and navigate to your page. Select Manage Organization. Select the 3 horizontal lines on the top left of the page and select the gear icon next to your page name. Now, select ‘Roster’. On this page, on the upper right, select the ‘Messaging’ button in the upper right corner, followed by ‘Create Relay’ on the page that loads.

Select the positions or individual members that you would like to send the message to by selecting Edit... within each component. Enter a title for your relay to identify it later (this does not carry over to your message). When you're finished, select ‘Generate’.

On the new page, take the Temporary Relay Address (email address in blue text), open a new email in your preferred email account (e.g., Outlook), and add this into the "To" field. Then, just compose and send your message as normal!

Remember that messages are sent within the system and then out to an e-mail address if the user has not opted out of receiving messages via e-mail in their notification settings.

Go to your user tool drawer by selecting the circle button on the upper right that has your first initial or picture and then select the ‘My Submissions’ option. This is where you can find every form you started to build or that you submitted, every election, every organization/page registration, and every event you’ve created. If you started any of these items and did not submit them yet, the status will read “In Progress”. You will be able to reopen the in-progress items and continue editing or officially submit them by selecting the little eye symbol on the right side of the page. After you select the eye symbol, select the blue text that has the form or event name and this will reopen your work and you can officially select the submit button.