In my position at ZAP, I meet with many student affairs and advising deans and directors at medical schools and other health professions programs. The question that comes up isn't "can it send announcements to a cohort?" It's "what happens when a student goes on leave and six months later nobody remembers why?"
That's the kind of challenge that only shows up after go-live, not on a demo. So here's a list of key features built around ensuring that your team is set up to ensure the success of every student that enrolls in your program(s). If you're evaluating advising software, these are the nine features you should be keeping an eye out for during every demo.
If your team's outreach history lives across individual advisor inboxes, you already know that communication can be a huge challenge. Look for software that keeps every message, session note, and status update tied to the student record itself and visible to the whole advising team.
Why it matters: Advisors change roles, go on leave, or move on to a new school. When that happens, the student's history shouldn't leave with them. A shared record also means any advisor can pick up a conversation without asking the student to repeat themselves.
LOA is one of the highest-risk, least-tracked moments in a student's journey, and most teams are still managing it in a spreadsheet or an email thread. That works fine until the person who owns the spreadsheet is out the week a return date comes due.
Look for a system that lets your team log the reason, set a return date, and monitor re-enrollment status in one place, not a checkbox that just says "on leave."
Why it matters: A documented LOA process protects the student and protects your program. When return dates are tracked systematically instead of by memory, fewer students fall out of the pipeline quietly.
Every platform will tell you it has "at-risk flagging." Ask what that actually means: what triggers a flag, how early it fires, and how it reaches a member of your team in time to act.
Why it matters: Identifying a struggling student after they've already withdrawn isn't early warning, it's a postmortem. The value of at-risk tracking is entirely in the criteria and timing.
Scheduling shouldn't mean toggling into a separate calendar tool and reconciling it against the student's file by hand. Scheduling advising sessions should live inside the software platform, not sit next to it.
Why it matters: Fewer missed sessions, less manual reconciling, and a full picture of engagement without having to cross-reference multiple systems.
Ask exactly how data moves between their platform and your student information system, and who's responsible when that connection experiences issues.
Why it matters: Re-keying the same student data into multiple systems isn't just a time cost. It's where inconsistent records and staff fatigue start, especially during busy periods.
Students should be able to submit and update their own documents and information directly, with your team reviewing rather than re-entering. Self-service only helps if it reduces your team's admin load, not shifts it.
Why it matters: Advisors are trained to advise. Every hour spent chasing down a form is an hour not spent on the conversations that actually move a student forward in their academic journey.
If pulling a retention or graduation report means exporting data and rebuilding it in a spreadsheet before anyone can digest it, that's pulling valuable time away from other meaningful work. You should be able to see retention trends, at-risk volume, and progress toward graduation, and share them with leadership with the click of a button.
Why it matters: These numbers get scrutinized by your dean, your provost, your accreditor. Clean reporting means less time defending the data and more time acting on it.
You may not be the one asking about hosting infrastructure and FERPA compliance, but someone on your campus will be before this software purchase gets approved. Have those answers ready ahead of time to keep the procurement process moving along smoothly.
Why it matters: A great advising tool that stalls in security review just delays the impact it was supposed to have. That delay is avoidable with the right prep.
Advising and admissions are often run on completely separate systems, which means nobody has one view of a student from prospect through graduate without stitching reports together by hand. Leverage a platform that connects both admissions and post-matriculation advising (hint, hint: AMP + SAMS).
Why it matters: Accreditation site visits and board reporting get a lot easier when the student's data doesn't have a seam in it before and after matriculation.
None of these features matter much on their own. The real test is whether they work together as one connected system. A platform that nails LOA tracking and scheduling but can't talk to your SIS just gives you a nicer version of the same disconnected process.
If you're evaluating student advising software for your team, I'd be glad to walk you through how these pieces fit together in SAMS.