Creating Your Personalized URL (PURL)

Overview

Every student in EMP has a Personalized URL (PURL) designed to highlight the degrees, programs, advantages, next steps/checklists, and timelines they have indicated they are interested in. The PURL  is an individualized micro site. You can manage the design, content, and layout to reflect your institution’s branding and messaging.

Setting up a PURL takes a few steps: start by configuring each content component individually - such as assets, forms, and checklists - then choose a template, add your content, and apply your branding and URL settings to bring it all together. 

1. Customize Your Web Campaign (Branding)

Customizing the look and feel of your web campaign is key to creating a consistent, on-brand experience for your students. In the Web Campaign Settings, you can align your EMP settings with your program’s visual identity — from color schemes to logos. This area allows you to manage the overall appearance of your campaign, including colors, logos, and styling options that will carry across your campaign widgets. To customize your branding:

1. Navigate to Content, then Web Campaign.
2. Click Choose File to add your branded Banners, Favicon, Background, or Footer.
3. Use hex codes to set your branding colors.
4. Click the lock icon to lock your branding settings and prevent accidental changes. Once locked, only users with Admin permissions can modify the branding choices. 

2. Set Up Assets

Assets are a type of data in EMP that serve as the foundation for building personalized content—such as majors, minors, extracurricular activities, or campus preferences. They can be used as single-select fields on forms (e.g., selecting a major on an inquiry form) and play a key role in generating asset pages within a student's PURL, as well as in variable print materials. The content you add to assets—such as text, photos, and videos—is automatically pulled into the PURL. For example, set your campus as an asset then you can include a written overview of a campus, highlight its unique advantages, add images, and link to a virtual campus tour video to bring the experience to life in the student's PURL.

1. Create your Asset Types
2. Add Assets to your Asset Types
3. Add Content to Assets
4. Build an Asset Page

3. Create Field Rules

Field rules are logic-based conditions that control which fields or options a student sees based on the value of another field. For example, if certain programs are only available in the spring term, the Program field should be placed before the Start Term field. These rules are applied universally across EMP and are built on straightforward if/then logic.

Field rules are especially important because they help tailor the student experience from the start. By guiding students to select what's most relevant to them—such as academic interests or campus preferences—field rules ensure that the content displayed on their PURL aligns with their choices.

4. Build PURL Pages

The PURL pages are essentially an online viewbook. You can create pages for majors, athletic interests, extra curricular activities, housing, financial aid, events, etc. Students only see pages based on the Assets and Fields Rules you determine.

1. You'll first create different Viewbook Templates which provide a scaffold for your content.
   • You can use Templates for multiple PURL pages, but using a fresh template for each PURL page is recommended.
2. After selecting a template, add Widgets to the template that will pull in information displayed on the PURL page. 
3. Then, use the Viewbook Builder to create your pages and add content to your pages.

5. Add Checklists to PURL Pages

Checklists are an optional list of items for a student to complete, and are a great way to keep students informed and organized throughout the recruitment process. These items can be plain text, a linked URL, or a file to be downloaded - perfect for guiding students through tasks like submitting documents for application or matriculation requirements. For example, you can create an Application Checklist with the steps an applicant needs to take to complete their application or create an Enrollment Checklist for next steps for accepted students with prompts for completing financial aid, housing, deposit requirements, etc. Adding a checklist helps create a clear, personalized experienced by visually outlining next steps or requirements.