To make changes to your program's matching process, select Program Settings followed by Matching. Depending on your program type, you will see different options. 

Evergreen Programs:

Cohort Programs:

Groups Programs:

Here you will be able to choose how your mentors, mentees, and colleagues will be matched. 

Types of Matching Processes

Admin-led (Cohort and Group Programs Only)

• Only admins can create matches, but the software helps make recommendations. This is best used for small programs or programs with special goals, like high-potential-talent programs.

User-led (Recommended)(Evergreen and Cohort Programs Only)

• Users can create their own matches. In this case, mentees either choose their mentor from a shortlist, or they can rank their mentor preferences and mentors approve of requests. With Match Declining: Users can approve matching requests from other users.

User-led + Auto-Matching (Evergreen Programs Only)

• Users will be provided with the best match based on the algorithm and have the option to either approve the match or browse the directory. Users can create their matches and will be matched right away without approval. Admin can still create matching at any time. 

Pro-tip: In Evergreen programs, you have the option to select whether you would like the system to check in with a mentor regarding their availability if they remain inactive on the platform. With this feature turned on, you cannot select Auto-Match:

Roles and Labels

In this section, you can toggle Mentorship and Colleague Connect on and off, however, you must have either one or both toggled on. Additionally, you can also enable Reverse Mentorship by selecting 'Mentors can request Mentees' while Mentorhsip is enabled:

Matching Priorities

Clicking into the Matching Priorities bar will display two different options that you can choose between:

• Optimize for the highest match score: Select this option if you would like your users to have the best match possible based on the overlap between their profiles, even if it means not all users necessarily find a match. Based on mentor capacity, this means that some mentors may be matched with 2 mentees, while other mentors will remain unmatched.
• Optimize for highest program participation: Select this option if you would like to avoid having unpaired users and want to maximize participation across the entire group of registrants.

Depending on how you would like your users to be matched, you may decide to choose one or the other. In my case, I would rather have none of my users left unpaired, so I will choose to optimize for the highest program participation.

Reporting Lines

The final option on this page is based on your user's reporting lines and organization structure.

Clicking into this feature will allow you to enable a restriction if you do not want direct reports matched with their manager, their manager's manager, or anyone who reports to the same manager. Be sure to click the Save button once you've made your selection.

• Note: employeeID and supervisorID fields must be available for this restriction to function properly. For more information on this, please check out our article here: Organization-Wide Fields: Importing Data and Converting Questions

Timezone Differences

The next option you will want to consider is whether or not you would like to limit matches based on a user's timezone. For organizations that have users across many different geographies, this can be a useful feature to ensure that users can find sufficient time to schedule their sessions.

Clicking on this bar will provide you with the ability to prevent matching between users if their timezone difference is greater than some value. In my case, I would like to restrict users from matching if their difference is greater than 4 hours:

Mentor Recommendations and Suggested Mentees Per Mentor

You can select the number of mentors a mentee can submit when choosing a mentor. This is in case a mentee's first-choice mentor is unavailable. The mentor next in line would then be chosen and so forth until a mentor is available. Additionally, you can select how many mentees a mentor is able to take on at once. This can be useful to provide additional coverage for mentees in your program and open up more options for mentees to choose from.

Session Frequency

Here, you can select the pace of the sessions that take place by reminding users to book sessions.

Note: reminders to book the next sessions are dynamic and will match the program's session frequency. 

New Mentor Requests (Cohort Program Type Only)

As an admin can decide if you would need to approve changes that mentees request for their mentors.  

Automatically End Matches

This setting can be particularly useful if you want to continuously keep matches fresh and allow participants to match with new mentors/mentees. You can select a specific date you would like matches to end or choose the amount of time matches should last.

Note: An email is sent to all Program Support Contacts each week, with a count of matches that will be automatically ended in the next 4 weeks when this setting is enabled. We do not send an email digest summary of upcoming ending pairings due to other processes (ie: Roulette matches).

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