About Interfolio at NIU

Interfolio Review, Promotion and Tenure (RPT) is an online platform for carrying out formal faculty reviews in a shared governance context, built to help academic institutions ensure that these processes are transparent, equitable, efficient, and well-documented. NIU refers to this platform interchangeably as "Interfolio" or "RPT".

A digital representation of your institutional hierarchy. Within the hierarchy, the different tiers will determine scope. Administrators can be assigned to any given unit. Ex. Institution > School > Department.

Academic workflow levels in Interfolio Review, Promotion and Tenure give users a way to manage access to cases for many users at once. Case access can be managed at individual case review steps based on unit hierarchy instead of by user roles.

The building blocks of the RPT module that allow administrators to create standardized, repeatable processes for all review types at their institution, colleges, schools, and departments. Templates can be created centrally or copied down to specific units for customization.

The lifecycle of a candidate as they progress through a standardized review cycle. You might think of this as a virtual 3-ring binder used to hold both candidate and committee materials for a review.

The collection of materials by which a candidate is being reviewed (documents and other files). The packet is divided into sections which can be worked on and submitted independently of one another. All materials submitted in the packet will be copied to the candidate's Dossier for record keeping.

Groups of users that can review the candidates’ case at a given step of the review process. Committees can be:

• Standing (managed from the central committee tab)
• Ad Hoc (case specific)
• Individual assignment (committee of one).

A tool for all faculty to store and manage job, fellowship, and promotion or review documents in one place. The Dossier will act as the central archiving tool for your candidate’s materials. All information submitted for a review will be copied into the faculty Dossier for archiving or reusability purposes. The faculty member's Dossier is private and portable, meaning it cannot be seen by the institution and it is theirs to keep even if they change employment.

Anyone added to Interfolio RPT is automatically called a user. Users have the most basic and restricted access in the system.

Committee members have the next most basic permissions within the system. They can view a candidate's packet, download documents (if allowed), and leave comments (also if allowed) on the particular case they have access to.

Committee managers have the power to move a case either backward or forward after a committee has finished reviewing. In addition, committee managers have communication powers within the system; they can email both the candidate and committee members from within the system, record committee votes in the system, and add files to a case. In order to make a user a committee manager, an administrator must manually select them to serve this role.

Case managers have the ability to create new cases and edit cases at their unit. They can manage case-level settings and committees, view case details and packet materials, and view all closed cases at their level in the hierarchy.

Case managers cannot manage templates, view reports, or change account settings.

Template administrators can create and edit templates at their unit but they cannot create cases, view reports or manage any account settings.

Administrators can access documents, email candidates and committees, and move a case forward or backward. Administrators can create templates, forms, and cases for the units to which they have access. Administrators have access to all cases at their unit, unless recused.

Institutional Administrators are the users granted the highest permissions in RPT. Not only can they act as an Administrator for any template or case at the institution (except where recused), but also they are the only users able to control the institutional branding, enable/disable comments and downloads, create a default list of case statuses as well as the voting options for committees.