Build Elira's Brain for private admissions
The guided setup for a private school: your address, approved answers, a practice draft, and optional ways to reach families.
Open Build Elira's Brain after signing in. Your dashboard brings you here until the five required steps are ready. Skip to the full dashboard is always available; your progress stays saved.
Prefer to watch? Three videos at the top of this page, with captions. Build Elira's Brain: five required steps (1:58) covers Your school, Send from your school's address, Teach Elira, Try it, and Is FERPA in play? It appears in each of those five required Brain steps. Answer admissions questions with Elira (1:11) shows reading Elira's draft, sending or correcting it, approving from your phone and letting her answer on her own; it is also in the Try it and Let Elira answer on her own steps. Put Elira's form on your website (1:06) shows adding the form and sending the guardian notice; it is also in the Put the form on your website and Tell your families steps. Every tutorial video is listed under Tutorials on the support page.
Required steps
- Your school: enter the Sender name families see and an On-call address for draft-and-ping — the inbox Elira pings off-hours with a one-tap approve link — then press Save identity. The Staff reply address for alerts is optional and does not complete this step.
- Send from your school's address: save your sender name first, then type a dedicated subdomain such as admissions.yourschool.org and press Connect. Your IT team adds the DNS records shown; use Check status after they do. Family emails wait until the address is verified.
- Teach Elira: add at least five approved answers — the list starts with the 12 questions families ask most. Answers you type and active website or pasted knowledge both count. Review scraped website entries before activating them.
- Try it: ask one practice question and read Elira's draft. This uses no family contact and sends nothing.
- Is FERPA in play?: answer whether your school receives U.S. Department of Education funds.
Optional steps
Add the website form, copy the guardian notice letter, set up visits, and choose whether Elira may answer on her own from approved knowledge. In Visit times you can save your own tour page link, open times families book on your AskElira booking page (campus tours, open houses or admissions interviews, each with a number of families), or both (opening times on your booking page needs visit booking on your plan; every pilot includes it). Elira's answers link to your booking page when you have not saved a tour link. From the same step you can close a time — families already booked keep their visit — or cancel a booked visit; AskElira does not email the family about a cancellation you make there, so let them know yourself. When a family books, moves or cancels on your booking page, AskElira emails them a confirmation from your school's verified email address; until that address is verified, nothing is sent and the booking page does not say an email is coming. The widget step marks itself installed when your website first loads its script. The guardian notice must go from your admissions inbox, or have it as reply-to, only after AskElira confirms in writing that it reads that inbox at least once each business day. Autopilot stays off until you turn it on.