How to Streamline Campus-Based Approvals with District-Wide Forms

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Introduction:

One of the advantages of using Laserfiche for automated solutions is the ability to create a single form that can be used for various purposes. This feature can help a school district operate more cohesively, as opposed to having individual campuses making decisions that may lead to confusion in district-wide processes. Laserfiche offers several options for developing a unified solution across the district, streamlining the process by directing it to specific campuses for review.

Use Cases:

• Enrollment Applications - A guardian submits an application; it is immediately assigned to a designated campus staff member for review and approval.

• Employee Travel Requests - An employee submits a travel request; it is instantly directed to the appropriate approvers based on the employee’s location or department.

• Absence Notification - A guardian submits an absence notification for a student, the designated campus is immediately alerted to accurately update the student’s absence record at their enrolled campus.

  
  

Form Setup Requirements: You will need to create a single line field within your form and pull in the Campus ID from a Lookup rule that is pulling based on the campus the student is enrolled in, or a campus selected on the form. This will be required for option 1 or 2.

Option 1: Utilize Laserfiche Forms Teams for assigning forms.

1. Within Laserfiche Forms, select the dropdown arrow next to the user's name.

2. Select Administration. Under System Settings, select Team Management.

3. Select "New Team".

4. Enter in a Name for your Team, such as "Campus Review".

5. Provide a short description of the purpose of the team (if applicable).

6. Select the Task Visibility.

   1. Selection will depend on the form needs. If you do not want the task to show once someone assigns it to themselves, select "Hide team tasks from team members not assigned to the task".

      

7. Click Next. Select a Team Manager (if applicable) and click Next. *Team members can be added at this time, but in this example, they will be added in a later step.

8. Select New role.

9. Enter the campus ID as the Name and campus name as the description. *Assigning the role by campus ID is a little easier to make the sure correct variables match in your form.

   

10. You will need to repeat this portion for each campus within your district. Once all your campuses are added, click Create.

11. Select your Campus Reviewer team under Teams. Select it and click Add in the top right corner. Select User or Group.

12. In order to assign individual users for each campus, you will need to select the user one by one and assign them a role (campus ID).

13. Check the box Team member and assign the correct Roles where the user is located. Repeat this step for each user at each campus.

    

14. Open the Process Designer of the form that will be assigned to campus staff.

15. Open the Task that will assign the form to a user. Under Assign to, click the Team radio button and Select Team. Select the "Campus Reviewer" team you just created.

    

16. In the drop-down box under Filter, select Create new filter. Enter in a name for the filter such as "Campus Reviewer by Campus ID".

17. Under Methods, enter in $result=team.findMembersByRole(). *You can use the drop-down option to select a variety of built in filter methods.

18. Click between the () of your JavaScript Definition, to pull a list of field variables to use.

19. Select the Campus ID variable created from the Form Setup Requirements.

20. Click Test and enter in a campus ID to verify it pulls the correct Team Member. If Test is correct, click Save.

21. Save your design.

Option 2: Pull Campus Staff Information into Form.

1. Within the Laserfiche Form, create a single line field that will store the campus employee Email address and Laserfiche account. *This is often the district's Active Directly account. (Ex: ISD\username)

2. Add a Lookup rule based on the Campus ID variable in the Form Setup Requirements to pull the employee information for the ERP based on the needed role at the campus. (Ex: If the form needs to be assigned to the campus secretary, write a stored procedure that pulls all campus secretary roles in the district based on the parameter Campus ID.)

   
   

3. Hide each field and mark Save Data when hidden. Set the rule to Always.

   
   

4. In the Process Diagram, open the Task that will assign the form to a user. Under Assign to select Users. Add the Employee Account variable that will be collected on the form.

5. Save your design.

Fiche Food for Thought

• While the setup for Option 1 takes longer, maintaining employee turnover can be manually performed by anyone who has security rights to the team (a Team Manager or Administrator). "In Progress" forms will need to be reassigned from the Monitor tab to the new user in the role.

• Option 2 allows for users to be pulled from the ERP system dynamically. When an employee is replaced in the ERP, the form will pull the new employee's information without any manual updates. However, this will not be retroactive to "In Progress" forms and the variables on each form will have to be manually updated from the Monitor tab and the forms will need to be reassigned to the new employee.