BETTER SAFER - bpmint.com · BETTER SAFER Higher Education Joanna Slusarz QUICKER BETTER SAFER Higher Education Empowering students, faculty and staff in today’s fast-paced educational

QUICKER BETTER SAFER

Higher Education

Joanna Slusarz

QUICKER BETTER SAFERHigher Education

Empowering students, faculty and staff in today’s fast-paced educational environment requires more than just giving them fast access to information. Successful colleges and universities need to optimize their business processes by getting the right information into the right hands at the right time.

Learn how a number of higher education institutions have made dramatic changes to their business processes with ECM software all while cutting costs, reducing manual labor and complying with state and local regulations.

This book contains a collection of customer solutions (including step-by-step instructions and screenshots) for streamlining and automating various business processes across various departments such as the Chancellor's Office, Financial Aid, Faculty Affairs and more.

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Laserfiche will help you in your daily process. It will improve employee morale. It will help you in everything you are trying to do for students."

- John Hermes, Vice President for Information Technology, Oklahoma Christian University

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© 2013 LaserficheLaserfiche is a division of Compulink Management Center, Inc. Laserfiche®, Run Smarter® and Compulink® are registered trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc. All other trademarks are properties of their respective companies. Due to continuing product development, product specifications and capabilities are subject to change without notice. Printed in the USA.


Higher Education

Long Beach - Washington, D.C. - Fort Lauderdale - Hong Kong Toronto - London - Shanghai - Panama

JOANNA SLUSARZ


Higher Education

LaserficheA Division of Compulink Management Center, Inc.3545 Long Beach Blvd.Long Beach, CA 90807

CONTENTSIntroduction .............................................................................................................. 1

Texas A&M University System ................................................................................ 4

Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board ......................................................... 14

Oklahoma Christian University ............................................................................... 28

CSU Chancellor’s Office ......................................................................................... 36

University of Central Florida .................................................................................. 46

University of Oklahoma ........................................................................................... 52

Simplify Admissions Processing ........................................................................... 60

Improve Records Management Practices .............................................................. 68

University of Southern California .......................................................................... 74

Dalhousie University .............................................................................................. 82

INTRODUCTIONToday’s educational landscape is changing faster than ever before. Students and staff alike embrace mobile and social channels of communication. They demand instant, self-service access to information via the web. They believe that online processes can be both convenient and secure.

At Laserfiche, we believe that the best way to help institutions like yours keep up with this rapidly changing landscape is to empower you with the knowledge and expertise you need to quickly and easily update your approach to information delivery—without the need to engage expensive experts.

This book is a collection of some of the most useful solutions (including step-by-step instructions and screenshots) colleges and universities have created with Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) software. Inside, you’ll read about how institutions across North America are using Laserfiche to:

} Digitize student, faculty and police department records. } Automate records-related processes. } Provide secure access to records from the web, mobile devices and other software applications.

We invite you to tap into their knowledge to help your institution keep pace with the ever-evolving requirements for information management in higher education.

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TExAS A&M UNIvERSITy SySTEMNumber of employees: 1,000- 5,000Headquarters: College Station, TxBusiness Process: Contract Management

Texas A&M University’s Health Science Center (HSC) reaches across Texas to educate health professionals and researchers. The HSC originally implemented Laserfiche in 2008 in the finance department; today, the HSC’s Laserfiche implementation spans eight different cities.

The Contracts Administration Office is responsible for processing, reviewing and approving contracts from various departments within the HSC.

Here is how it uses Laserfiche Workflow to decrease processing time from more than six weeks to a mere one or two weeks per contract.

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Trevor Moran, Senior Information Technology Consultant at the Texas A&M University System Health Science Center (HSC), demonstrates how Laserfiche Workflow helped the HSC decrease contract processing time from eight to two weeks.

STORE INITIAL CONTRACTS IN LASERFICHE

Contracts originate in different HSC departments, including the College of Medicine, the College of Nursing, the College of Pharmacy, the College of Dentistry and the School of Rural Public Health. Staff from those departments can either scan documents directly into the “For HSC Review” folder in Laserfiche or use Laserfiche Snapshot to print the documents into the folder. During this scanning or printing process, the staff member manually enters the required metadata into the document’s template. In the template screenshot below, all the fields denoted in red are required.

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REvIEW AND EDIT THE CONTRACTS

Once a document has been stored in Laserfiche, the review process begins. We have set up a series of template-driven workflows to facilitate the process.

Different people in the Contracts Administration Office are responsible for managing different types of contracts. For example, contracts from the College of Medicine and College of Nursing are assigned to one staff member (HSC Component Contact) while contracts from the School of Rural Public Health are assigned to someone else. The first workflow takes each contract from the “For HSC Review” folder and, depending on where it originated, routes it to the folder of the specific HSC Component Contact who will be managing the contract.

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Workflow then automatically populates the Contract Number field in the template with the document’s Laserfiche Entry ID. Both the HSC Component Contact and the person submitting the contract receive an email stating that the contract has been received. This email also contains the Contract Number, inserted as a token, in order to simplify tracking.

Workflow that routes contract to HSC Component Contacts.

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As part of our template, we have a multi-value field named Areas of Requested Review. The HSC Component Contact populates this field with the names of the people who will need to review the contract. Another workflow then uses the Conditional Parallel activity to route a shortcut of the contract document to each reviewer’s folder in the Laserfiche repository. In addition, Laserfiche Workflow emails every reviewer a shortcut to the document. This process enables simultaneous review of the contract by all the required parties.

The actual contract document is stored in the HSC Component Contact’s folder.

Workflow that routes contracts for simultaneous review.

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The reviewers make comments and corrections on the original document. Once they finish reviewing the contract, they mark the specific field in the template that pertains to them. If changes need to be made before the contract can be approved, Laserfiche Workflow moves the contract to a “Returned to Component” folder in the repository.

The person who initially submitted the contract receives an email letting him know that the contract has been reviewed and that there are changes that need to be made before it can be approved. He opens the contract in Laserfiche from the shortcut included in the email and creates a new contract with all the necessary changes. The pages of the revised contract are appended to the old contract which enables the changes to the contract to be tracked. This contract is then resubmitted.

This time around, the contract is automatically routed to the same HSC Component Contact and no new Contract Number is assigned. This review process is repeated until everyone agrees on the finalized version of the contract. Certain contracts may also be routed to General Counsel for an additional review after the initial review process is complete.

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Workflow that waits for contracts to be reviewed.

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SIGN FINALIZED CONTRACTS

After the contract has been finalized, it must obtain approval signatures. We use a Conditional Parallel activity in Laserfiche Workflow since the contract has to be signed by multiple parties at various levels. When the contract is ready to be signed, an email, which includes a shortcut to the document, is sent to each person who needs to sign the contract. People sign the contract by appending a personal stamp to the document and then updating a particular field in the template.

Contracts that have been signed and finalized are moved into a record series where various staff can access and review them as needed.

Workflow that gathers approval signatures.

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GENERAL ADvICE ON PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTING WORKFLOWS

} Meet with all of the users involved in the business process and get them involved in designing the workflows.

} Be ready to adjust your workflows if necessary to account for changing business requirements.

} Set up security on templates so that only the people who need to edit certain fields can see them. This will eliminate user confusion and reduce data entry problems.

} Use security tags if you want certain users to be able to view only certain documents and not the entire contents of a particular folder.

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TExAS HIGHER EDUCATION COORDINATING BOARDNumber of employees: 100 - 500Headquarters: Austin, TxExisting Laserfiche Integrations: Higher Education Loan Management SystemBusiness Process: Student Loan Processing

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) provides leadership and coordination for the Texas higher education system.

THECB provides low-interest loans for students who are eligible to pay in-state tuition. All loans are serviced at THECB until they are paid in full.

Processing loans is a very paper-heavy process—THECB processes an average of 1.5 million documents a year. After purchasing Laserfiche Avante in 2010, THECB used Laserfiche to streamline loan payment processing and ensure a smooth flow of information throughout the loan operations department.

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Deborah Whitis, Manager of Operational Support Services, describes how Laserfiche Workflow improved the efficiency of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s loan processing operations department.

IMPORT DOCUMENTS

Loan applications arrive at THECB in two ways:

} Electronically. These applications are then transferred to the Laserfiche repository by Laserfiche Import Agent.

} By mail. These applications are scanned and indexed manually.

During the Snapshot process, we select the required template and manually enter the required metadata, the most important of which are the “LPO Department” field and

“LPO Document Type,” both of which are provided in a drop-down list.

Due to federal and state mandated regulations and the prospect of future litigation, we have to document and archive every single piece of information regarding the loans we process. This results in a great deal of supplemental documentation—ranging from email and electronic customer service requests to screenshots of our Loan Management System and several other third-party systems—that must be archived for each loan. We use Laserfiche Snapshot to quickly and efficiently print these supplemental documents into the Laserfiche repository.

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PROCESS DOCUMENTS WITH LASERFICHE WORKFLOW

Documents that have been printed with Laserfiche Snapshot

Once the supplemental documents have been printed into Laserfiche, the “Virtual Pickup” workflow is invoked. It routes the newly imported document to the “Virtual Pickup” folder in the repository. Depending on the value of the “LPO Department” field, it assigns the correct document template. The document is then routed to the correct folder in the Laserfiche repository based on the value of the “LPO – Document Type” field.

The document then waits in the folder for a reviewer to read through it and manually update the value of the “Status” field. Depending on the status update, another workflow is invoked for further document processing. For example, if the document happens to be a copy of a personal check, the “Payment Workflow” gets invoked.

Here is what the “Virtual Pickup” workflow looks like:

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Documents that have been scanned

Once payment documents are scanned into the “Scanning” folder, the “Payment Indexing” workflow is invoked.

} The documents are moved from the “Scanning” folder into the “Indexing” folder and assigned to the “Indexing” template.

} A technician looks at the documents in the “Indexing” folder and manually fills out either the “SSN” field or the “Reference Number” field. He then changes the

“Status” field to “Process Pending.”

} Laserfiche Workflow uses the Query Data activity to pull the rest of the information from the database based on the Social Security Number or Reference Number (depending on which was filled in by the technician). The Assign Field Values activity is then used to populate the remaining fields. This eliminates manual user entry error.

} Next, Laserfiche Workflow checks to make sure that the template was filled out completely.

� If most fields are blank, which means the database lookup failed due to an incorrect Social Security Number or Reference Number, the document is routed to an “Exceptions” folder. The “Payment Indexing” workflow is invoked again, giving the technician an opportunity to correct the mistake.

� If all of the data is successfully populated, the “Payment Processing” workflow is invoked.

� If somehow there is no Social Security Number or Reference Number filled out, the issue needs researching by the payment team and the “Research Workflow” is invoked.

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PAyMENT WORKFLOW

} The “Payment Workflow” uses the Retrieve Field Values activity to obtain the field values from the template, including the “LPO Department Number,” and turns them into tokens for later use.

} It then assigns the “Payment Processing” template to the document using the Assign Field Values activity. Depending on the value of the “LPO – Document Type” field, the document gets routed to the “Payments Processing” folder, the “ACH Folder” or the

“Correspondence” folder using the Move Entry activity.

} The Wait for Entry Change activity waits until the value of the “Status” field is updated by the reviewer who monitors the particular folder on a regular basis.

} The Retrieve Field Values activity then converts the “Status” field into a token that is used in the Routing Decision activity to determine where the document needs to be routed next.

} This document can be completed, routed incorrectly (some documents originally appear to belong to one department but really should be processed by another), sent to another department for further processing (some documents need to be processed by multiple departments) or put on hold. Each of these actions invokes a separate workflow.

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Here is the full “Payment Workflow” design.

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KEEP TABS ON EvERyTHING THAT IS BEING PROCESSED

Since there are more than 29 different workflows running regularly, it is very important that I, as the manager of operational support services, am able to track their progress quickly and effectively. The Laserfiche Workflow Administration Console makes it easy to monitor where any document is at any given time. The first thing I do each morning is look in the “Wait Conditions” tab in the “Monitoring Node” to see if there are documents that have been stuck in any of our workflows for 24 hours or more.

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Selecting a document in the “Wait Conditions” node returns its “Entry ID” in the “Actions” pane. I can copy this number and, after clicking on “Open Workflow,”open the particular workflow in the Workflow Designer. I can then use the “Search” function in Workflow Designer to search by the “Entry ID” (which I had copied previously).

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This search will return all of the workflows that are currently processing the selected document.

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Double-clicking on one workflow opens it in the designer pane. The path that the document took through the workflow is clearly marked in green and the place where the document is stuck is marked in blue. I can then investigate the problem and resolve it.

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I can also view workflow statistics under the “Monitoring – Statistics” node.

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SUMMARy OF BENEFITS FOR TExAS HIGHER EDUCATION COORDINATING BOARD

} Documents are now available immediately after being scanned or printed into Laserfiche.

} Business processes can be monitored efficiently and problems identified and resolved as they occur.

} Unnecessary and redundant processes have been eliminated.

} Data entry error is significantly reduced.

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OKLAHOMA CHRISTIAN UNIvERSITyNumber of employees: 100-500Headquarters: Oklahoma City, OKExisting Laserfiche Integrations: Microsoft SharePoint, Datatel Colleague (Ellucian), LincDocBusiness Process: Financial Aid Processing

Oklahoma Christian University (OC)’s modest size offers big innovation: the private liberal arts college with 2,200 students and more than 60 degree programs is a visionary leader in advanced teaching and learning methods.

In 2010, OC implemented Laserfiche in the Student Financial Services Department and has since expanded it to other departments. Before implementing Laserfiche, OC’s financial aid office struggled to output financial aid offers quickly with a paper-intensive application process, ultimately frustrating students and parents.

Here is how OC improved student financial services and obtained $31,000 of hard savings in under two years by integrating Laserfiche with its existing Datatel Colleague ERP system (now known as Ellucian) and LincDoc eForms Creator.

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Clint LaRue, Director of Student Financial Services at Oklahoma Christian University, demonstrates how integrating Laserfiche with Datatel Colleague and LincDoc has simplified how the financial aid department manages student paperwork.

THE COMPLETE PROCESS

Every Oklahoma Christian University student is assigned a personal network account that they can use to log into the MyOC portal, which provides students with campus news, email, news about upcoming events and more. This portal is integrated with our Datatel Colleague ERP System and is built on Microsoft SharePoint. Here’s the screen a student sees when logged into the portal:

This portal also allows students to manage their financial aid forms. Under the Services section and My Financial Aid, there is a Missing Documents link. Clicking on this link brings the student to a new screen which lists and describes all of the missing documents he must submit.

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Our staff creates these documents through the LincDoc eForms Creator and then manually embeds the links to the forms in the student portal. For example, if a student clicks on the Asset Information Worksheet link in her Missing Documents section, she can open the following form after using her personal network ID and password to log into the LincDoc environment.

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} The Student ID Number, Student’s First Name and Student’s Last Name fields are automatically populated based on the information supplied during the login process.

} Once the student and parent sign the form and click Submit, Laserfiche Workflow automatically routes the form to one of the subfolders inside the _TO BE FILED folder in Laserfiche.

} Depending on whether—and what—information is still missing, this form can be initially classified as either Award, Probation and Suspension, Need Counselor Number or Need Student Name and File.

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We run Laserfiche Quick Fields sessions multiple times daily to further process and OCR the documents that arrive in those folders, with a different Quick Fields session for documents stored in each folder.

The session below processes the documents in the Need Counselor Number folder.

} Laserfiche Quick Fields identifies the Student ID and looks up the name of the appropriate Financial Aid Counselor, who is automatically assigned student files based on students’ last names in the Datatel Colleague database.

} Laserfiche Workflow then routes the document to the financial aid counselor responsible for this student. Each counselor has his or her own 01_Enter in Datatel folder in Laserfiche where these documents are then stored.

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Here’s how the folder of newly assigned student records appears to a financial aid counselor in Laserfiche:

Every financial aid counselor has access to his or her folder in Laserfiche from the Datatel Colleague environment, which provides easy access to documents. Through our Laserfiche integration with Datatel, an Affinity button is available in the toolbar of Datatel Colleague. A financial aid counselor can simply click on the binoculars icon to pull up the relevant student documents in Laserfiche:

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The financial aid counselor then opens the submitted form in Laserfiche and reviews it to make sure everything has been filled out correctly. S/he then selects Received from the PFC Reviewed list field in the assigned template.

Once the metadata is finalized, Laserfiche Workflow moves the document from the financial aid counselor’s folder into the relevant subfolder within the overall FILE_ROOM folder in the financial aid department’s Laserfiche repository.

The financial aid counselor then logs into Datatel Colleague and changes the status of the document to Received in CRI. This updates the document section of the student’s MyOC Portal so that this document is no longer labeled as missing.

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SUMMARy OF BENEFITS FOR OKLAHOMA CHRISTIAN UNIvERSITy

By integrating Laserfiche with existing systems, the financial aid office has streamlined the entire financial aid award process. Today:

} Financial aid counselors can respond immediately to students who inquire about their financial aid status by pulling up their entire files right from their desktops.

} It is easy to track employee efficiency by simply looking at how many documents are in their folders, which have been processed and which still need to be processed. This allows management to delegate workloads more efficiently to staff and address underperformance.

} Students may easily submit information electronically, reducing incoming mail from all over the world and saving OCU $31,000 in paper, mailing and storage costs a year.

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CSU CHANCELLOR’SOFFICE

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The California State University (CSU) Chancellor’s Office oversees 23 university campuses, nearly 437,000 students, and 44,000 faculty and staff across the state. It implemented Laserfiche to reduce paper and automate business processes.

The accounts payable department at the CSU Chancellor’s Office is responsible for processing invoices for the head office of the CSU system. Three dedicated technicians process about 1,000 invoices each month.

Learn how the accounts payable department automated invoice review and approval with Laserfiche Workflow.

Number of Employees: 100-500Headquarters: Long Beach, CAExisting Laserfiche Integrations: Oracle PeopleSoftBusiness Process: Accounts Payable Processing

The Chancellor’s Office at California State University describes how it streamlined accounts payable with Laserfiche Workflow.

CAPTURE

Invoices are received by mail and scanned into Laserfiche by the accounts payable technician (AP tech). During the scanning process, the “Invoice Type” and “AP Tech Name” metadata fields are manually populated. Once scanned, the documents are routed to the appropriate AP tech’s folder with Laserfiche Workflow.

After document scanning is complete, the AP tech opens each document residing in his folder and manually populates additional metadata fields.

} The “Reviewer” field is required.

} The “Vendor Name” and “Invoice Date” fields are completed to assist department users in identifying the documents.

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INvOICE APPROvAL

The reviewer is notified once per day by email when there are documents that need to be reviewed. This email contains a link to the reviewer’s work folder in Laserfiche.

The reviewer looks over each invoice in his folder. If the reviewer does not have delegated authority to approve invoices, he will select “OK to Pay” from the “Dept Status” field and designate another person to review the invoice by selecting that person’s name from those listed in the “Reviewer” field. The process will then repeat for the new designated reviewer. If any of the reviewers selects “Reject Back to AP Tech,” the invoice will be sent back to the original AP tech.

Each time the “Okay to Pay” option is selected, the following stamp is automatically applied to the image:

The reviewer name and current date are automatically applied by Laserfiche Workflow.

} The reviewer name is derived from the user’s system login ID.

} The box is outlined in red to indicate that approval to pay has not yet been obtained.

This process was developed to allow departmental staff the opportunity to relay information to the delegated approver that the invoice is correct and may be approved for payment. This process may be repeated as many times as necessary before the document is assigned to the approver—the person with delegated authority.

Once the last review has been completed, the name of the delegated approver is selected from those listed in the “Reviewer” field and the document is routed to that individual. The approver then chooses one of the following from the “Approval Status” field:

} Approved

} Rejected

} Approved with exception

} Approved manual send

If the invoice “Dept Status” is “OK to Pay” and the “Approval Status” is not “Rejected,” then the reviewer provides payment information by inserting a sticky note on the invoice with the purchase order or accounting information. Once a decision is made, the invoice is immediately sent back to the original AP tech. If the “Approved manual send” option is selected, the user can determine when the document is returned to the AP tech. The AP tech will be notified once per day by email when there are documents in his folder.

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The name and date are automatically applied by Laserfiche Workflow in the same manner as the “OK to Pay” stamp mentioned above. The box is outlined in green to indicate approval to pay has been given.

Security is applied to the Reviewer and Approver user groups to dictate allowable actions that users in these groups may perform. Reviewers will only have access to the “Dept Status” field while approvers are only allowed to update the “Approval Status” field.

When the AP tech receives the reviewed invoice, he can make a decision by choosing one of the following from the “AP Tech Instructions” field:

} Approved

} Resend

} Reject

If approved, the invoice will be routed to the “CSU\Accounts Payable\Invoices” folder. If the invoice is rejected it will be routed to “CSU\Accounts Payable\Invoices\Dead Invoices.” If “Resend” is selected, then the invoice will be sent back to a designated reviewer and the review process restarts.

When any of the “Approved” options are selected, the following stamp is applied to the image:

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Here is a diagram of the whole process.

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LASERFICHE WORKFLOW

This whole invoice approval process is powered by Laserfiche Workflow. A series of workflows routes the documents and sends the email reminders based on the various metadata field options selected.

Here is a screenshot of the workflow that routes the invoice to the reviewers. Based on the reviewer’s decision, this workflow then does one of the following:

} Routes the invoice to the AP tech.

} Waits for an annotation and then routes the invoice to another reviewer.

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Another workflow runs regularly every night. This workflow invokes other workflows, which scan the repository for invoices that still need to have an action taken and remind the appropriate people by email.

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One of those workflows also looks up information in the external Oracle PeopleSoft database and uses it to populate the rest of the metadata. This workflow can also be triggered on demand by setting the “AutoIndex” field to “Now” on any document.

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Here is how the “Custom Query” activity is configured:

ADvANTAGES OF LASERFICHE

Implementing Laserfiche in the accounts payable department at the CSU Chancellor’s Office resulted in the following benefits:

} Original documents remain in the Accounts Payable folders—only document shortcuts are routed, viewed and approved directly in Laserfiche.

} Approval time is reduced because the time required to route documents via the internal mail process is eliminated.

} Employees in other departments no longer need to contact Accounting if they have a question about an order or a submitted document. They can obtain this information on their own directly from Laserfiche.

} Since metadata is now updated based on the data stored in the PeopleSoft database, manual data entry errors have been eliminated.

UNIvERSITy OF CENTRALFLORIDA

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The University of Central Florida is the second-largest university in the country. Its police department provides law enforcement services to the university community as well as several university-affiliated housing communities near campus. The police department implemented Laserfiche Rio to streamline records management and eliminate paper records.

Here is how the University of Central Florida’s police department organizes its records with Laserfiche and complies with the State of Florida Library and Archives retention policy.

Number of Employees: 1,000-5,000Headquarters: Orlando, FLBusiness Process: Records Management

Carla Markx, Records Supervisor, shows how the University of Central Florida Police Department organizes its records with Laserfiche.

FOLDER STRUCTURE

Invoices are received by mail and scanned into Laserfiche by the accounts payable technician. When designing the repository, it was necessary to take into account exactly how each division within the department searches for documents. For example, the Patrol division has folders set up by year, month and case file number.

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Meanwhile the invoices maintained by the Procurement division are stored in folders by fiscal year and vendor.

The UCF Police Department found that the way files are organized in the Laserfiche repository does not have to be the same as the way physical files were organized. It is best to rethink the organization scheme to make sure that it is optimal, rather than simply replicate what was done previously.

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DOCUMENT TEMPLATES

In addition to browsing for documents, records will also be located by using Laserfiche Search. In order to facilitate searching, it is very important to create extensive document templates. A Laserfiche administrator should sit down with the divisions involved and have them write down every possible thing that they would like to locate documents by. That is the information that should be stored in template fields.

Since each division deals with different files and works with them in its own way, the UCF Police Department decided to create a separate document template for each division. Here is what the Police Records template looks like.

Here is what the Procurement document template looks like.

To account for different types of documents within each particular division, the UCF Police Department created a “Document Type” list field. A “Document Type” field is contained in every template, though the document types available to be selected differ by division. 49

RECORDS MANAGEMENT

In order to facilitate records management and comply with the state of Florida’s Library and Archives retention policy, the UCF Police Department added a “Document Date” field to each template. Twice a year the Records Manager runs a search in Laserfiche for all of the documents that have met or passed the retention guidelines, and deletes them.

In order to make sure that nothing is deleted that shouldn’t be, the Records Supervisor looks through the Recycle Bin after the Records Manager deletes the records. Once this second check is completed, the records are purged from Laserfiche.

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Implementing Laserfiche at the UCF Police Department has resulted in the following benefits:

} Sensitive data can be redacted using the redaction tool so that unauthorized users never have access to it.

} Records are deleted after they reach their retention so that the repository is never cluttered with old, unnecessary files.

} Documents can be found quickly and easily while each division still has a say in how to best organize its own files.

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UNIvERSITy OF OKLAHOMA

The College of Arts and Sciences is the largest school at the University of Oklahoma with 28 departments, 50 majors and more than 7,000 students. It implemented Laserfiche Avante in 2011 in order to digitize student records.

The College of Arts and Sciences’ large student population results in numerous requests for services such as changing majors and class withdrawals that must be processed every day by the Academic Services Office. Here is how the college uses Laserfiche to automate the management of student records and processing of petitions and forms.

Number of Employees: 1,000-5,000Headquarters: Norman, OKExisting Laserfiche Integrations: Banner Student Information SystemBusiness Process: Student Advising, Records Management

Rhonda Dean-Kyncl, Assistant Dean of Academic Services, University of Oklahoma College of Arts and Sciences, describes how Laserfiche streamlined many of the College’s processes including change of major and advising students on academic contract.

MANAGING STUDENT RECORDS

The Academic Services office handles more than 8,000 student records for both active and inactive students. Each record can range anywhere from ten to 100 pages and include the student’s entire academic history including high school and college/university transcripts, advising documents, email correspondence to and from the student, degree checks and disciplinary paperwork. It is very important that these records are only accessed by authorized staff members.

All student records are now stored in Laserfiche. The “File Room” folder in the Laserfiche repository stores records for active, denied, grad and inactive students.

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Each counselor has her own “Inbox” folder in the Laserfiche repository where documents needing her attention are placed.

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CHANGE OF MAJOR

Students change their major three times on average during their academic career. They can only change majors if they have an acceptable GPA. If the GPA falls below a certain level, then they have to get approval from one of the counselors. If it falls below another level, they need to seek the approval of the assistant dean.

Laserfiche has fully automated the change of major request process at the College of Arts and Sciences.

1. A student comes to the Academic Services Office and a receptionist fills out the change of major PDF form with them.

2. This form is then sent to Laserfiche with Laserfiche Snapshot and certain required fields are manually populated.

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3. A workflow is then invoked. If the student’s GPA is below 2.0, a short-cut to the Change of Major form is sent to the assistant dean’s folder. If the student’s GPA is greater or equal to 2.0, a short-cut to the form is routed to the assigned counselor’s folder.

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4. Either the assistant dean or the counselor reviews the change of major request and approves or denies it by changing the value of the “Reviewer Decision” field.

5. Once reviewed, the document is routed to a special folder in the repository where it awaits processing by Laserfiche Quick Fields. Laserfiche Quick Fields looks up information in the Banner Student Information System database by Student ID number and populates the rest of the document’s fields including name, term of entry, birth date and enrollment information. It is no longer necessary to obtain this information from the student, as it is always up to date based on what is stored in the Banner Student Information system.

This process is similar for other requests such as complete withdrawals, admission referrals and graduation and minor clearance.

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MOBILE ADvISING

Invoices are received by mail and scanned into Laserfiche by the accounts payable technician. If a student at the College of Arts and Sciences has a GPA that falls below a certain level, the student is placed on academic contract. This means that the student is at risk for being suspended from the university or dropping out because of poor performance. Students placed on academic contract are required to meet with an academic counselor at least once a semester, meet several strict guidelines to remain enrolled in the college and to make progress toward and eventually achieve an acceptable GPA.

This previously paper-heavy process has been revolutionized with Laserfiche. Students are now informed of their academic contract status by email. A copy of the email is stored in the student’s Laserfiche folder. The academic contract itself is electronic. The counselor reviews this contract with the student on an iPad and the student signs the contract with their finger or a stylus.

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Implementing Laserfiche in the University of Oklahoma College of Arts and Science Academic Services Office has resulted in the following benefits.

} The office saved $1,800 a year by eliminating its File Trail hard copy file management system and reducing the purchase of paper and supplies.

} Academic contract status, honor roll and other notifications are now sent by email, saving the office $1,080 a year.

} Advisors and staff are more efficient as multiple people can access the same student record simultaneously. Processes are automated so that emails don’t have to be typed manually.

} Student forms and documents are no longer misfiled. An advisor can see all the student records at a glance by simply opening the student’s folder in Laserfiche.

A copy of the signed contract is then emailed to the student.

“We believe this process will actually improve the student’s awareness of contract stipulations and ensure they have access to those stipulations throughout the semester.”

The College of Arts and Sciences is in the process of implementing mobile advising. Counselors will now be able to meet with students outside of the office, such as in a dorm meeting area, and not have to rely on students coming to them. Laserfiche Mobile will grant counselors immediate access to the student’s records directly on their iPads.

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SIMPLIFy ADMISSIONSPROCESSING

Using templates, which are collections of related metadata fields, allows organizations to find relevant documents quickly. An entry can only have one template assigned to it, but each template can contain multiple fields. This article outlines how to create a Laserfiche template that includes different field types, multi-value fields, dynamic fields and field constraints using the example of a college or university admissions process.

Job Functions: Admission OfficersBusiness Process: Admissions Processing

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Learn how to create an optimal document template using multi-value fields, dynamic fields and field constraints.

To demonstrate how to create a Laserfiche template, I will use the fictional example of Laser University.

ExAMPLE: LASER UNIvERSITy

As part of Laser University’s admissions process, prospective students have to submit an application along with the following supplemental documents:

} Personal statement.

} Candidate recommendation.

} Transcript.

All of these documents are scanned into Laserfiche with Laserfiche Scanning or printed into Laserfiche with Laserfiche Snapshot and stored in the applicant’s folder in the Laserfiche repository.

Laser University’s admission officers agreed on the following parameters to organize submitted applications and documents. The officers based this list on the information that they would need when searching for applications and related documents.

} First and last name.

} Date of birth.

} Proposed major of study.

} Phone number.

} Email address.

} GPA.

} SAT score.

} Type of degree.

} State of residency.

} Type of student (new student or transfer student).

} Type of document.

Here is how Laser University converted these items into a template that is applied to every application and related document in the Laserfiche repository.

TyPES OF FIELDS

Different field types can contain a different type of information. Some examples of field types include:

} Text fields.

} Number fields.

} Date fields.

} List fields.

Each field type can be used for a separate purpose. Here is a list of all of the fields in the Laser University “Admissions Application” template and their field types.

MULTI-vALUE FIELDS

Sometimes, it would make sense if one field was able to contain more than one value. For example, prospective students can have more than one phone number such as a home phone and a cell phone. To account for this, Laser University can create two different fields: one for cell phone and one for home phone. Two fields would make searching by phone number very inefficient, though, since the admissions officer would not know which of the fields to search because one of them could be null.

A better option would be to create a multi-value phone number field to store either one or both phone numbers. Most fields can be set to contain multiple values and the number of values assigned to such a field varies from entry to entry, depending on user input.

Therefore, Laser University can make one field for “Phone Number” and then set it to allow multiple values. An admissions clerk can then add as many phone numbers as necessary into the field. When searching for an applicant’s document by phone number, an admissions officer can simply perform a single search using whichever phone number he has in front of him.

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When a user opens the “Admissions – Application” template, he will now see that the phone number field contains two dashes. These dashes signify that a user will not be allowed to enter a phone number in any other format (such as adding parentheses).

Since all phone numbers are now formatted uniformly, searching by phone number will now be easy.

In addition to field constraints, fields in a template can be designated as “required.” Required fields prevent a user from saving the document without filling them out first. Laser University designated the following fields to be required because they are all used in naming the final documents:

} Admissions document type.

} Last name.

} First name.

FIELD CONSTRAINTS

Using a multi-value field for the phone number can make searching by phone number simpler, but if phone numbers aren’t entered in a consistent format (xxx-xxx-xxxx vs (xxx)xxx-xxxx), this searching will still be difficult. This is where field constraints fit in.

Field constraints restrict users to enter data that fits a particular pattern or is of a particular type. To make it easier for admissions officers to locate documents related to a particular applicant, the administrator can set field constraints on the phone number field. All phone numbers will have to follow this format: xxx-xxx-xxxx. This field constraint can be set with regular expressions.

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Required fields are configured in the Laserfiche Administration Console by simply checking a box.

Laser University’s existing external database table looks like this:

DyNAMIC FIELDS

Sometimes, list fields may contain so many different values that it is difficult for the admissions clerk to select the one he needs. For example, since there are over 100 different majors at Laser University, it is time consuming to select just one from a list field that contains them all.

Selecting a particular item from a list field can be simplified by using dynamic fields. Dynamic fields allow a user to be presented with options to select in one field, based on what he had previously selected in another field. Dynamic fields look up information in an external SQL database table and use this to filter the results.

Laser University has set up a series of dynamic fields to help with populating the “School Applied To” and “Major Applied For” fields. For this purpose, the university used an existing database table.

In the table pictured above each degree type has associated schools and majors. These relationships have been used to set up the dynamic fields.

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When configuring these fields in the Administration Console, the “School Applied To” field is assigned one parent field – the “Degree Type,” and the “Major Applied For” is assigned two parent fields – “Degree Type” and “School Applied To.”

When filling out this template, the admissions clerk will first select a degree type from the “Degree Type” list field. This field will contain a list of all the degree types that are specified in the external database table. Next, the admissions clerk will select the correct school from the “School Applied To” field. The choices in this field are limited to those schools that accept the degree just specified. Once the admissions clerk selects a school, the “Major Applied For” field will be restricted to only those majors that satisfy the degree type and particular school.

For example, if the admissions clerk selects the undergraduate degree type, then the schools listed in the “School Applied To” field are only schools that provide an undergraduate degree (the law school will not be listed since that school only provides graduate degrees). Once the clerk selects the Letters, Arts and Sciences school, the majors listed in “Major Applied For” will only be those that are offered at the school, and for which a student can get an undergraduate degree (mechanical engineering will not be listed, as that major is located in the School of Engineering).

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FINAL TEMPLATE

Here is what the final, populated template looks like:

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BEST PRACTICES FOR USING TEMPLATES AND FIELDS

Administrators should keep the following best practices in mind, when setting up fields and templates.

} Reuse fields across templates. If many templates should have a “Last Name” field, then create one field and apply it to the multiple templates. This simplifies searching by allowing a user to find all student records for a person with the last name of “Smith” without having to worry about which template to search in.

} List fields, dynamic fields and field constraints can help reduce errors due to data entry or spelling mistakes. This will also make documents easier to search for in the repository.

} When creating templates, think of all the different things that an end user would want to search on and include those as template fields.

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IMPROvE RECORDSMANAGEMENT PRACTICES

Proper records management is important for colleges and universities of all sizes. Here are some strategies for setting up records folders, implementing cutoff instructions and setting retention schedules using the example of a university. The article also contains tips for Laserfiche administrators on how to facilitate system maintenance from a records perspective.

Job Functions: Records ManagersBusiness Process: Records Management

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Records managers and administrators: learn strategies for setting up records folders, implementing cutoff instructions and setting retention schedules with advice from a Laserfiche Presales Engineer.

RECORDS MANAGER

The role of a records manager is to manage the records of an organization according to a formal plan. One of the obstacles records managers face is that retention schedules may not provide explicit instructions. This gray area can be used to your advantage by allowing a bit of leeway when setting up cutoff instructions.

A cutoff instruction determines when a record is eligible for cutoff (eligible to enter retention). There are seven different cutoff instructions in Laserfiche, but we will focus on the three most popular:

} Time-based cutoff: When a retention schedule is triggered based on a time-based cycle period (such as monthly or weekly).

} Event-based cutoff: When an event on the record (such as employee termination) triggers a retention schedule.

} Time + Event-based cutoff: Triggered when an event occurs, but the records are only eligible for cutoff after a subsequent time-based cycle period. Basically, this cutoff collects all of the records for which retention was triggered by an event and gives them all the same starting date for future eligibility calculations.

It is a best practice to use either a Time-based or Time + Event-based cutoff. When it comes time for final disposition, all the records with the same cutoff eligibility date will be eligible for disposition on the same date, enabling you to process hundreds of records in one batch instead of one record at a time. Most regulations specify a minimum retention period, so keeping a record a few weeks longer in order to process it with other records should not be a problem.

REUSE INSTRUCTION DEFINITIONS

Many records management instruction definitions are similar. For example, there is usually a standardized archive location, general standard retention times for basic handling and so on. Creating generic cutoff, retention and disposition instructions allows you to reuse them across record types and keep the number of unique instructions to pick from to a minimum, making records management much more efficient.

For example, let’s use the following physical retention schedule for a university and convert it to RME.

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The easiest way to do this is to reuse some of the elements. The color-coded items are the ones that we can group together.

From this we can create two different cutoff instructions:

} Time-based: Academic year.

} Time + Event-based: An event + academic year.

We can also create three retention schedules:

} 1 year, then destroy.

} 6 years, then accession to “Academic Registry”.

} 3 years, then destroy.

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LASERFICHE ADMINISTRATOR

The Laserfiche administrator’s role involves creating, configuring, securing and maintaining the enterprise content management system. Here are some suggestions to make this system easy to maintain, from a records perspective:

} Determine which documents are records. Not every document is considered a record, so not every document needs to be stored in a records folder.

} Organize your records series on a broad level, such as by department or by content type and year, and the records folders at a more specific level, such as by month or employee name.

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In addition to making your records retention easier to apply, organizing your records in this way imposes a limit on how many records can be stored in a particular folder. For example, there is a limited number of records that can be stored in the folder corresponding to the month of May in the year 2011. This will prevent your system from infinite growth, which could negatively affect performance.

} Use Laserfiche Workflow to route your records to the correct storage location in the Laserfiche repository based on either the field values Laserfiche Quick Fields extracts from them or the field values a user manually enters during scanning. This alleviates users from having to remember where different types of documents are stored in Laserfiche. It also saves the records manager from having to manually store each document themselves. Simply configure Laserfiche Workflow to start when you update one of your metadata fields and it will automatically name and store your records for you.

} Implement transparent records management (TRM). TRM allows records managers and general users to have their own repository views and still have access to the same content.

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In the above screenshot the records manager’s folder structure is on the left and the user’s folder structure is on the right. The records manager’s folder structure is functional and allows him to store all of his records in a way that will maintain compliance with the published retention schedules and aid the administrator in setting up security. The user’s folder structure is more logical and provides an intuitive way to find content. In order to make TRM possible, Laserfiche Workflow automatically stores the original documents in the appropriate location in the overall records management structure while creating shortcuts in other folders that general users have access to.

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UNIvERSITy OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

With a student population of more than 8,000, the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences is one of the largest colleges on the University of Southern California (USC) campus. It implemented Laserfiche in 2007 to manage faculty records.

USC’s Dornsife College has around 700 active faculty members. Storing their records, as well as the records of all previous faculty members, took up a lot of space. Here is how USC’s Dornsife College revolutionized faculty records management with Laserfiche.

Number of Employees: 10,000-15,000Headquarters: Los Angeles, CABusiness Process: Faculty Records Management

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April Burnett, Records Retention Administrator at the University of Southern California Dornsife College, describes how Laserfiche revolutionized faculty records management.

LASERFICHE QUICK FIELDS

Barcode coversheets are attached to new faculty documents such as contracts, appointments or promotion notices as soon as they arrive at the office.

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The documents are then scanned into Laserfiche with Laserfiche Quick Fields. Laserfiche Quick Fields extracts information from the barcode to identify the document type.

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For salary or contract documents, Laserfiche Quick Fields also does a lookup into the payroll database to populate some of the fields.

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Below is a screenshot of the full Laserfiche Quick Fields session configuration.

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LASERFICHE REPOSITORy

Each faculty member at Dornsife College is categorized into one of three types:

} Pending: faculty members who have accepted an offer of employment and have a future start date.

} Active: faculty members currently employed at Dornsife.

} Inactive: faculty members who are no longer employed at Dornsife, are deceased or have declined an employment offer with the college.

The Laserfiche repository has a folder corresponding to each of the faculty types.

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Within each folder, there is a different folder corresponding to each faculty member. These folders follow a standard naming convention of: last name, first name, 10-digit USC ID Number.

LASERFICHE SECURITy Four other entities within the university have access to the Dornsife College faculty records through the Laserfiche Client or Laserfiche Web Access:

} Dornsife Business Officers

} University Payroll

} University Human Resources

} Facilities80

Laserfiche security is set up by group. Each Laserfiche user belongs to a different group and has access to only those records that the whole group can access. Security tags are used to make sure that individual, proprietary documents are only viewed by authorized individuals, even though the rest of the documents in that folder can be viewed by others.

Each employee can configure and save a different column profile to meet his or her individual needs. For example, an employee in Payroll can display columns with salary information while an employee in Faculty Affairs can set columns that contain information about the employee’s job description.

The preview pane in the folder browser can be customized so that the document’s image can be viewed without the document having to be opened first.

BENEFITS OF LASERFICHEManaging faculty records with Laserfiche has resulted in the following benefits for Dornsife College and the university as a whole.

} Employees from other departments can access faculty records instantly without having to ask someone at the faculty affairs office to retrieve them.

} Information about faculty is easy to find. Recently the college was contacted by a publication looking to write an article about a former professor who is now deceased. The faculty affairs office was able to provide information about the professor’s tenure at Dornsife College right over the phone.

} Faculty information is completely secure since only authorized individuals have access to faculty files.

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DALHOUSIEUNIvERSITy

Established in 1818, Dalhousie University is one of Canada’s leading research universities. The Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine has 400 students and 500 residents in its undergraduate and graduate programs.

In 2003, the Faculty of Medicine implemented Laserfiche to transform the student records management process. Here is how it uses Laserfiche for efficient, organized and paperless student records management.

Number of Employees: 1,000-5,000Headquarters: Halifax, Nova Scotia, CanadaBusiness Process: Student Records Management

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Monica Baccardax, IT Project Manager, describes how Dalhousie University Medical School uses Laserfiche to manage student and resident records.

LEGACy PROCESS

From the time a student or resident was admitted to Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine to the time of graduation, his paper records were kept in a single file folder. This file folder was stored in the department’s locked storage area and moved to offsite storage once the student graduated.

Finding a specific document was time consuming since the file folder first had to be retrieved from either onsite or offsite storage and then the actual document would have to be located within the folder.

FOLDER STRUCTURE

Currently, student and resident records are scanned directly into Laserfiche by a dedicated scanning technician as soon as they arrive at the office or as soon as the student/resident completes the medical school program. Records originating in an electronic format, such as student assessments, are imported directly into the Laserfiche repository. The older records were also back-scanned into Laserfiche.

All Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine records are organized in a single repository. The medical school has developed a workable filing method over the years. Rather than change something that works well, the Laserfiche repository folder structure was created to mimic the existing structure.

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Every student or resident’s records are stored in his individual folder under the department in which his program of study is housed.

For example, the department of Undergraduate Medical Education (UGME) has its own folder. Within that folder are individual student folders. When the student graduates from the UGME program, his folder is moved to the non-current student records folder under the main UGME departmental folder.

DOCUMENT TEMPLATES

To create document templates, the Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine staff identified types of information common to all records, such as the Dalhousie University ID and student/resident name. These common elements were used to generate fields included on each template. Additional fields were chosen to make it easy for employees to search for the various record types.

For example, here is what the template assigned to all academic documents looks like.

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BENEFITS OF LASERFICHE

Implementing Laserfiche at Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine has resulted in the following benefits:

} Records are organized using Dalhousie’s classification codes and metadata schemes resulting in faster search and retrieval.

} Physical storage space has been reduced.

} Only one copy of each document is stored and no record is ever lost.

} Multiple employees can access the same record simultaneously, as long as they have the appropriate security rights.

One field common to all document templates is “Retention Date.” This field is populated by the scanning technician during the scanning process. The Dalhousie School Faculty of Medicine has a retention policy that requires most records to be retained for at least 60 years. When a record reaches its retention date, the records management administrator will delete it from Laserfiche. Records are also deleted upon receipt of a signed approval form from the authorized person.

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Higher Education

Joanna Slusarz

QUICKER BETTER SAFERHigher Education

Empowering students, faculty and staff in today’s fast-paced educational environment requires more than just giving them fast access to information. Successful colleges and universities need to optimize their business processes by getting the right information into the right hands at the right time.

Learn how a number of higher education institutions have made dramatic changes to their business processes with ECM software all while cutting costs, reducing manual labor and complying with state and local regulations.

This book contains a collection of customer solutions (including step-by-step instructions and screenshots) for streamlining and automating various business processes across various departments such as the Chancellor's Office, Financial Aid, Faculty Affairs and more.

QU

ICK

ER B

ETTER SA

FER: H

igher Education

Laserfiche will help you in your daily process. It will improve employee morale. It will help you in everything you are trying to do for students."

- John Hermes, Vice President for Information Technology, Oklahoma Christian University

"

© 2013 LaserficheLaserfiche is a division of Compulink Management Center, Inc. Laserfiche®, Run Smarter® and Compulink® are registered trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc. All other trademarks are properties of their respective companies. Due to continuing product development, product specifications and capabilities are subject to change without notice. Printed in the USA.