Floridu Process Automations
Florix Inc new directions
Florix Inc, has been reporting excellent returns over the last few years and has reasonable reserves that board is interested in reinvesting or diversification of business. With three experienced people in the board who has served many years in education, it was decided to look at opportunities in investing to education business.
That is how the Floridu was born focusing on education business. Initial investments will go into Tertiary School specializing in engineering and computing with the hope for degree awarding institution later.
Floridu, managed to acquire a government subsidized facility that can be modified to hold up to 1000 students per trimester. The physical infrastructure modernization is estimated to be finish within 4 months, includes compete rewiring of the school with high-speed internet via fiber connected hotspots, new electronics, mechatronics, and computer labs as well the lecture theaters.
Now the management is focusing on the operations infrastructure for School Management, Intake Management and Academic management tools including Learning Management to be procured and implemented.
Among the Processes Identified that needed to be implemented initially were
Student Enrollment Process
Employee Hiring Process - Available
Academic Staff Hiring Process - Available
Leave Management - Available
Employee Off boarding - Available
Facility Booking
Field Trip Request Process - Available
Maintenance Requests - Available
Bullying/Misbehavior Reporting - Available
Purchase Request - Available (please refer to Florix Demo)
Expense Claim Available (please refer to Florix Demo)
Request for Software/Hardware
Asset Management
Send SMS to guardian - Available
Issue ID’s to employees
Personal File Management
Appraisals of Academic
Paid Study Leave??
Code of Conduct for academic staff
Sign up for Sports activities.
Capacity planning
Old Boys/Girls Associations and activities
Parent engagement and communications
1.0 Student Enrollment Process
Scenario: Floridu has two intakes of students, September and January. Applications are online via Web browser and receipt deadlines are 1st December and 1st August respectively. All students will receive an acknowledgement from the colleague within 15 days of application.
If the Application is accepted then students need to proceed with the second step, which required completion of the payment procedures and enrollment process to the course.
There are few scholarships offered to students who are exceptionally good, these are school memorial scholarships. Under this program annually there are 5 vacancies covering 3 engineering and 2 computing.
Process:
Applicant will submit enrollment request application Floridu University (floridustudentenrollment.azurewebsites.net)
Based on Either engineering or computing, this will be assigned to relevant academics to evaluate
Based on outcome, student is being informed via email.
Student administration will send further notice to student for payment and physical presence for the induction program.
Payment receipt is sent to student
Student enrolment process complete by uploading all the documents to archival system.
2.0 Employee Hiring Process - Available
Scenario: Floridu is continuously updating and upgrading its staff to support the operations without a hindrance to the academic activities. Among administrative and operational staff are finance, admin, operation management, maintenance and security.
With recent pandemic situation in place, all recruitments are now based on online recruitment process that covers, applications submissions to interviews and background checks up to the offer letter.
There are multiple methods to receive applications, from the Floridu website, via Linked in and via Third party recruitment sites. Once an application is received based on the department, it will be directed to the relevant head of the department. Based on his/her recommendation it will be passed back to HR for organizing an online interview. A Team Video interview will be organized.
Once they arrive at a decision on the recruitment, a final approval step is submitted to General Manager.
Once the formalities are completed, HR will receive the approval for headcount in.
Process:
Appliant will submit the application via website
Automatically routed to the relevant department head
If approves then goes to HR for organizing interview schedule
If rejects, still the applicant will get, and email and process will end
After the video interview decision will be made
If accepted HR will continue
Else applicant will be notified
HR will update the portal with all the documents
Workflow will include the process of HRM record creation, Issuance of Items such as Laptop etc. as well
3.0 Academic Staff Hiring Process - Available
Scenario: Academic staff, the heart of successful education business, recruitment is not only challenging but also require careful evaluation to make sure the right talent is acquired.
The process involves, from requirement identification and deans' approvals to publishing, interviewing, shortlisting and onboarding. To simplify the process for Floridu part of this process is outsourced and once the decision to a hiring staff is being made internally, outsourced partner will be doing marketing, prequalifying and filtering of applications.
The balance of the process, final interviews, contract negotiation and onboarding are carried out by the Floridu academic staff.
Process:
Requirement identification and justification
JD creation
Outsourcing to specialized recruitment partner
Advertise
Shortlist
Interviews by the floridu staff
Background check
Job offer
Onboarding
4.0 Leave Application and Management - Available
Scenario: Floridu has so for not implemented a fully fledge HCM system, the plan has been to implement a full blown Digital HCM when the staff count reach over 75. However, having only HR person in the department has increased the stress on HR accounting activities and the biggest of such challenges is managing leave.
This issue was discussed with the Senior management team and it was decided to automate few of those processes using their existing process automation toolkit Flowdoh.
Current 50 plus staff should be able to apply for their leave via this new system, the process would be every year HR would update the available leave balances using Update Leave workflow, and then whenever leave is being applied the system will generate automatic balances. It was decided to stick to the standard of 14 Days annual leave and 7 Days of casual or medical leave per employee and one can carry forward annual leave only and again for a maximum to 2 years.
Two Workflows are there! Leave Application and Leave Management
Leave Application Process:
Employees will log in to workflow system and initiate leave request
When initiated with employee number it will show the leave balances
Then employee can apply for the leave (period and reason)
Reporting or Approval Manager will be selected by the employee
Manager will approve or reject via Inbox or Teams Bot
User will be notified via mail about the outcome
Leave balances will be automatically update as per the outcome
All employees will be able to Apply for leave but for the simplicity of demonstration we have included only Sales Team (“Uru”, “Nadia”, “Nimal”, “Jolly”, “Chan”, “Namaskar” ) capable of applying leave. Reporting person of Sales team is Barry Mentor. Also HR group is added to make the demo’s more flexible.
This workflow demonstrate automatic reporting manager selection by the workflow designer!
This workflow is enabled with Teams Approval Bot, if you need to demonstrate the Teams bot, you need to ask and get added to HR group with your O365 email. Please note once you do that, when anyone doing a demo you will receive a notification too.
Leave Management Process:
HR Admin team can
Add new employees with Leave Balances
Remove an Employee
Update the Leave Balances of Employee
User group : HR where “John” is the HR Manager have access to this update
5.0 Employee Offboarding - Available
Floridu being an education institution, is quite strict with its discipline matters. For Floridu when employees are being issued with warnings and served with final termination, still the offboarding process required certain amount of documentation to make sure everything is clear from any hindrance of removing a person from the cadre.
Further there are cases where senior staff is also moving to different countries with more exposure and better perks, this has been a challenge but a norm in the industry as well.
But to have better understanding on recruitment, retention, disciplinary management Floridu decide to implement a proper offboarding process, to identify reasons, with exit interviews and supervisor or HR comments.
Process:
Offboarding process will be initiated by the HR
Select a type, resignation or termination
Resignation will have an exit interview
Termination will have explanation by the supervisor, HR and employee comments as well
There will be table update for further analysis
User group of HR can initiate the offboarding process.
This workflow demonstrate User Picker, which allows the submission user to select a person to write the report on the termination.
When demonstrating pay attention to whom you will be forwarding the next work step.
Table update process is not completed yet!
6.0 Facility Booking
Floridu has shared spaces that are used by teachers and students. The new concept of book your space is to bring variety to the learning environment and also to support specialty labs and lecture areas.
Computer Lab
Learning Theater – with Video conferencing
Mechatronics Lab
Cloud Connect Lab
Mini Supercomputing lab
50 Private Learning pods
Teachers and students are allowed to make bookings for those facilities.
Process:
Select a facility
Select date and time period
Indicate who are the users, group size etc
When booking is requested an email will be generated with the details and send to admin
Admin will make sure no double bookings for the same (verified manually)
Once admin accepts initiator will receive a confirmation (expect an iCal so it can populate in the local calendar)
7.0 Field Trip Request Process - Available
Time to time Floridu organizes field trips to Universities and other interesting locations, where students can capture the broader use cases of what they learn.
But this process requires, security arrangements.,transport, access permission, special need assistance etc. therefore teachers are requested fill a Field trip request process and administration department will make arrangements of the same.
Process:
Create request
Attach list of students and guardian contact
Trip details
Send a notification to guardians
Security requirements
Transport requirements and Any special needs
Administration acknowledgement
Completion notification
User groups:
Teachers : “Uru”, “Nadia”, “Nimal”, “Jolly”, “Chan”, “Namaskar”
Security: “Bruce”
Admin: “Barry”
Transport: “Sami”, “Jerry”, “Notti”, “Currie”
This demo has excel import capability and please use Demo Excel file which has students List.
While we can easily incorporate emailing the guardians about the trip by a loop and mail, we have not done that purposely as the email addresses will get spammed.
8.0 Maintenance Requests – Available
Floridu Campus has over 2000 lamps and hundreds of WIFI hotspots and projectors, video conferencing units etc. Invariably there are failures to some of this equipment. However, the facility is following Japanese Kaizen program and as part of it, anyone in the facility can create trouble ticket, thanks to proper numbering for identifying all the different items.
Management has decided to implement support ticket generation using Flowdoh tool kit.
Process:
Create a new maintenance request
Take photograph using the mobile
Select the issue type and add if there are any comments
Send
Maintenance department will receive the request
Allocate a person
Person completes service report after completion
All employees will be able to request for Maintenance but for the simplicity of demonstration we have included only Sales Team (“Uru”, “Nadia”, “Nimal”, “Jolly”, “Chan”, “Namaskar” ) capable of Initiating this request.
This workflow is enabled with Teams Approval Bot, if you need to demonstrate the Teams bot, you need to ask and get added to Engineering Manager group with your O365 email. Please note once you do that, when anyone doing a demo you will receive a notification too.
9.0 Bullying/Misbehavior Reporting - Available
Floridu has implemented Bullying and Misbehavior reporting process. The process allows anyone to create such report. However, the current manual system requires someone to fill a form, and sometimes to attach even proof etc. to create a case.
Floridu Management, has seen the capability of Flowdoh workflow engine and decided to bring this process online and accessible to even broader set of users.
With the new implementation they expect, using the mobile devices students and teachers can participate on the process of reporting, evaluating and responding to such incidents.
Process:
New request is created
Form is filled up online and attach any evidence
Admin will receive
Will decide and appoint the committee
Committee will take decision
Admin will implement the decision
Acess:
All employees and All students: should be able to report for simplicity we are allowing the user group “Sales” to act on behalf
Admin: group will review “Barry” simplicity use the Usergroup GM
Commitees: will consists of admin and education staff max of 6 “Uru”, “Nadia”, “Nimal”, “Jolly”, “Chan”, “Namaskar”
10.0 Purchase Request
It was decided to use the same purchase request Florix is using !
11.0 Expense Claim
It was decided to use the same expense claim solution of Florix
12.0 Request for Software/Hardware
Scenario: Floridu has been providing its staff the BYOD option for their laptops and phones. However, there are some instances employees require very special hardware which is either very expensive or they are not regular.
In such cases employees can request to purchase the necessary hardware or software. These requests need budget approvals before purchasing.
13.0 Assets Management
Scenario: Floridu has acquired significant amount of specialized hardware for the laboratories and communications. Also, the inventory contains chairs, tables and various other physical goods that need to be managed.
Managing these assets is a challenging task as similar item names, with features cannot be identified from the exterior and similar other issues.
Therefore, Floridu decided to take photographic inventory of the items and print a 2D barcode label for pasting for future tracking.
Process:
Create asset capture incident
Capture the photo
Generate unique ID
Print a barcode and paste
Upload the image and the other information to Enadoc for archiving
Users:
14.0 Sending SMS to guardians - Available
Scenario:
Folridu Parent Teachers interaction has multiple methods. One of the semester rituals of the floridu to have parent engagement meetings to explain the progress of the child and college. Most parents prefer to receive SMS.
So terachers will populate list of parents to be met and bulk sms sending tool Twillio is integrated to send the messages.
This will demonstrate the Open API integration with Twillio SMS gateway
Process:
Teacher wil fill the guradian list and the message
Flowdoh, Twillio integration will send all the messages in the backend
Users:
Teachers : “Uru”, “Nadia”, “Nimal”, “Jolly”, “Chan”, “Namaskar”
15.0 Collaboration - Mail Room with multi organization capability
Scenario: Floridu receives number of emails, and snail mails every day from various external parties requesting information, or services related to student services, document verification requests so on and so forth. It is noted that there have been more than 50 to 60 different queries do come in and there is a challenge in predefining a process flow to attend them.
Some of these requests are related to administration work such as old employees requesting character certificates to their provident fund confirmations etc. It is also noted that there are some requests that are related to the service levels which may need to escalate to sister company. For an example recycling machines at the floridu site has been not functioning correctly and a neighbour has complained about the smell, which need to be escalated to Florix inc, Engineering support.
Since it is important to handle these queries and suggestions in a structured way, Floridu management has requested the Flowdoh engineers to address this and create a solution.
Process:
All the snail mails and common emails such as [email protected] are received by Mail room.
Once received by the Mail room, the document is scanned and attached to a form, if it is an email a pdf is created and attached to the form and send to one of the following groups to act.
Administration
Teachers
Finance
Dean
Relevant user group is then notified to act on the same.
Once received by the user group they will be able to collaborate internally by sending back and forth within the team to take actions.
Once completed a notification is sent and process completes.
In rare cases such as the one explained above, where the Neighbours complained about the malfunction of recycling plant, the request should be able to forward to the complaint management system in Florix Inc.
Design Consideration:
In order to address this requirement, Floridu and Florix will have two workflows with General Trigger enabled. Process initiation will happen from a webform (instead from the workspace). Once it is being Triggered it will be send to mail assignment team. Once assigned it will go through the collaboration process and if the process requires it to be escalated to Florix Inc. It will initiate the Florix inc Complaint Management workflow.
Protocol: When inter organizational workflows get forwarded it will have a common format of From, Attention, Subject, Body, Attachments.
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