Forms and Workflows - New features that drive efficiencies in your vetting process

[KaraMarolt]

We're excited to announce major enhancements to LearnPlatform, designed to streamline your product vetting processes, improve data collection, and make your administrative tasks significantly easier. These updates focus on forms and workflows!

Let's start first with a few improvements to forms.

Streamlining Data Collection in Forms

We've introduced two key features to make your forms cleaner and workflows more powerful.

• Say Goodbye to Endless Scrolling with Dropdown Menus: Now, any multi-select or single-select question with numerous options can be displayed as a dropdown menu. This feature isn't just for new questions; you can apply it to previously created questions for a cleaner, more user-friendly look. This enhancement significantly improves the user experience when selecting choices from long lists.
  
  
• Introducing the Game-Changing Tag Checklist: This is the big one which has been delighting our early adopters! The new tag checklist question type allows tags to be applied directly to products during the request or vetting process. This eliminates much of the manual work for administrators who previously had to read through forms and then apply tags. A tag checklist can be added to a Request Form or Review Form.

Tag-checklist item type

Workflows: Smarter Automation

When leveraging the tag checklist, there are new features in workflows to ensure you can easily remove tags that may have simply been transactional.  

• Tag Automation Options: You now have the ability to either add all tags from a list or remove all tags from a list as automation actions within your workflows. This feature was specifically requested to help clear tags that were accumulated during the vetting process but are no longer needed at the end of the workflow, reducing confusion.  This is especially helpful when leveraging the new tag-checklists in forms, when answers may only be relevant during the workflow.
  
  
• Automation-Only Steps: We've added an automation-only step type which allows you to insert steps into your workflow to execute automations without requiring action by a reviewer. Similar to a review step, an automation-only step can leverage multiple automations (e.g., set status, send notifications, add tags) and can be made conditional. This simplifies complex conditional steps, allows for customized notifications based on product status, and helps reduce duplicated automations.

Automation-only steps

Example Use Cases

Let's take a look at a few ways these new features can be used for increased efficiency:

• Use Case 1: Activating Conditional Workflow Steps: You can now automate workflow progression based on form responses. If a product's review path depends on the school, grade level, or subject for which it will be used, you can simply use the tag checklist item type to gather the necessary information to drive those steps in the workflow.  Previously, an administrator would manually add a reviewer or apply tags to trigger the correct conditional review step. 
  
  This streamlines reviews based on criteria without needing an admin to review forms and apply the tags associated with those conditional steps.

Rochester Public School District has set up tag-checklists to identify a product’s primary purpose - instructional or operational - and whether or not it will be used for Special Education.  Based on the educator’s choices, the corresponding product review steps are activated in the workflow.

"Our updated workflow will not only lighten the administrative load. but also make the entire request process far more transparent for everyone."
- Ethan Wenz, Rochester Public School District 

• Use Case 2: Collecting Product Information During Vetting: It's now easier to gather important product data as the vetting process unfolds. These tags are instantly applied to the product, making it easy to filter and search for products with specific features later. Collect data privacy elements, accessibility features, and more during the review process, making your product library more searchable and informative. 
  
  During an accessibility review, a reviewer can select available accessibility features like "Closed Captioning" or "Text to Speech" from a tag checklist. These tags can then be displayed on the Products page.

Page County Public Schools is using tag-checklists to collect information from teachers of whether they are requesting a free or paid product, and from reviewers on funding sources.  

"The tag checklist was probably one of the most helpful things for us—it lets us be transparent about what we're approving or denying, which cuts down on questions from teachers. It also keeps our workflow efficient by making sure everyone only sees what's relevant, instead of being flooded with unnecessary information."
— Tracy Shifflett & Kristin Vaughn, Page County Virginia

• Use Case 3: Setting and Communicating Status and Ending Workflows Automatically: You asked for more ways to automated workflow conclusions, and this is a good fit for these new features. In the past, if a product was rejected by a reviewer whose approval was required, a LearnPlatform administrator would need to manually stop the workflow and send a notification to the requestor. You can now leverage the tag checklist question type to activate a conditional, automation-only step of a workflow to completely automate its conclusion. 

Early Adopter Use Case: The Accessibility step reviewer, working in My Tasks, responds to a tag checklist question by selecting "Fails Accessibility Standards," which automatically applies the tag to the product. The presence of that tag activates a conditional automation that sets the product's status to "Reviewed & Denied" and sends a customized email to the requestor, emphasizing the importance of the district's accessibility requirements. 

This configuration of a tag checklist removes the need for manual workflow stoppage and ensures consistent communication.

Setting up a powerful workflow can be a complex process, and we’re here to help!  Investing the time to leverage these new features results in a streamlined experience for everyone involved.  Please connect with your CSM, @Madra or me if you have any questions about how to best leverage workflows in your organization.