Many institutions struggle with paper-based processes. The situation becomes even worse when the process flow is poorly defined, and responsible parties are unaware that it’s time to act. Does this description of chaos sound familiar to you? Well, you’re not alone, as we have already mentioned, many institutions have the same pain. For those who use Ellucian software, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. With the Ellucian Workflow solution, you can automate many routine business processes.
In this blog post, we show how the ABCloudz team used Ellucian Workflow to automate the review and approval of student disability declarations for a university in the UK. If you have read our related post on the Disability Declaration Experience card, this is the other half of the same implementation. The Experience card delivers the student-facing GUI, while the Workflow handles the orchestration behind the scenes. Together, they form a reusable reference architecture we apply across similar process automation scenarios in the Ellucian ecosystem.
Are you looking for a reliable partner to automate your processes, data flows, or integrations? ABCloudz has hands-on experience with the Ellucian software that you need. With hundreds of delivered projects for higher education institutions, we are your go-to partner for any automation, modernization, or integration.
What is Ellucian Workflow?
Ellucian Workflow is a software-as-a-service business process management solution. This solution automates repetitive routine tasks and helps staff work more efficiently.
In practice, we often implement automation in Ellucian SaaS as a two-layer pattern. An Experience card provides the GUI for students or staff, and an Ellucian Workflow coordinates approvals, notifications, and data updates. This separation keeps the user experience simple while ensuring the underlying process remains auditable, maintainable, and reusable.
Ellucian Workflow has an intuitive interface with drag-and-drop functionality. You can create workflow diagrams that use automated procedures such as sending email notifications, updating data records, and so on. Powered by the Ellucian Ethos platform, the Workflow solution has built-in data exchanges with Banner and Colleague so that you can access all the data you need.
You can make your organization more efficient by saving staff time and reducing human errors with Ellucian Workflow. If this description sounds like a silver bullet for your institution, then stick with us to learn how the ABCloudz team automated business processes for our customer.
Current state architecture
In the paper era, students had to print, fill in, sign, and bring their disability declaration to the university support team. Of course, during the peak periods, this support team was overloaded with requests. However, to approve all student disability declarations, the support team had to create a specific group for each request.
The following image shows the current state of the disability declaration flow in the university.
This “paper-to-people-to-email” loop is a common pattern in many institutions. The goal was not just to digitize the form, but to separate the student-facing experience from the operational pipeline that routes work, tracks decisions, and updates the system of record.
The approval process was barely documented, and the creation of an approval group for some declarations lasted for long weeks rather than days or hours.
To check the status of the declaration, the students had to contact the support team again. And again. So, they had to wait for a simple and straightforward confirmation instead of enjoying their studies.
Creating a reusable workflow
The ABCloudz team designed the Workflow layer of a scalable and reusable reference architecture with three goals in mind.
- Manage the student disability declarations
- Allocate support services
- Notify workflow stakeholders
The starting point for this workflow is a new disability declaration. The result is either an approved or rejected declaration. Between these two components, we have the review and approval steps. For each of these four major components, the workflow supports different automated actions, such as sending email notifications or updating data in the database.
An approval group still is an integral part of the process. This group must approve or decline each request and ensure all updates are reflected within the respective areas. You can’t automate this approval process, but for all other steps, Ellucian Workflow has a proper component! For example, the approved request triggers an update of the student record and statutory reporting in the Banner SaaS database. On the opposite side, for each rejected declaration, the workflow cleans up the related data and files.
The ABCloudz team designed this workflow diagram with reusable assets, making the whole solution reusable. As a result, we can easily customize this reusable workflow to interact with new tools that the university might want to add in the future, or even tailor it to the needs of another higher education institution.
Future-state architecture
The following image shows the automated architecture of the Ellucian Workflow.
The workflow can start from several entry points. In this implementation, the main ones were:
- Disability declared in the admissions record.
- Online enrollment disability card.
- Disability declared on the Ellucian Experience card.
The workflow can find the first two items in the Banner SaaS database by using the general medical information (GMI) API. In this case, the workflow moves to the review component. This component generates an email to the student with an assigned form to complete. The workflow uploads this form to an Amazon S3 bucket. This email also includes an explanation on how to do so.
When the student declares disability on the Ellucian Experience card, the workflow starts automatically. This illustrates the intended split of responsibilities: the card captures the declaration through the GUI, and the workflow takes over to coordinate review, approvals, notifications, and system updates.
The workflow routes each request to an approval group configured in Intelligent Processes. The approvers are notified by email and can review the assigned tasks without manual coordination or follow-ups.
For a rejected declaration, the workflow generates an email to the student that includes comments from the reviewer and explains the reasons for refusal. In turn, the workflow triggers the clean-up process to delete the disability declaration and all uploaded documents.
For an approved declaration, the workflow generates an email to inform the student about the approval. This email also includes the next steps, which the student can expect. For example, the student can use the available support services listed in the Ellucian Experience card. Next, the workflow uploads the relevant documents to the Banner Document Management System (BDMS) for future processing and reference. Finally, the workflow updates the information in the Banner SaaS database by using the general medical information API.
Benefits and results
The automation of both the disability declaration process and the related review and approval business processes proved to be a win-win scenario. The students can declare their disability and track its status in an Ellucian Experience card. The university staff receives timely notifications and knows exactly how to proceed with each declaration.
After implementing this automated solution, the support team reduced the time for approving or rejecting the disability declaration by 60 percent. However, it’s impossible to measure the positive feedback that the university staff received from students using this new workflow.
As the world champions in automation, the ABCloudz team was happy and proud to deliver this reusable and customizable solution for a university in the UK. Beyond the disability use case, the same architecture can be applied to other institutional workflows, combining an Experience card for the user-facing interface with Ellucian Workflow to orchestrate approvals, notifications, and data updates.
Automate your business processes with world-class experts!
ABCloudz is an Ellucian Service Partner with deep technical expertise in automation, modernization, and integration projects. Our team delivered hundreds of Ellucian-based projects for higher education institutions. Not only do we know your challenges, but we also know how to overcome them! Contact ABCloudz to bring your cool automation ideas to life.