Imagine saving a month’s worth of manual work – what would you do with that time now you’re free from repetitive tedious tasks? Tracey Fernandez-Jones, a Coursework Submissions & Higher Doctorates Supervisor with the Student Assessments team, doesn’t need to imagine this anymore after taking steps to streamline and simplify daily tasks using Microsoft Power Automate, saving the team an estimated 29 days of work annually.
What needed automating?
Tracey and her team handle checking coursework submission deadlines and following up with students for any overdue assessment items. This involves cross referencing data taken from eVision of what is expected to be submitted on any given day with a list exported from Inspera detailing what has been submitted as well as whether an extension has been granted. Tracey had estimated that per assessment item it took around 30 seconds to check whether it had been submitted on time or not. This may not sound like much but multiply that by having to check several hundred lines of these every day, also accounting for human error, double-checking, and screen fatigue, this was a tedious task to be undertaken by a team of only two.
How did they automate this process?
Knowing there must be a better way to complete this task, Tracey approached the Student Data Management and Analysis team who pointed her in the direction of Power Automate to help set up a new workflow. With their assistance, Tracey was able to set up a flow in which Power Automate could compare the two sets of data from eVision and Inspera by adding queries and connection reports, displaying them together in a much more accessible format, so the team can be left with a list that can easily be filtered to show any assessments that haven’t been submitted, any deadline extensions that have been applied, and all students who have submitted on time. This meant that 300-400 rows of assessments can be cut down to show only those which are late submissions, which could just be 5 or 6. This is how an estimated 29 days of work (at least) has been saved across the year, along with giving Tracey and the team newfound confidence in their data, reducing stress and pressure on their work.
The benefit of this is not only the reduction of manual work for the team, but also means that any students who have missed submission deadlines can be contacted sooner and receive assistance if needed. The next steps for Tracey’s automation journey are to start looking into how to automate the communications to students with missed deadlines, to further reduce the risk of missing anyone out. Now that the Digital Transformation programme has introduced the Workflow and Automation Competency Centre, Tracey has reached out to the Competency Centre team to start exploring ways they could achieve this.
What is the team doing with all the time saved?
The Student Assessments team can now spend more time providing comprehensive support to course administrators, who can seek assistance for eVision and Inspera platforms as well as assessment-related inquiries, especially for varied submission formats such as PowerPoint presentations, PDF documents, recordings, and computer code. With their more flexible calendars, Tracey and her team are also now available to deliver personalised, in-person training sessions with whole teams to develop their knowledge and skillsets. In this way, the automation of late submission checking has not only benefitted the immediate team, but also surrounding staff.
Now that Tracey knows what can be done with automation, she is looking for more and more opportunities where her team can save time and reduce the risk of human error. To anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation which could benefit from automation, Tracey recommends:
Ask around the University, speak to the Workflow and Automation Competency Centre and explore what’s out there. Even if you have no idea what can be done for your manual process, go to the Competency Centre and there will be a way.
If you would like to take Tracey’s advice, the Workflow and Automation Competency Centre is open to all colleagues across the collegiate University who are looking to streamline processes and reduce manual workloads. You can contact the team via their Expression of Interest form to start discussing solutions.
