Solutions Blog

http://www.uthscsa.edu/facilities/index.html

Mission
The Department of Facilities Management of the University of Texas Health Science Center At San Antonio provides services (maintenance, repair, etc)  to support more than 2.8 million gross square feet of space in buildings with a staff of 315.

Testimonial
"We are very pleased with our decision to purchase WorkflowGen.  We knew there must be a better way to process the thousands of paper work requests that we receive each year.  We initially looked at having someone write a customized program which turned out to be well over our budget.  We then looked at some of the larger workflow software companies and found that their software was expensive and required substantial programming to implement.  Once we “discovered” WorkflowGen, we knew that we were looking at something special.  Being able to design work flow processes using PDF forms, without formal programming, was extremely important to us.   Designing processes using WorkflowGen is relatively simple for an “end user” to do with out formal programming.   We plan to extend WorkflowGen processes to other areas since it is so easy to design and implement them quickly and economically.  We are very satisfied with the product."
Gary L. Tate
UTHSCSA Facilities Management
Assistant Director for Business Services

Business Challenge
The Department of Facilities Management was looking for a solution to better serve 3,000 internal clients who are submitting 6,000 work order requests per year. The goal was to reduce the volume of paper work while optimizing the response time.  
  

WorkflowGen Solution
Functional Solution
The Department of Facilities Management designed a workflow with WorkflowGen to enable any of the 3,000 authorized clients from anywhere on the campus to submit a work request. Depending on the requester and the nature of the work the requests are automatically routed to the appropriate supervisor (signature authorities) for approval and then routed to the Department of Facilities Management. All the participants in this process can track the status of their request in real time (requesters, approvers, facilities management operators) via the workflow portal. Event-based email notifications enable the requestors to be notified of the request's progress along the workflow process. The users can attach external files to the forms. Thanks to single sign-on, no separate username and password is necessary.

Technical Solution
WorkflowGen works on an IIS web server with SQL server as a back-end database. The authentication of the participants is done automatically thanks to an LDAP connector. An integration has been developed with PeopleSoft in order to dynamically retrieve the list of approvers depending on the requester and the nature of the work. The participants use their web browser to access WorkflowGen and populate PDF forms to submit their requests.

Benefits
Immediate productivity gains
The response time has been optimized from 2 days to 15 minutes.
The workload for the operators in the Department of Facilities Management has been reduced dramatically and their ability to monitor and retrieve process data has been maximized.
The clients enjoyed both the productivity gains and the possibility to monitor their requests in real time.

Fast deployment
The Department of Facilities Management has designed the work order process with WorkflowGen in 1 month.
A pilot was first organized for a few selected participants before the solution was rolled out campus wide to 3,000 people by sending a simple email. 

Ease of use
The Department of Facilities Management was able to design the workflow without programming except for the integration with PeopleSoft and LDAP.
No training was required for the end users who where able to access a user guide if needed directly on the Department of Facilities Management web site. 

Process
The requester completes the work order that is sent to a coordinator in the logistics department.

The coordinator analizes the request, if it is not properly completed it is sent back to the requester for modification. If it is properly completed it is sent to the most appropriate person with information about the time limit and the means needed to handle the request.

The designated person will notify the requester of the work order completion by sending back the form (if the work order is not completed the person in charge can use the form to explain why.)

The requester closes his work order request and adds a comment about the provided service quality.

The coordinator is notified by email that the process is closed.

Workflow with WorkflowGen
1/ The employee opens his/her browser and logs on to WorkflowGen.

2/ He/she clicks “New application” and selects “Work Order”. By clicking  “Launch application”, he/she then accesses the “Application follow-up form”.

3/ In “My to-do list”, he/she clicks “Complete” and the form corresponding to the selected application is displayed. The employee completes the form, the nature of work he needs and the time limit and clicks “Send form”.

4/ At this point an e-mail message is sent to the logistics coordinator with the subject line reading “One new action has been assigned to you”.

5/ By clicking “View action”, the coordinator accesses the “Application follow-up form” and goes to “My to-do list”. By clicking the action assigned to him/her (in this case, Analyze), the  form opens again. The coordinator checks if the provided information is valid for this work order. If the request is not properly completed, it is sent back to the requester who will be able to perform the INITIATE action and send the modified work order to the coordinator.  If the request is properly filled-in the coordinator defines a time limit and additional advices for the person in charge of handling the work order. The coordinator then clicks “Send form”, accesses the “Application follow-up form” and designates the person from a list.

6/ At this point an e-mail message is sent to the person selected with the subject line reading “One new action has been assigned to you”. By clicking “View action”, the manager accesses the “Application follow-up form” and goes to “My to-do list”. By clicking the action assigned to him/her (in this case, HANDLE), the form opens again with information and instructions entered by the requester and the coordinator. The designated person fills-in the appropriate areas about the work order before clicking “Send form”.

7/ The requester is notified by e-mail that he has to handle the "CLOSE" action. The form is launched and the requester can add a comment about the quality of the service and the way the work order was handled. He clicks "Send form" and the coordinator is notified by e-mail that the process is closed. The coordinator accesses the “Application follow-up form” and reviews all the actions and data of the process.