PerfectForms Releases Education Version of Workflow Tool
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 11/03/10
PerfectForms, which develops applications that help organizations automate paper-based processes, has created a version of its workflow management product that caters specifically to the education market. PerfectForms for Education lets K-12 and higher ed customers create custom workflows or use 58 pre-built templates to address common tasks. The templates can be customized to reflect school colors and use logos and typeface.
The program is intended to be used not just by IT staff but also by business and administrative staff. The company makes video tutorials available online to walk the user through the effort of planning how the new workflow should proceed; how the form should be laid out and constructed to do data collection; and how to add triggers, such as calculations and conditional actions.
The 17 templates specific to higher education address admissions, tuition, change requests, tech requests, and other categories. The company has also developed templates for human resources and finance.
The University of Tennessee at Martin has used PerfectForms for creating new processes in admissions, registration, and healthcare areas. One implementation involved the creation of an online student ID request form to replace a process whereby freshmen students would stand in line to have their pictures taken on move-in day and then wait for an ID to be created. Now, new students upload a picture of themselves online while registering for summer orientation; their ID cards are waiting for them when they arrive on campus.
"PerfectForms is the most user-friendly process implementation tool I've come across," said Mike Abney, process improvement facilitator at the university.
The application can be hosted by PerfectForms or on customer servers. The "starter" version of the on-demand option is $30 per month per user; an advanced version that includes report design is $40 per month. The on-premise edition is $5,000 per year for a single server license.
About the Author
Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.