SharePoint Admissions Automation at Jesus College Cambridge

Moving from a Paper and File Share to SharePoint has revolutionised a heavily paper-centric process that involved lots of manual scanning of files received in the post and moving content and folders multiple times as various milestones in the process were reached. Moving applicants between the College and University involved manually downloading from SharePoint and then uploading to Google Drive, which was time-consuming and inefficient.

1. Streamlined and improved the efficiency of the existing processes.
2. Automation of the manual repetitive aspects to reduce manual effort to be more efficient and reduce manual error.
3. Reduced the ‘out of hours’ working required to meet time-sensitive deadlines, reducing stress and supporting employee wellbeing.
4. Tangible timesaving equivalent to 3 weeks work for a full-time equivalent.
5. Support a paperless office.
6. Ensure the security of personal data at all times

Covid forced the College to find a digital solution to a paper process that dealt with around 1000 undergraduate applications annually. The existing process was not streamlined and while there had been a successful internal project to get content automatically transferred in, it was only one element of an entire applications process with the rest still being primarily manual which was time-consuming and cumbersome.

The project followed an agile methodology. It was a very iterative process that involved fully redesigning the process to include additional tools and functionality to make different parts of the process easier to complete. The Solution also provided the College with the functionality to apply checks to ensure the process was followed correctly.

The original solution was characterised by scanning and a lot of manual intervention including locating the correct applicant folder and uploading content to it. To reduce:

• Searching for missing files/ applicants
• Constant checking and re-checking
• Moving applicant folders as their status was changed

A digital process via the Applicant Portal was proposed. This enables content to be streamed into the correct Applicant Folder which was now set up with content types and metadata default values. As a result, content received (whether received in the post and scanned or downloaded from UCAS in bulk) was processed by workflow and automatically routed to the correct applicant folder removing the need for manual filing.

The cumbersome manual process for moving content between SharePoint Online and Google Drive was replaced with a workflow that did the majority of the manual work. The Google Drive Desktop app was used as a manual safety strategy.

The Admissions team knew the process was inefficient, but it was the only way it could be completed to meet the highly pressured time-sensitive admissions deadlines. The team had the in-depth business knowledge to know what the process needed to do but needed technical support to help automate the process and take advantage of current technology. Transparity came in to demonstrate the art of the possible.

Our approach was to work in partnership with Jesus College to understand the process and the problems that existed within the end-to-end process and there were quite a few challenges some of which were discovered part way through this project. An example was the manual hunt for applicants who were missing a particular file. A manual search was several hours in progress but within 40 minutes of being made aware of the issue, Transparity had developed a customisable Flow that was flexible and could be used to search for files meeting different criteria.

The manual process was challenging for the College to manage, yet now it operates from a single spreadsheet with a workflow taking the data and modifying the applicant’s metadata in SharePoint Online accordingly.

Trust between Jesus College and Transparity was developed, and Transparity were able to fully support them to streamline and automate a solution that is flexible enough to enhance and extend in the future.

Key components of the Solution include:

• Automated the updating of applicant records.
• Automated the routing of content from different sources (UCAS, Applicant portal, Admissions Team) to the correct applicant file.
• Processed data for successful applicants into the appropriate structure and automatically uploaded it to the University’s chosen Data Management System.
• Tools to further reduce time, effort including:
• Document Count discrepancy checker
• Applicant Status discrepancy checker
• Missing Document (where applicants should have a file with a specific filename format)
• PDF files being automated to the correct student folder to reduce the need for manual filing and support a paperless office.

The project was delivered successfully, on schedule, and within budget and enabled Jesus College to streamline a complex manual process that was time-consuming and inefficient. The Solution is flexible and scalable. It has been time-saving for the admissions team and helped to reduce stress and manual errors in a time-sensitive process. In so doing it has also reduced Data Protection risk and enabled the College to better meet its obligations in this regard.