In an effort to increase faculty engagement and create a maintainable review and approval process for curriculum administrators, the workflow visualization tool gives Curriculum Management users access to every step of the curriculum approval process.
How to Access the Workflow Visualization Tool
You will find a new link in the left-hand navigation of the unified navigation, the Tools link. The Workflow Visualization tool can be accessed by selecting the Workflows option.
How the Workflow Visualization Tool Works
After the Workflows option is selected, a new panel will appear, asking you to select a proposal for workflow review.
The proposal options will include all of the proposals available by your institution.
After the proposal is selected, the review and approval options will load, allowing you to select each step of the process as they are available, with details in the right panel on each step of the process
There is a key at the bottom of the screen explaining the icons next to each workflow step, and those icons are used again in the details panel.
Direct To: Indicating where the button is directing the proposal to, i.e. next workflow state if button is selected.
Can Return to Submitter: Indicating the workflow state has the option/button for the user to return the proposal back to the submitter if needed.
Forks: Indicating that the workflow state is relying on an implemented fork to promote or demote the proposal to the next state. This means that there is usually a trigger set up to determine the course of the proposal reliant on the trigger selection on the form. These can be Yes/No questions, Undergraduate/Graduate questions or something more specific to the institution. The specific details of the fork will be explained in the Stage Details to the right when using this tool.
Return to Previous State: This indicates the workflow state has the ability to send the proposal back a step to the previous workflow state it was promoted from.
Parallel Approval: This is showing that when the proposal is in the affected workflow state, it may remain there for multiple approval actions. These approvals take place in the same state and once fully completed, the proposal is promoted to the next state. For example, there may be a Impacted Department state where more than one department head needs to review the proposal and approve before it can be promoted to the next state.
Final State: This indicates that the workflow state is the final approval state of the workflow - from here the proposal is archived and the catalog item is created. At this point, the proposal is no longer in the workflow nor can it be returned to the workflow.
Curriculum Strategy offers very flexible workflow options, so this tool will represent each option determined by the institution and explain how different options selected on the proposal may alter the proposal routing process.
To help explain the tool to users, there is a How This Works link with more details:
The final workflow state will typically be Approved, once selected you can see that no more review routes are listed, this is the final state of review.
An alternate view for the review and approval process is also available. If you toggle the View Steps Regardless of Order option, all associated workflow steps will be listed. This list includes each option available for the selected proposal.