Case Study: Charter School Automates Summer School Process Using Power Platform and Office 365
Challenge/Opportunity
Having access to Power Platform in Microsoft Office 365, the charter school wanted to convert their existing summer school 3rd party application and workflows to a more automated and integrated solution using Office 365, Power Apps, and Power Automate (Flow).
Optimum’s Involvement
Optimum’s team assessed the migration needs and requirements, determined the best solution design and platforms, and developed the entire summer school selection and enrollment process using Power Apps, Power Automate, and SharePoint Online.
Results
A single data and process compilation in Office 365 allowed for a more integrated and automated student vetting and enrollment process, resulting in more efficiency and reduced cost and less hours spent on admin work for the school staff.
The Classical Charter Schools prepares K-8th grade scholars in the South Bronx to excel in college preparatory high schools. Through a classical curriculum and highly structured setting, students become liberated scholars and citizens of impeccable character who achieve proficiency in and advanced mastery of New York State
Performance Standards.
The school offers a Summer Learning Academy (SLA) program to both incoming students and returning students. The process for vetting and enrolling students into the educational summer camps is complex, involving time-frames and deadlines, various academic and attendance related student parameters, and dynamic movement of students’ data from one data source to another.
Opportunity and Solution
The school wanted to convert the existing 3rd party summer school application to an Office 365-based automated solution, which allows for a more integrated platform while improving the team collaboration and reducing the operational cost of performing this process on an annual basis. To maximize their investment in Office 365 and to utilize the full capability of the Power Platform, the school, a long-term client of Optimum, reached out to our team to develop the new solution in Power Platform.
After conducting a brief assessment and migration planning phase, Optimum’s team of Office 365 architects and certified Power Platform developers designed and developed the entire process in Power Apps and Power Automate. Our team also utilized the SharePoint Online document management capabilities as well as real-time data pulls from various SQL databases to compile the entire date set that was needed for the new solution.
Optimum also used the Document Generation capabilities of our partner company, EnovaPoint, to dynamically generate and email documents, using the automated workflows, throughout various steps of the summer school evaluation and enrollment process.
“Optimum was great to work with, and you will be able to work with a whole team looking at the project from different perspectives to ensure you get a quality product.” -Allyson F., Data Manager, Charter Schools
This automation greatly reduced email-based collaboration and manual review/approval processes and allowed for the viewing of near-real-time student performance data, list allocation, and camp enrollment status. It also enabled the school to maximize their investment and adoption of the Microsoft O365 and Power Automate platform.
About Optimum
Optimum is a modern Software Consulting firm, designing and building result-driven, customized solutions that brings the power of Workflow Automation, SharePoint and Office 365, Digital Workplace Portals (Intranet and Extranet), Business Intelligence (BI), and Systems Integration to organizations to increase efficiency, reduce operational costs, and drive digital transformation.
Our services are designed to help organizations realize the full impact and ROI of their Microsoft solutions investment, while increasing their user adoption and engagement, especially for Office 365 based solutions and apps.
Contact Us to speak with one of our Office 365 and Process Automation experts and schedule a free discovery session.