Cuyahoga Community College

Ellucian Intelligent Processes is a SaaS-based alternative to Ellucian Banner’s Action Item Processing component that is included in the Ellucian Experience Premium package. As a no-code bulk task assignment and holds automation tool, Intelligent Processes enables institution department admins to automate business processes in a user-friendly environment across departments. Cuyahoga Community College is diving in headfirst and seeing what Intelligent Processes can do for them.

One of those beta testers is Cuyahoga Community College, or Tri-C for short. Tri-C is located in Cleveland and is one of the largest colleges in the city and northeast Ohio. In fact, it was founded in 1963 as Ohio’s first and largest community college and today boasts more than 1,000 credit courses per semester in 200+ career and technical programs. These are offered  on the institution's four campuses and multiple off-campus sites.

With a student body and program offering such breadth, Tri-C naturally depends on efficient tech solutions to keep their operation running—and they're wise to always be on the lookout for new innovations that can ease administrative pain points. Cindy Shick, Manager of Solutions Specialists at Tri-C's Jerry Sue Thornton Center, has had first-hand experience with Intelligent Processes and came away with a mixture of curiosity and optimism about how it can help Tri-C.

"From a simple task perspective, for us, it's a nice product," Shick said. "We're using Action Item Processing for a few different college notifications that we send out to students each semester, so I could see us using [Intelligent Processes] for that."

Moving on to Intelligent Processes

Despite its features and benefits, Action Item Processing has some limitations that Intelligent Processes doesn't. Shick mentioned that since their student body exceeds 15,000, their population cells for notification distribution were too large to process through Action Item Processing. Thus, Tri-C found itself creating a custom process in-house to handle newly active students in addition to their large volume of current students. With Intelligent Processes, Shick said, the large population cells will run. The school is still having a related issue but is working with Ellucian support to fix it, and in the meantime, some of Intelligent Processes' improvements are beginning to show.

"From the setup and configuration side of things, I think it's a lot easier to set up," Shick said.

Another improvement over Action Item Processing she cited is the ability to change posted content.

"In Action Item Processing, once it's posted, it's posted. If you had a slight change with verbiage, you couldn't go in and adjust it once it was posted. With Intelligent Processes, we can modify once it has been posted and create an updated version with the new verbiage. From that standpoint, I think it is better."

Getting the Right Help

Beta tests happen so software developers can get feedback from potential customers and work on updates, bug fixes, requested enhancements, and other issues that arise. Developers rely on customers' feedback and work with them to optimize the solution to meet customer needs. During the beta test for Intelligent Processes, Shick worked with Ellucian Group Product Manager Sarth Desai and Lead Analyst Stephanie Hook.

"Sarth has been really great to work with; [this is] probably one of the nicest beta projects I've ever been on," Shick said. "He was always quick to respond. I think Stephanie Hook has done an amazing job assisting with the technical questions. Overall, I'm very happy with it."

Shick also praised Ellucian's online community, which brings more than 45,000 people together in one forum. She said that she liked how any other beta tester could easily get on the forum, ask a question (or answer an existing question), and collaborate together as a group.

"Overall, the way it has been managed, I think, was really good," she said. "It would be nice if all of our projects were like that."

Leading without Coding

One of the most anticipated features of Intelligent Processes is that it offers a no-code solution for department administrators at higher education institutions to compose forms, automate tasks and build approval workflows. This will allow them to streamline cross-departmental processes. How is this feature faring at Tri-C?

"It is definitely a lot easier to use," she said. "I think we could potentially open it up to departments to allow them to set up their own [processes]. From a no-code perspective it is relatively simple to use and create tasks. I haven't dived into the form or workflow side of it as much as I would like to, but I do think it could potentially take the place of some of the workflows that we have."

Since Shick referred to the "workflow side" of Intelligent Processes, it's worth mentioning that in addition to build custom processes in Experience, it also lets users explore ready-to-use workflow templates and customize them to meet their extensibility needs as part of its workflow component. While Tri-C hasn't delved too deeply into that feature, they're sure to reap its benefits when they do.

Looking to the Future

Tri-C is still beta testing Intelligent Processes, but Shick plans to continue to work with it until it reaches the point that her department can send it to others.

"Once we do share it, I think that individuals within our institution will like it because of the simplicity and that it's all in one location—the Experience portal," she said. "Having the task card there for the students, and up front the moment they log in, that's nice. They don't necessarily have to go into registration like they do now with Action Item Processing."

Soon, Intelligent Processes will be out of beta testing and will see a wide release for Experience Premium customers. When that happens, should Tri-C continue to utilize it, they will have the opportunity to see how their feedback and help requests have affected Intelligent Processes.

"I'm excited about this; I think it's going to be beneficial and a great addition to the Experience Platform," Shick said. "I like where it's going."