Using Forms to Automate Your Workflow

I think it’s time to start utilizing my blog a bit more, especially for sharing resources for presentations at conferences. This week, I spent three days at the Midwest Google Summit in the Wisconsin Dells. This is the second year of the conference and is super learning opportunity for educators. Between the fun activities set up and the all star lineup of speakers, it’s no wonder this conference has sold out the past few years.

My focus for this post is to share the Google Forms resources that I model in my Google Apps for Admin session. At Andrew CSD, we have automated many processes that save a bunch of headaches for staff. Here are the templates many of you have requested:

Leave Request
Transportation Request
Purchase Order Request
Teacher Candidate Reference 
Student Discipline Form
Here is how you can use these forms in your district. First, click “use this template” to download the file into your Google Drive. Once downloaded, you can make any edits that make the form your own. It is afterall, a template. Edits are welcome. Once you finished the form, make sure you select whether you want folks to sign in and if you will be collecting their username automatically.

The next step is to install a script to process your data and communicate with the appropriate people. I like the script FormEmailer but there are a few others out there that other folks like as well. For me, FormEmailer works great so I’m sticking with it. Click on the FormEmailer link to get step by step instructions to help you out.

Don’t forget the last step, go to Tools and then down to Notification Rules. Select how often you would like to be notified when your spreadsheet receives new data. This way you don’t have to log in to Google Drive to check if a leave request has been submitted or if your reference checks have been returned. I have all of my forms set to notify once a day in a digest format via email.

I’m thinking of hosting some Google Hangouts on the Air for school leaders as I give them some tips and tricks on how they can model and use technology everyday in their profession. Let me know on Twitter what you think!