We always like to continually improve what we do and how we do it. When we hold a training session, we use an evaluation to ensure that what we are doing is right for the participants. Are we offering the training that people want? Are we doing it in the best way possible? Are we missing anything out or are we covering the right things? Related to this – are we gathering the data in the best way possible?
Before COVID, a paper form was circulated to participants, they completed it, we collated it, then added all of the scores to a spreadsheet. With the wide introduction of Microsoft (MS) Power Platform tools, it seemed like an opportunity to try and improve the way we collected the evaluation scores.
Susan G
Updating the spreadsheet with all the data was certainly not a difficult task, but it was monotonous. I tended to let a few sessions worth pile up then spend an afternoon on the task. Looking back, it may have felt less arduous had I just done them a few at a time but as they say, hindsight is a wonderful thing. Inputting the scores may have been tedious but inputting the comments was an entirely different kettle of fish! Some people don’t write any comments, some people write War and Peace! It could be a lengthy process, made all the more difficult when trying to decipher someone’s handwriting.
During lockdown when everything moved online, we used a survey tool. It was an improvement, but still required manual input to gather the data and present it in a suitable format.
Susan A
I’d watched a couple of videos and some online training sessions about the use of Power Automate and it was something I was really interested in trying out. What I did find difficult was getting how it worked straight in my head. I needed to find something that it I could figure it all out with. Eventually, I decided I wanted to look at how we could reduce the administrative burden of collecting, inputting the scores and producing the performance measures for our training evaluation responses.
One thing that helped me come to the decision to use training evaluations as something that could be automated, was receiving an email about a change to the licencing and associated cost of the evaluation tool that we used. The cost of this was rising, so it seemed sensible to move the questionnaire over to MS Forms – something everyone at the University had access to – without any additional costs.
Moving the evaluations to MS Forms then got me thinking about automating some of the process of gathering the data. We had already moved from paper evaluations to electronic because of the Covid lockdowns, but the scores were still manually added to the spreadsheet and then used to manually create a performance measure.
Susan G
When Susan told me that she had a hunch we could automate the entire process I was delighted. Clueless as to how, but delighted that it was a possibility. This was really where my input ended. Susan took on the task of learning about Power Automate, and how to create flows that would populate the appropriate fields with the appropriate responses. Perhaps I should feel a little guilty that Susan put in all the effort and I have reaped all the rewards? Maybe, but I try not to let negative thoughts intrude!
Susan A
I looked into using Power Automate to take the scores directly from the MS Form completed by the attendee and input straight into the spreadsheet without Susan having to add anything herself. I don’t mind telling you that it took me a while to figure it all out, but by the end of it I had 14 MS Forms, 14 Power Automate Flows and had achieved my goal of getting everyone’s scores directly into the spreadsheet. Job done, right?
Susan G
As with every new process, we definitely had a few teething problems. A separate form had been created for each of the courses we offered, and if a course hadn’t been run for a period time, we would get a message to tell us that flow was about to end. Putting our heads together, we realised that we could have just one form, with a dropdown field where the participant could select the course they had attended. This meant the flow would run at least twice a month and wouldn’t run the risk of being ended by Microsoft.
Susan A
As Susan said, there were further improvements that we could make to what had been set up. Why not have one MS Form and then one flow? It was almost so obvious that I couldn’t believe that we hadn’t thought about it beforehand. In our defence, it was all new to us, we were just learning. It is such a reminder that no process is ever perfect, there are always ways to improve upon what is there already. The changes were made, not by me this time, but by Susan who was following a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) that I created when I had set up the automation in the first place. I’m sure Susan won’t mind me telling you that this was something she was not looking forward to doing.
Susan G
Susan is not wrong! I was dreading it, it all seemed so complex. I think it was the fear of new technology that I think can creep up on any of us from time to time. I’m very pleased to say I was wrong. The SOP Susan had created made the steps very clear and I actually really enjoyed working with Power Automate.
Susan A
Something else we like to do is to demonstrate the benefits of any improvements we make. In this case, we were able to measure capacity savings based on estimating the time it used to take to collate and input the information from the forms to the spreadsheet and taking the number of training sessions we ran in 2018/2019 before we made any improvements. This resulted in a saving of 31 hours per year. That may not sound a lot, but it’s almost a week which has been freed up for Susan G to work on more value-added activities. We also thought that there must have been a non-measurable benefit around the quality of the information gathered – thinking back to what Susan said about difficulty deciphering handwriting and a paper form not an online form that has required fields.
If you are curious about automating a process, I would say to have a go at it, learn as you work through it - watch videos and speak to colleagues. I would challenge you to have a think about what processes you currently have that could be improved with a bit of automation to reduce the administrative load.
Our next blog will pick up on how we used these improvements to make further improvements to the way we used the training evaluation data to update our related performance measure.
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