In higher education, audience engagement comes in many forms—from campus visit requests and admissions to event RSVPs and alumni donations. But paper forms are a hassle. And online forms are not always well thought out. It’s haphazard, clunky, and slow depending on whether you rely on IT to create and place them on your website.
Then, once you’ve created a form and start receiving submissions, what happens to the data? An administrator might transfer the information into a spreadsheet before you can use it—another time-consuming step where mistakes can occur. Or, the data might just sit there, gathering dust and generating duplicates with every new campaign.
We believe your team’s time is better spent elsewhere.
Formstack Forms makes it easy, from drag-and-drop form creation to data retention and analysis. And that means your team will save hours of productivity. In fact, we estimate teams that use Formstack save an average of 17 hours per week. Alternatively, our AI form builder lets you build a form through a text prompt in a matter of seconds.
What could process automation look like for your team? In this guide, we give you a look at how you can use Formstack across every department, including academics, human resources, financial aid, admissions, and alumni services.
1. Academic Departments
Academic administrators are tasked with making sure faculty, staff, and students have the tools they need, data is easy to capture, and gathered information stays secure. PDF forms play a big role in this process—but it’s time to move away from the printing, filing, and scanning that goes with it. Here are a few ideas about how each of your academic groups can benefit from Formstack Forms.
Prospective Students
Do your departmental websites have a way for potential students to connect with a real person? With Formstack Forms, prospective students can:
- Sign up for a tour.
- Select classes to observe.
- Connect with a student ambassador.
Easily post the online form on your website or send it in an email. You can even have it ready on a mobile device with offline access at college fairs.
Current Students
Students are a vital part of any academic department, but their demands can be a challenge to keep track of. Use a single form on your department website to help centralize requests for information like:
- Class openings
- Applications to specific schools within the university
- Scholarship availability
- Independent study proposals
- M.A./Ph.D. candidacy
With the Approval Workflow feature, your team can easily follow up or move applicants to the next stage with just a click.
Course Evaluations
Students want to feel like their opinions are important and can affect change in a department. But paper surveys and forms are messy, impossible to aggregate across an entire course, and cumbersome to archive long-term.
Formstack Forms helps you streamline course evaluations through customized online forms. Quickly, easily, and confidentially compile student evaluations, and pass on the information to professors and administrators. Using our Analytics function, you can also identify trends to develop faculty into better instructors.
Faculty and Staff
Internal communication within academic departments typically consists of emails—lots and lots of emails. Instead, skip the “Reply All” saga, and collect information from faculty and staff using Formstack Forms:
- Create an application for travel funds, sabbatical leave, or grant proposals.
- Ask faculty and staff to upload receipts for expense reimbursement.
- Take conference room reservations or lunch orders.
Then, assign the forms to teams or individuals you designate for follow up with Data Routing. By using Formstack’s online form builder, departmental information is no longer stuck in email inboxes.
2. Human Resources
It seems HR has a form for nearly every situation. But as classes come and go and school years pass, these forms pile up. Wouldn’t it be nice if those towers of paper could be conveniently kept in the cloud? By moving from paper to online forms, HR can save time, effort, and aggravation.
Did You Know? According to the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), 92% of people who click “Apply” to a job never actually complete the application.
Job Applications and Onboarding
Consolidate and automate the job application process with Approval Workflow. HR can move candidates along the hiring process, while ensuring applications are sent to the right hiring manager. Candidates also receive automatic confirmation emails so they don’t have to call “just to make sure you got it.” Once you hire someone new, streamline the extensive HR, governmental, and onboarding paperwork to fill out with online forms that get them started in their position even faster.
Performance Management Tools
Documenting employees’ progress is key to strong management. Formstack makes it easy to create, modify, and evaluate performance reviews, all from a single platform. Here’s what the process might look like:
- An employee receives their annual self-assessment form.
- After the employee submits the form, their manager receives a notification to complete their portion.
- Data from the completed form is sent to Formstack Documents so a PDF version can be generated and stored in HR’s cloud storage drive.
- The manager and employee meet, using the PDF to guide their discussion.
You can even route low-performing reviews to the appropriate person for further action.
Work/Life Benefits
Use Formstack to facilitate signups, manage participants, and track user satisfaction in your staff wellness program. You can even process reimbursements with one of our payment integrations.
Using a third party to manage staff wellness benefits? Easily access Formstack’s API to connect the data. Throughout the year, send surveys for feedback to see if what you’re offering meets faculty and staff expectations.
Educational Benefits
Many universities offer educational benefits like tuition assistance to faculty, staff, and even their families. Simplify the approval process by putting it online with Formstack Forms. Then, automatically route the form data to the appropriate person or department for approval, saving time each month, quarter, or semester it’s submitted.
Change of Information
Faculty and staff are constantly changing, from Family and Medical Leave Act benefits and address modifications to promotions and rehiring. With Formstack, you can manage these updates in stride with easy, online forms that are not only convenient for employees to fill out, but exponentially simpler for your HR team to update and input new information.
Data Privacy
HR handles private information for every employee at your university, so naturally, security is a major concern. When you use Formstack products, you can rest assured that your form data is protected by security features like 256-bit SSL, data encryption, password protection, reCAPTCHA, and HIPAA compliance. Everything is secure—from forms to documents to electronic signatures—on one secure platform.
3. Financial Aid
Don’t risk inaccuracy and human error when it comes to financial aid. Students and parents must have reliable, timely information. Using Formstack Forms, you can securely collect information, organize forms, and streamline the process of applying for aid and managing student finances.
Scholarship Applications
Formstack is a one-stop shop for managing applications. Ensure the right team members receive an email notification when a submission comes through. Use our pre-built scholarship application template with your university logo, or build one from scratch. You can even include applicants’ attachments right in the email. Use the Approval Workflow feature and allow multiple users to approve or deny an application from a centralized location.
What’s an Approval Workflow?
This feature gives users in your Formstack Forms account the ability to approve, deny, or comment on form submissions. It’s a great way to weed out the submissions that don’t need to be stored in your account. Set up single- or multi-step approvals, and even review submissions via email.
Work/Study Jobs
Students who participate in work/study programs need to apply for approved on- and off-campus jobs. Use an online form to centralize this process, and create a seamless hand-off with Data Routing. For example, if a student chooses a position in the bookstore, you can direct the application to the bookstore hiring manager. Once student workers are in place, create an evaluation form that allows employers to submit evaluations.
Academic Progress Appeals
Students who need to make an appeal for denial of financial aid must fill out forms and attach appropriate documentation. With Formstack Forms, students can upload documents to support their appeals and sign electronically using their finger or a mouse. This helps them get answers faster without compromising sensitive documents.
Contact Forms
Even with an informative FAQ section on your website, your financial aid offices will inevitably be inundated with questions. Allow students and parents to ask questions with a click. By using a Formstack contact form, all inquiries are stored in one place for easy response. Plus, drop-down options can help people ask more specific questions.
4. Admissions
A strong first impression is essential in university admissions. Students and parents are an eager audience, and accurate management of their information helps your school stand out among the competition. Prompt attention, correct information, and a welcoming attitude communicate your university’s commitment to a prospective student’s experience. See how Formstack can help overhaul your admissions process to make it a smooth and memorable experience for prospective students and parents.
Lead Generation
One of the most important functions of your website is capturing leads. Whether you attract prospective, current, or transfer students—or even their parents or guidance counselors—your online contact form needs to be easy to fill out, yet efficient at capturing necessary information.
Analyzing your backend data can take your lead generation even further. How many unique users view your form? Is there a bottleneck that causes potential contacts to give up before hitting submit? With Formstack, you can analyze unique views, conversion rate, and abandonment rate, helping you modify your form to retain as much interest as possible.
Recruitment
College students are extremely mobile, so your recruitment strategy should be too. Enjoy the freedom of walking around a college fair, recruitment event, or campus tour with Offline Forms, designed to be used without an internet connection. Using the Formstack Go mobile app, your team can pull up the correct forms on a tablet or other mobile device, collect information, and sync submitted data immediately. This not only saves time filling out paper contact forms, but gives prospective students a taste of how dedicated you are to their experience.
Social Media Buzz
Social media contests and giveaways are a great way to get prospective students talking about your university. Too often, though, there’s no follow-through on the leads gathered. By using Formstack Forms to manage your contest, you can take action on the data you collect with follow-up emails, texts, mailers, and invitations.
Did You Know? Seventy-six percent of students use social media to research colleges. Further, the 68% of students who use a university’s or college’s social media account as a resource are more likely to have a positive opinion of the institution. Be sure to use an online form to quickly gather inquiries from prospective students on Twitter or Facebook.
Campus Visits and Tours
Use Formstack to help schedule campus visits and tours. Then, your admissions office can immediately know how many admitted students, prospective students, or parents are coming to campus, and tailor tours to their needs. Conditional Logic allows you to show or hide questions based on students’ responses. If they choose a tour on a Monday, you can display which times are available. Then, set up the form to automatically notify the appropriate tour guides.
Applications
When students are ready to submit applications for admission, Formstack Forms removes the need for paper forms and mailing with a fast, seamless digital process. Customize your admission form with a space to upload files like essays or transcripts, input short and long answers, and select demographic information. The applications will be sent immediately to whomever you designate, allowing admissions to move more quickly.
Then, take action on the data you capture with Formstack Documents, allowing you to automatically transfer the information into professionally designed applications, acceptance letters, loan documents, and more—without manually reentering it. Your documents can then be electronically signed or even sent to third-party apps like your CRM through ultimate accuracy across systems.
5. Alumni Services
Maintaining relationships with alumni helps establish a strong network that grows your university. Loyalty is powerful, but it must be nurtured. Engaging alumni requires more than repeated requests for donations. Let Formstack help you foster a deeper relationship with your alums that keeps them coming back.
Up-to-Date Alumni Information
A database is only as good as its information. Young alumni move around frequently, and your alumni office must be able to keep in touch. Formstack integrates with popular email marketing and CRM software, making updating a breeze. Just add an “update your information” section on your website or social media page that links right to a Formstack form.
Did You Know? 63% of donors (regardless of generation) prefer to give online with a credit or debit card. That’s why it’s imperative to offer online giving options with a digital form that quickly collects information and donations from those ready to contribute.
Alumni Communication
Create forms so alumni can join your alumni association, sign up for events, or even apply to start a new chapter. With Formstack Forms Analytics, you can view users’ geographical location, unique submissions, and more.
Scholarship Applications
Make it easy for alumni to start their own scholarship with a scholarship workflow. Build an online scholarship form that’s customized to the alum’s family name or business. Then, easily centralize the data you collect to make record-keeping and selection easy. Set up Data Routing to notify the scholarship sponsor when a new application comes through. Then, use the form data to generate a certificate to present at the scholarship awards ceremony.
Networking with Current Students and Alumni
The more robust your alumni network is, the more attractive it will be to recent graduates to stay connected and, eventually, give generously.
- Do your alumni prefer in-person social events or online networking?
- Are they willing to meet with small groups of current students or recent graduates?
- Do they prefer LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter to connect with you?
Add surveys and event registrations to your website and emails to determine what your network needs to be more effective. Then, take action on the data you collect to improve alumni engagement.
Online Giving
If you don’t already have a way for alumni to give online, Formstack integrates with popular payment processors to make it easy. With a couple of clicks, the donations will come pouring in! Include a link in emails to subtly encourage donations whenever alumni are exposed to communications from your alumni office.
Formstack Improves All Your Higher Ed Processes
What processes could use a transformation at your university? Formstack’s suite of digital forms, documents, and electronic signature capabilities, paired with the native capabilities of Formstack for Salesforce, take your recruiting, admissions, and alumni activities from busy work to automated bliss.
Transition to a paperless campus today with a 14-day free trial. Or contact sales to book a demo.
