How to Work Smarter with Intelligent Forms Management

Welcome everyone, today's webinar. My name is Greg Schmidt. I'll be the presenter for today's webinar. And today's topic is Intelligent Forms and Workflow Management. Working beyond the paper to manage forms and workflows. You can start to remove the need to build time consuming, custom built web applications for forms managements. Start to empower your IT team and business users to work more efficiently by removing the cumbersome paper forms from your organization. Intelligent Forms Management will not only help your organization remove the paper, but it will also help you start to enforce the workflows for approvals and enforce how the data is being collected inside and outside your organization. So today you will learn what is Intelligent Forms Management and how it can help you and how to create browser based forms with workflows in minutes. And last of all, how to not only make your forms easy to use, but also transform your business processes with forms designed and best practices to collect the data the way you need it the first time.

Again, my name is Greg Schmidt. I'm a senior Solutions Engineer here at HelpSystems. I have 20 plus years of experience in the data document forms and process automation and specialties in document forms automation and business intelligence. I have been key in helping companies automate their data and document processes and streamline their troublesome and often cumbersome business processes with technology and strategic planning for digital transformation. I help guide companies and best practice for implementation and solution expansion within their organizations. I have also a decades worth of experience in the IBMI report and data distribution and robotic process automation technology. Okay. Onto today's main agenda. I'm going to start with a quick overview and then we're going to move into the main topic of intelligent forms and workflow management. Then I'll be doing a live demonstration on some of the use cases that we'll be talking about here towards the middle of the webinar.

And then we'll finish up with some Q&A at the end if time permits. Feel free to enter your questions into the chat window. And I will address them towards the end of the webinar if time allows. Please select all presenters so all the questions are directed towards me, and I will plan to complete this session in about 30 minutes. So you'll have plenty of time to make your next important meeting. Also today's event is being recorded and you'll receive a link after the webinar to share with anyone in your organization that could not attend today's session, or if you would like to rewatch the session as well.

Streamlining the way companies create capture securely and distribute their business documents, processes and business data. That is what we help organizations do on a daily basis here at HelpSystems on the document and forms management side. We help companies on their digital transformation journey. We have a variety of solutions in four key business areas that can help you at every step of that journey. From secure document and workflow management, intelligent forms and workflow management, which we'll be talking a little bit more about today during this presentation here. Then we also have things like accounts receivable automation and accounts, payable automation. Over a decade now we've been helping companies with their automation journeys for accounts payable and accounts receivable processes that might be running on a natively on an IBMI or even on a windows platform as well. Like I said earlier, we are going to be focusing on the intelligent forms and workflow management topic today, but feel free to reach out to us and learn more about any of the other areas that I just mentioned.

Okay. Let's get started on the main topic today. Let's start by defining what is web docs intelligent forms management, is a solution that turns your paper-based business forms and processes into a web based dynamically changing, intelligent fillable form with business-based rules to guide users how and what to fill in the form with security at the field and section level, full audit and version control the form at any state in its life cycle inside of web docs and full workflow enforcement for approvals and reviews can be added to any form to enforce who is filling in the form data and when they are doing it during the process.

So forms can be accessed from any device with a web browser. So there's no need for any application to be installed to access and use forms and or workflows. Web docs intelligent forms management enables your organization to build and deploy forms, build on a web-based citizen developer interface that allows you to drag and drop pre-built elements on forms and configure without any programming need, create electronic versions of any form like purchase orders, work orders to even HR onboarding documents. We can require certain fields on the form to ensure that the information is entered the first time around correctly, even add a dropdown menu option to fields to standardize the answers that you're getting back in the forms.

Then you can deploy the completed form via, links, website, or even like a portal or a space so users can access them from any device with no extra effort. Manage data and workflows. You can validate data and fields as forms are being filled out. So no mistakes can be made during that completion process. And if there is mistakes, you can guide the user on what the correct information is that you're looking for. Once your form or document data is captured electronically, it can then be passed to the backend system, letting you rest assured that is entered accurately. So we can do a whole validation and verification process of the data. Speed up and enforce the approval and routing processes with built in workflows to manage how the forms are being filled out and who is filling them out and help them, aid them in that completion process, which then might start to enforce some of the regulatory and compliance efforts that you need to uphold.

Forms can also have embedded electronic wet or pin based signatures. Data integration and connectors. Web docs forms management can sync with your existing business systems and databases, fields lists and menus can be pre-populated with information from your IBM IDB2. Databases. Microsoft SQL server databases, Oracle, My SQL. When you sync data across your systems, you'll spend less time entering information and eliminate errors during the data entry process. Secure storage. Keep all your confidential documents secure by setting permissions for specific employees in your organization with different user rights to... they may have capability to author, revise, view, route, or even delete documents. With full version and audit control, you can prevent unwanted changes from being made to your forms and documents

There are three main components to a complete intelligent forms management system, and they are easy to use citizen-based forms designer and forms that incorporate business rules to help guide users to fill in the data the way it is needed the first time. A complete workflow system that can route completed forms along with supporting documents to the appropriate individuals and a workflow system that can also route completed forms that were turned into documents. I'll be adding a little bit more clarity around that topic here in just a few minutes with another slide that I have to talk about forms, workflows and document workflows. And a secure document informs archives. So all your completed forms and documents can be securely managed with full version and audit control for compliance and regulatory purposes,

Web docs forms management offers your users the full experience. They can access the forms, applications and workflows from any device like smartphones, tablets, desktop PCs, or even laptops with no need to install any app or software on your device they're accessing it from. And in the design process of a form, before you deploy to the user community, the interface even lets you test in any of these environments directly in our web browser based design interface with no need to have that device in hand.

Built into the core application, you can use the workflow system to not only enforce how the data is being filled out, but also the process in which you need to enforce it through a flow or an approval process to get the data collected. It can also aid in the compliance and regulatory efforts that your company needs to enforce by being able to define those approval and review flows. And the second option for workflow allows you to go a step deeper by not only having four workflows, but document based workflows that integrate with each other during the documents lifecycle inside the system.

This allows you to have forms based workflow and data collection process. And then after that has completed, you can update your business system with the data and the document can be created from the form and the data and pass the document into a document based workload for action to be taken beyond during the document's life cycle. We see this scenario a lot when we are working in more of the compliance-based areas where we're doing data collection on a document or on a form. And then we have to create a document for someone else to handle that might have other enforcements or regulatory and compliance needs on it.

Okay. And to help you with user management, file management and database access for reads and writes, we have built in connectors to help you with that. So there is need to program around these options. The database connectors are database agnostic and will work with any database that you have access to via drivers also built into each form application, you can export data either via of a web service or restful API or a file export option. This will allow you to update your ERP with the data. So there's no re-keying of the data that has to take place. And last of all, if you're using an RPA technology or robotic process automation technology software, you can use that to take the completed form and data and run back in automation processes on it. We see a lot of this when we're working inside of the human human resources, onboarding process, HR onboarding, where we might use a form for front end data collection and then be launching into backend processes to be able to launch into user account creation and stuff like that.Okay. Now on to some of these use cases that I was talking about here. These are just a few use case samples here. We'll be taking a deeper look at these forms in just live demonstration here in just a few minutes. First, the first form on this slide here really shows how you can use a form to start the data collection process for HR. So that HR onboarding process, that might involve collecting data from managers, HR team, new employees to get the data you need to be able to create backend documents like the W-4s, I-9 and even might be some insurance documents inside of there as well.

And then if it goes all the way to the IT side, we can collect user information and system access information as well from the manager or HR team during that process. Approvals can be enforced and the data is then passed to the backend system or to an RPA solution on the backend to do the backend processing. IT can be alerted or different individuals can be alerted during this workflow process that might need to do something with that form or pass that data to IT for that new employee set up.

And last of all, the second form is a purchase order approval form, or an individual can start the request for a PO by filling out the form. And then after all the data that is required is completed, it then can automatically be routed to a manager for approval and dependent on a total value, you can have a business rule in there that it can be routed for executive approval and then passed to completion and then notify everyone via email that that process has been completed. There are so many use cases that the solution can solve. So there really is no end to what we can help you with in an organization do. Here are other a few common use cases that we run into that I'd like just to pass by or starting to get that thought process going here. But these are pretty common ones, right?

So quality control and QA forms, sales order forms, purchase order forms, human resources, onboarding processes and forms, online hiring forms. We have customers using it for credit application forms on their website. Price change and update forms to your CRM and ERP. So there might be a workflow process to be able to collect data and get comments and information. And then after that process is done, we can update the CRM and ERP system. And then last of all, the data collection form to update databases. So it might not be a form that you're using. You're using a form for not the document creation side of things, but you might use a form to collect data and then update your databases with that information. Building off that concept, there are many ways forms can be used in an organization on a day-to-day process.

With some of these use cases, customers might have some different flows on which the form needs to be accessed for filling out. So they might have different processes in there and where things might need to be filled out. And then when the data gets pushed to the system. So forms can really be integrated and used in your organization in many different ways. From, like I was talking about, data collection processes. You might be collecting data, putting it into your business system and then passing that data to the database, which then you might have a BI solution that is accessing that for analytics making forms available on a website for customers to access, like those credit application forms, address change requests and stuff like that. Accessing internally via links and secure portal, or even launched directly from your ERP or business applications.

So if you want to be able to launch forms, we have ways you can integrate and pass the forms from your ERP system directly from your interface screens. In all these business use cases. It is not just about the power of the form, but it's really around streamlining the data collection process, but the full power of the intelligent forms management solution, like Webdocs Forms Management that can help really push that whole workflow enforcement process, right? So it's not just about the form, but it's about the complete system being able to facilitate the form and data collection process, but that workflow and how it's flowing through the system all the way to the ERP systems. So we can pass that information to the ERP system directly or through some import program. So again, no re-keying of the data needs to take place.

Before I jump into the live demonstration here, I just wanted to make sure that everyone is aware that on our website, you can try a couple of these forms out in our live environment, by going to the following page listed above, and then you can click on any of the three forms use cases and use those forms directly. There's a purchase order form out there, an expense report out there and an employee onboarding example as well. You can also sign up for our live demo on this page and access to our self guided trial.

If you plan to use the self guided trial, I do suggest that you contact us still for a 30 to 60 minute getting started or best practices session to show you the right way to design and deploy forms within the environment. Okay. Now I'm going to jump into the live demo. Today, I'll be showing you some of those use case examples that we were talking about earlier here. And I'm going to finish up by showing you some of the power of the technology and how easy it is to create the forms in workflows inside the system. And then if time permits here, I'll be showing you some of the backend archive informer versioning control. And that completes out that secure archive message.

All right. Here, let me switch over. So from a demonstration standpoint, I'm going to show the Forms Management Solution. Again, all web browser based from user access to design access. It really just depends on the security that you're using inside the system and what permissions and what features you're going to get inside the solution. But everybody comes through the web interface no matter if they're a user or if they're like a designer inside the system. Today, I'll be focusing on the design element so I can show you some of the function features here. But I'm logged in here. And you'll see, I have quite a few different examples inside my system here, from onboarding. I use this actually for demo requests forms. We have customer examples in here from medical forms, database collection forms. They have project worksheet forms, some of the project management teams that we work with.

So yeah, there's a lot of different things that you can do from the accessing the forms and being able to deploy those different forms. For example purposes, I'm going to scroll all the way down to the bottom. I have one of the categories in here called the webinars and demos. And this has a couple of different things in here. I'm going to show you some of the forms that I have created, and also some of the flows that I have created in here too. So from a form standpoint, you can have all different kinds of forms, right? So I call this physical evaluation form, I call this more of a simplistic form, right? Because it's data collection, we're creating information, but you're answering questions as we're going through so you can require certain information inside of here.

They can have yes or no questions in here. And also on some of these questions, if you answer yes or no, you can actually have different pieces of information. So if I say yes to something, I might have to specify more information. So we can have rule-based questioning inside of here to be able to guide users to gather more information during this process. So you see this is more of a question-answer kind of form. Signatures on it. So I can actually get web based signatures. It could be a pin based signature too authenticate it to the system, but this does allow that user or users to be able to sign off on things. So a lot of times, student and parent, if it's a school or a application form or multiple people are filling out, it needs to be routed to those different individuals.

We can grab that information and process it into the forms. So that's one example there. We have some, I'll call more complex forms with more of the business rules structure in here. But these are forms where might be a couple of different things, right? So it might be, Hey, I need to go and fill out information or guide someone to fill out something. I can guide them to fill out this information. I can have maybe a short video link in here that they click to, or a more information section here that it might guide them to. Collect those different signatures. And then it can be multi-lingual as well. So it can be... you can have the different language sets internationalized from that standpoint. So if it's English, Spanish and Chinese in this case here, but you can have those different formats inside of here from the data collection standpoint and then the output document.

So we do give you some capabilities there. Before I move on here. I want to show you this here too. This was one of the big things I talked about earlier, is being able to use this form in these different environments, without having any devices. So inside of here, you can see, I can look at this form and what it looks like on a laptop or computer. I can also look at this what it's going to look like on an iPad. And I can go all the way down to the lowest common denominator here, which would be an iPhone or an Android device, or I might need to see what that looks like on those devices and then fill it out and use it just like they would on that device. So that's one of the very helpful things from a design standpoint that our interface from a designer allows you to do before you deploy forms.

Some of the other forms here too, like I was talking about credit application form. This could be as simple data collection form. But data collection forms can also be document collection forms. So in this process here in the credit application form, you might need to fill out information, but then also gather signatures and other supporting documents. So you can enforce this process here to be able to collect documents during the filling out of a form. And these could be attached documents that they might have as PDFs. They might be pictures. This control is actually smart enough to know what device you're coming from. So if you're coming from a device that is camera enabled, it will go right to the camera roll so they can snap a picture of that document and then upload it directly to the form. So that's some of the intelligence of the form here itself.

Last one. I'm going to show you some of the design or some of the workflow, and then get into the design standpoint, but accessing data from a database. So in this case here, I might know the last name of someone, right? So I would say, "You know what? I'm going to go find that person. I'm going to go search in the database forum. I'm going to get my results and say, yep. That's the one I want there." And that can hit the validate button or tab of the field to validate. And then I can have that pre-fill the form with some of that information from the database. We can have secure fields too. So if you want to hide or show certain information, like in this case, we don't want to show the full social security number.

I just want to know that we have that social security number and then show me the last four only in this case. Or you could even not show any of it and to say, yep, we have a valid social security number and I have a check mark next to it or something, or have the fields red or green from that standpoint. Check boxes, drop down boxes inside of here you can have. But this allows you to be able to enforce how that user is driven through the form and what they're doing and how the data is being collected in there. Either from them hand keying drop down menus or database information. Now I'm going to show one flow here before I go into the design here. And I'm going to wrap up for today. But from a flow standpoint, I'm going to show you this purchase order one.

Because I think this one's the best one, right? From the standpoint, you can have so a form like this could go through different individuals, right? So you could have workflows that they flow through and also data collection standards inside of here. But I also might want to enforce during that workflow how... who needs to fill it out and when they need to fill it out. So this is where we can use the visual designer here for workflows. This is all drag and drop. So if I want to be able to add something, I can drag and drop it in here. But this allows you to be able to set users up or roles inside of here to specific user or role or group to be able to define there. But we can also, if you see here, if I click on each of these and say manager, and we can have it smart enough to know who their managers is inside the system, either via active directory or via of the Webdocs Forms Management system directly.

But then we can also put what we call pre-conditions in there. So if you don't want the vice-president should get anything that's below $10,000 for approval, we can stop that during that process here. So it's very powerful system to be able to do that process. Now from a design standpoint here, and then we'll jump into some questions here, too. I want to show this really, the design is very, very powerful. So you can come in here and edit these different forms inside the system. And these forms are all drag and drop. So you can drag different components into the forms from the predefined pallet here. So this allows you to do that configuration of those different functions inside the form. So if I wanted to do an upload control inside of here, and I wanted to configure that upload control, I can name it and then I can tell it and do restriction types and everything here.

Again, no programming required during this process. So very, very powerful system from that standpoint. And then business rules. You can put business rules in here. And again, these business rules, I'm going to add a new business rule so you can see the wizard, but you can actually do JavaScript code in here if you want to, or you can run our predefined wizard, which then allows you to do visual rule editing and creation by going with different values and stuff inside of here. So very powerful rules design functionality in here. But the design structure very, very powerful. You can have custom controls that are pre-defined controls that are shared amongst users as well. You can have different data sources that you might be accessing during that process here as well. It's a very powerful system.

All right. I am going to see if we have any questions here first. Let me check here. All right. We do have a couple of questions and just for time purposes, I'm just probably going to take a couple and we'll get back to everybody on the other ones here. Feel free to keep entering your questions in while I review the results here. And I won't get to all the questions today. So we'll be following up after the presentation to get back to any of the other ones. Give me a second here.

This is a good question. Is there any limit to how many forms can be created in the solution? No. There really is no limit to how many forms or workflows can be created. You might have the need first to create one form or two forms to three forms. And then as the excitement inside the organization starts, and people see this, they might need more and more. All it really is is you buy the solution and you can create as many forms and workflows as you want. It is licensed off of concurrent user licensing. That one is... I just answered that.

One is the price per form you create? And then that's a no. Again, you can create as many forms as you want. It's more off of the user licensing behind the scenes. How has the software deployed? That's a great question. I'm not sure exactly how to answer that. But we have a couple options that come from the deployment. Both options are really based off of an on-premise license that can be deployed inside your organization, to on a physical VM or a virtual environment. Or you may even choose to deploy via our cloud enabled manner as well. So if you're using Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS. You can also use that as well. So you do have a couple options there.

All right. And the last question here for today. Do the connectors come with the solution or do they need to be purchased separately? They are pre-built in. So you do get the connectors, the database connector file, the file connector, the webdocs archive connector. There is no extra cost to that functionality inside of there. All right. There's still a lot of great questions out there, but I'm not going to get to all of them. I'm a little bit over my time already here. So we'll be following up after the webinar to answer the questions that have been submitted already. If you did not get a chance to submit a question yet, feel free to reach out to us directly. And I'm going to get on to my next one here.

All right. And so I thank everyone for attending today. I hope you have learned some helpful information about Intelligent Forms and Workflow Management and how Webdocs Forms Management can help you on your document and forms management journey. If you have any additional questions, feel free to reach out to myself or the sales team here. We'll be happy to schedule a free consultation or a live one-on-one demonstration to address any of the questions and maybe even see a form of your own inside the solution. You'll receive a link to the recording link for this webinar to share with anyone in your organization that could not attend today's session. Thank you for attending today's webinar and hope you found the information very helpful and useful. Have a great day and enjoy the rest of your week.