Woot!

Agree!

Hi Cheryl,

Thanks for the feedback. While I think we added a lot of value with the "Auto-assignment" of follow ups, I recognize that we didn't get all the way to where everyone would have liked us to be.

Over time, we'll be continuing to add additional batch functionality. However, we'll be doing this relative to other priorities we have. At this point, there are quite a few things we'll be tackling before we be looking at batch assignment of follow ups. So while it will remain on our longer-term road map, given the other priorities and the feedback about it at this point, it's not something I expect to see us working on in the next 12 months or so.

Thanks,
-chris

I would lean toward a batch assigning process over an auto assign since we use the same processes repeatedly and the due dates would change for each cycle. I don't see how auto assign would work for us.

Throwing my 2 Cents in too. Batch Assigning of Follow Ups would be great!!

Hallelujah!

Couldn't agree more! :-)

This sounds PERFECT! I agree with Paula McCarty above that my ongoing faith in Foundant and its team continues to be affirmed. You guys are awesome!!!

Again, my faith in the Foundant staff is affirmed. Chris, you are outstanding and the plan sounds great! Now if we could just get rid of the need to type "DELETE" every time we delete a follow up, you'd be batting a thousand! So proud to be a customer of Foundant - which actually listens to its clients. Thank you!

April,

I see your point. I was looking at it from the GLM Administrator's perspective. Reviewers can be a whole different ballgame. Our board members are our reviewers and they struggle with finding anything! Fortunately, if submission dates aren't met, no reviewer sees the grant request--it is automatically declined. On the rare occasion we decide to put one through, we enter staff comments that can list the submission dates or anything else we want to disclose.

FYI: In a recent board survey we asked our board members if they wanted documents related to a request stored elsewhere besides GLM (not MY question, believe me) and they said YES! This astounds me as we've done everything to keep it as simple as possible by providing them all the documents they could possibly need within the request. I have to keep telling myself they only do this once or twice a year and to be patient. (NOT my strong suit!)

Blessings,
Barb

Yes, this sounds interesting and promising, Chris!
Thanks a million,
April

Yes, Barb, I too often use the automated emails generated from submissions to check the date things were sent in, but when you are looking at grant it only shows due date, it would be nice to see submission date on same screen. Our reviewers often request this information as they help to score new grants, it is difficult for them to determine if the agency is in good standing.
I appreciate your note and the Foundant staff!
Have a nice day,
April

Chris,

This sounds fabulous! Yes, even better than batch assigning. Since we have to approve or deny a request, once we approve it, why not just set the follow-up dates and assignee at the same time. and to be able to edit some or all--brilliant! I LOVE this. As always, I appreciate the attention and concern the Foundant Staff shows for its clients.

Hi all,

And by "all" I mean quite a few folks! This is one of the most popular items in the Idea Lab in terms of comments, followers, and "me toos". Given the interest, I wanted to provide an update on a feature that we are calling "Auto-assign follow ups". We are working on this instead of a "batch assign" feature for a couple reasons:
we can do it much more quicklywe think it should greatly reduce the need for "batch assign" (for new approvals)it'll allow folks to assign follow ups directly from the approval page (whether or not they use the "auto-assign" part of the feature")At a high level, the feature will work as follows. For each follow up form on a process, you will be able to mark it as "Auto-assign" if you wish. If you do so, you'll be able to set its "Due Date" in a couple ways. We may add more, but for right now, the 2 are:
"static" (a fixed date)"dynamic" (a date calculated from a response to a required date form question - like "Decision Date" on the approval form)For a concrete example using a "static" approach, imagine a grant cycle with a fixed end date of June 30 with these 3 follow ups:
Grant Agreement (due July 15)Interim Report (due Sept. 30)Final Report (due Dec. 31)When you approve a request for this process, a pop up dialog will appear with these 3 follow ups listed, the due date defaulted to the above dates for each, and assigned to the applicant. You'll be able to edit any of that information if you wish, or just click a button and proceed.

For a concrete example using a "dynamic" approach, imagine a rolling grant cycle (that accepts requests throughout the entire year) with these 3 follow ups:
Grant Agreement (due 21 days after the Decision Date)Interim Report (due 90 days after the date the applicant indicated in a "Project Start Date" question)Final Report (due 365 days after the date the applicant indicated in a "Project Start Date" question)In this case, if you approve a request and set the Decision Date to June 30, the Grant Agreement will show as being due on July 21. If the "Project Start Date" is September 1, the Interim Report due date will show as November 30, and the Final Report due date will show as August 31 of the following year.

In both cases, you'll be able to edit the follow up due dates and assigned person at any point.

I wanted to describe this feature under this Idea Lab thread as you all may have some input on it. Feel free to offer more feedback - I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts.

Thanks again for the comments you've already added,
-chris

April,
Yes, follow-ups can be time consuming. I'm confident Foundant Staff will provide a means to batch assign follow-ups as quickly as they can, within the constraints of everything they're working on for us clients.
I'm responding to your comment about trying to find the submitted date. I used to go crazy looking all over for it. My workaround is to go from a grant request and view the respective organization's Request Email History. There I can find the record of the automated message we send when a follow-up is submitted. All emails for that particular request provide the date they were sent and to whom. If you don't send an automated email message when a follow-up has been submitted, you might want to consider doing so. It's a great tracking mechanism. :-)

Follow-ups are very time consuming, I am wondering where things are with getting batch follow-ups working? Most of our follow-ups are the same form, assigned to the same process, with the same due date. There isn't an easy way to go in and assign, without going to each grant directly. There also isn't a way on the new dashboard to pull up a user friendly list of applicants within a process that are open to go down and assign a follow-up to either, you have to use requests and decisions or follow-ups complete - and in doing so many times things are in duplicate and it is easy to miss someone... There has to be an easier way. I also wish when you were looking at an agency's follow-ups it could easily show when they submitted it, it only shows the due date. Lately I seem to spend a great deal of time trying to simple straight forward tasks within the software. I am hoping the Tune Up will help!

Is this really the case? If so I'm already dreading preparing follow ups for our next fiscal year of installment payment grants...

We are finding this very challenging as well. I think I've created all the necessary Follow up forms for installment payments for archived processes - but it took someone not being able to get into the form to realize this was necessary. I probably just missed something in the 5.0 Release instructions.

I need to create and enter 12 different follow ups for each of my grants? Really? The last system allowed me to create one follow up form and assign it to which ever file I chose. It's SO frustrating. We are in conversations with Foundant and know they will come up with something... we hope.

Paula,
Not at all. What kind of difficulty?