Post-event Notes: Automation in Higher Education Forum

On Wednesday 25 October colleagues from the University of Bath, University of Bristol, Bath Spa University and University of the West of England attended a forum with the aim of showcasing a range of use cases of automation. We discussed how automation has been successfully implemented, exchanged knowledge, ideas, strategies and tips to maximise the potential of Power Automate (and other automation technologies), and used the opportunity to link up with colleagues from different departments and institutions - all with the common goal to improve processes and productivity in Higher Education.

Lightning Talks

The morning began with a series of Lightning Talks on a range of topics, with details on the topics covered and presenters as follows:

• Mail merge flow using a shared mailbox and multiple personalised attachments (David Prabhu, IT Learning and Training Consultant, University of Bristol)
• External database connector and certificate creation (Anya Mathews - Business Intelligence Analyst, University of Bath)
• Student and employer comms when a placement is secured (Cait Kirkpatrick, Placements Officer, University of Bath)
• Getting started with Power Automate Desktop (Josh Lim, Learning Technologist - STEM, University of Bath)
• Using data from Forms in SharePoint with calendar view (Hannah Barnham, Operations and Projects Manager, University of Bath)
• Putting 'magic' into a new starter process (Nick Hill, Enterprise IT Services Manager, Bath Spa University)
• Automated leave calendar (Simon Jubb, IT Business Manager, University of Bath)
• Visiting students unit selection (James Cooke, Business Intelligence Analyst, UWE)
• Fixing common errors in Power Automate (Clare Baxter, Process Automation Manager, University of Bath)

Thank you very much to the colleagues who spent time preparing and delivering these presentations!

Personal Productivity

Following this, colleagues discussed personal productivity with a series of prompt questions to stimulate thoughtful conversations about the role of automation, including Power Automate, to explore how individuals (and us as citizen developers) can navigate the evolving landscape of work and technology.​

As well as Power Automate, the role of email rules, Microsoft Bookings, Planner and external apps like Trello, TopDesk, Monday and Todoist were mentioned as tools for organisation being trialled and actively used. Colleagues are using flows use Teams for reminders to follow up on messages, Outlook to block time, as well as using email reminders which are personalised for people beyond their immediate teams. People are also utilising automation to make auto-updates to spreadsheets, to save documents to Teams sites and to generate notifications when responses are gathered. On a larger sale, colleagues are also using Power BI for reporting (such as risk registers) and to generate allocations.

Important conversations about over-automation and the time spent on automating processes followed, with colleagues raising questions about how we can strike a balance between the potential lack of personal contact with automation, as well as the time and energy required to learn a new skill set (of utilising automation, learning the tech, etc.). There are risks involved so managing this is crucial, as well as ensuring that the training resources are in place and documentation is clear so that processes can be maintained consistently. There was a general agreement that one can potentially spend hours building automated models – although this can also be a development opportunity, and that understanding logic and conditioning is a good skill to have.

Team and Business Processes

Thinking from the previous discussions naturally progressed to consider more complex processes involving other people. Before the next set of prompt questions were introduced, colleagues were invited to think about the life cycle of a flow/automated process (cited from the Microsoft White Paper: A guide to building enterprise-ready flows):

• Planning
• Design and making
• Testing
• Deployment
• Troubleshooting
• Maintaining

Clare Baxter and Anya Mathews also explained the Simplify, Eliminate, Automate model to encourage colleagues to think about whole processes first, the importance of planning and thinking about the 'why' at each stage of a process or workflow. As the image below illustrates, when considering automation, try to think about the process holistically and improve it by simplifying and eliminating any unnecessary waste before getting to the automating stage:

The prompt questions during this part of the forum stimulated productive discussions about the role of automation in improving business processes and team productivity, while also addressing the challenges and opportunities that come with automation adoption in a team or organisational setting. Colleagues were encouraged to identify a current team practice that could benefit from the 'Simplify, Eliminate, Automate' model and talking this through proved a good exercise in realising where processes had clunky steps that could be removed and where there were elements requiring manual, repetitive tasks that automation could take care of. 

With regards to deployment, the following points were highlighted as actions that should be considered when implementing automation in a team:

• Clear agreement on how flows and automations will be shared so that they are future proofed and not reliant on one person (who may leave the organisation)
• Where and how documentation is created and maintained so that automations aren't broken if systems and workflows change 
• If a process is transitioning, consider whether what you are implementing requires technical training, or does it require leadership in terms of change management?
• MS Centre of Excellence has an overview of all flows so this could be used to help users prepare for systems changes

​Of course, plenty of other conversations and exchanges took place that aren't documented here, but to capture the key takeaways from the morning, see the Menti results below:

And a couple of snippets of feedback received so far:

I really liked the "Simplify. Eliminate. Automate" moto. I feel Automate is shiny and new so people are naturally drawn to it, but it may not be the answer for that specific task.

That there is so much potential! It's great there is the Power Community of Practice to share ideas.

It's likely that we'll get asked about some of the automations around the student administration areas at some point, so it's handy to see the sorts of things that have been automated.

Simplifying processes is key before automation is involved.

Thanks - a really thought-provoking morning.

Thank you to all attendees for their participation and engagement!

Details about our next event will be available soon, so keep your eyes on the Power Community of Practice (internal colleagues) or register to receive details about future events via this form if you are at another institution.