A Stellic workflow is a a paperless approval process. We detail what a workflow is in our article on "What are Workflows"? In this article, we will discuss how to initiate a request as part of a workflow.
A request is the method to add a student to a workflow. Until a request has been initiated by or for a student, the student is not considered to be a part of the workflow review process. There are two primary ways to initiate a request:
Add students in bulk to the workflow. From the workflow creation page, you can initiate requests in bulk to the workflow. In order to access this method, you need to have permission to create workflows at your institution.
Initiate the request for an individual student from the student's profile page. Any user with permission to initiate the request can initiate a request from the student's profile. (The permission to initiate a request is configured within the workflow setup.)
Add students in bulk to a workflow
Initiating requests directly from the workflow editor means that you will be starting the workflow process for those students without additional action needed by the student or another user to begin the review process. Note that once you have initiated a request, the only way the request will be resolved is for it to go through all required steps and associated reviewers of the workflow. There is currently no way to manually remove a student's request from the workflow process once it has been initiated.
In order to initiate requests in bulk, you must first make sure that your workflow is published and ready to go!
There are four options to add students to the workflow: all eligible students, new eligible students, import students, and select students. See below for an explanation of each option.
All eligible students will add any students who both meet the criteria of the workflow whom you have permission to see in Stellic. If there are students who meet the workflow criteria (for example, all freshmen majoring in biology) but you do not have permission to view those students, those students will not be added. In other words, if your permissions are limited, it is possible there are students who meet the workflow criteria but will not be added.
Only new students eligible allows you to start requests in bulk for any new students added since the initial request. For example, if your workflow is based on an an expected graduation date your institution is sending via the data feed, as new students have graduation dates added, they become eligible, but they would not have been in your initial batch of requests. This allows you to continue to add students if your eligibility criteria allow students to be added to the workflow.
Import students allows you to add students from a list. You can paste or type student usernames into the window to initiate a request for those students. Note that only students who meet the criteria of the workflow are able to be added. If you have a username on your list of a student who that does not match the workflow criteria, that student will not be allowed to be added to the workflow.
Select students brings up filters that allow you to find a specific subset of students. Note that the students who appear in this search window are only the students who already match the criteria of the workflow and whom you have permission to view in Stellic. You can add specific students from this eligible list.
Once you have added the students that you desire, select the option to "start request for [x] students" (with x being the number of students that you have selected). This will initiate requests for all students selected.
Important: Please note that this action cannot be undone, and once initiated, a request can only be completed by reviewers in the workflow process. Additionally, some approver actions, such as attaching the student's progress, cannot happen in a bulk workflow initiation.
Initiating Requests from a Student's Profile
Any user who has the ability to initiate a request for a student (as determined by the settings within the workflow when it is created) will be able to see available workflows on the request tab in a student's profile. In other words, if you have the ability to initiate requests for all workflows that involve this student, you may see multiple options on the "Requests" tab. If there are multiple workflows that can apply to a student, but you do not have the ability to initiate a request for any of them, you will not see anything when clicking on the "Requests" tab. For your reference, the creator of the workflow selects from the following options when identifying who has the permission to initiate a request:
the student's primary advisor (if available; not all institutions identify a primary advisor)
the student
anyone with the permission to edit the student's plan within Stellic
specific user(s)
specific group(s)
Select the request that you would like to initiate from the dropdown list:
Once you click "Submit Request," you will see a pop up window to start the request. Some fields may be required in order to submit the request. Any information that will be visible to the student once the request is submitted is noted in the description.
