AFS Brings Order to Onboarding with NITRO Studio


The Challenge

AFS had a labor-intensive and manual process to manage onboarding using Excel spreadsheets and Outlook tasks, making it difficult to efficiently track new and departing employees. The system was racked with problems: missed tasks, delayed responses, and security issues. This made on/off boarding slow and arduous.

Joe was tasked with finding a better onboarding solution. He made this his #1 priority, knowing how important an efficient system was to the organization. He also realized that, as a non-profit, it was vital for AFS to make every dollar count and keep administration costs low through improved processes. He looked for a solution to manage tasks, create easy workflows, and reduce risks for better adherence and accountability,

Joe found that Crow Canyon Software’s Onboarding application completely fit his needs and provided a powerful and low-cost solution to the employee management problem.

“We can now easily and efficiently bring on a new employee and get them up and running smoothly and quickly, while securing sensitive data during the offboarding process.”

– Joe Collins, IT Project Manager, SharePoint Administrator, AFS-USA

With the high degree of configurability of the Crow Canyon application, Joe was able to modify workflows and processes to meet AFS’s specific needs. AFS is now running over 100 workflows to process its vigorous demands of onboarding and offboarding. In fact, Joe was new to building workflows in SharePoint and found the training and support he received from Crow Canyon to be invaluable. He is now building workflows independently to keep up with the ever-changing demands of the HR Department as it brings on or releases the many employees that help make AFS run.


The Solution

Our NITRO Studio adds forms, workflows, reports, portals and many other additional enhancements to SharePoint and Office 365. The solution that AFS uses starts with a SharePoint Site and various lists, but by using NITRO Studio forms, workflows, and other features, they are able to work within SharePoint to get the onboarding solution they need.

By using NITRO’s robust, flexible, highly interactive forms, accompanied by workflows and actions that are easily configured using the NITRO workflow engine, we provided AFS a very capable way to manage the intake of employees (initial inquires, assessments, analysis, and the associated tasks with bringing the person on board) as well as the departure of employees (removing rights, collecting equipment, writing evaluations, etc.). All this can be done in SharePoint, using the normal Site and list structure in conjunction with the enhancements that NITRO provides — forms, workflows, actions, reporting, formatting, portals, KB, and much more. These NITRO features add the power needed to run a truly effective employee onboarding and offboarding application within SharePoint.

“By deploying Crow Canyon’s Onboarding Business Application, combined with the exceptional training and support provided to us, we have created an advanced workflow solution within our SharePoint platform that meets all the needs for our onboarding/offboarding process.

This has saved us time, resources and eliminated the potential for error and frustration, that was a huge part of our manual process. We can now easily and efficiently bring on a new employee and get them up and running smoothly and quickly, while securing sensitive data during the offboarding process.”

– Joe Collins, IT Project Manager, SharePoint Administrator, AFS-USA

Without the NITRO enhancements, layered on top of the SharePoint base, this kind of application would not be possible to do successfully. The AFS solution uses both the native capabilities of SharePoint along with our NITRO features to give the global non-profit the application they need to manage a very large employee base, along with the flexibility for expansion or modification as their needs change.


AFS Logo

About

AFS strives to make the world a more just and peaceful place by providing international and intercultural learning experiences to individuals, families, schools, and communities through a global volunteer partnership.

A global nonprofit organization, AFS works in over 50 countries to provide opportunities for cultural exchange for students from around the world. This is made possible, by dedicated AFS volunteers—more than 4,400 in the U.S. and over 50,000 worldwide.


Industry
Education

Solution
NITRO Studio