Routing Fundamentals

When higher education institutions relied on paper to conduct routine business, an employee would print or copy a form, fill it out manually with a pen, physically carry it to their supervisor’s office and ask them to sign it.  If the supervisor was not in their office for some reason, perhaps they had a wooden inbox where the employee would place the form awaiting her approval.  When available and able to do so, the supervisor might review it, sign and date it.  Somehow the employee would be notified of the approval, and someone would take the signed-off on form, perhaps use some sort of a rubber stamp to mark it, and then place it in a manilla file folder which they would then label and place in a file cabinet so someone else would be able to find it.  Now imagine that supervisor being on vacation and without the approval from someone at her level, it would critically hinder the mission of the institution.  Imagine the alternate who is able to sign on behalf of the supervisor who is on vacation, is present and able to sign, but an institutional policy requires that alternates must also get an executive manager’s signature, and when that happens, someone must make copies for two directors, a dean and a chair.

All of the above can now happen with a few keystrokes and mouse clicks.  Efficiency can be improved and jobs can be eliminated.  What makes this possible is electronic form or e-doc routing.  The next few subsections of this documentation explain how a portions of the Kuali Coeus and Kuali Rice software functionality (modules) can be configured to work together to accomplish business scenarios much more complex than the aforementioned example.

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