Arts Corps is a nationally recognized youth arts education organization that works to address the race and income-based opportunity gap in access to arts education. Through participation in their arts integration, out-of-school arts and teen leadership programs, youth experience the transformative power of creativity and gain a deepened belief in their own capacity to learn, take risks, persist and achieve. Their programs reach over 2,500 K-12 students in South Seattle and South King County each year.
We encourage you to learn more about Arts Corps on their website.
Case Study
The Problem
ArtsCorps works with a growing number of teaching artists and other teaching professionals who need to track and submit student attendance as well as payroll information. ArtsCorps had designed a functional solution, but after a number of years, the team realized that it was not a solution that could scale to accommodate the need for a growing number of teaching artists to submit attendance tracking data, timesheets, and expenses.
Specifically, teaching artists would collect and submit student attendance data in Excel spreadsheets, then ArtsCorps staff would upload this data to Salesforce via a custom upload tool that was built specifically to handle the organization’s Salesforce data structure. Similarly, payroll and expenses were submitted via spreadsheets, but the data was never entered into Salesforce.
This cumbersome process demanded that ArtsCorps staff commit time to vet and upload the spreadsheets teaching artists submitted. Moreover, since the payroll information continued to live in separate spreadsheets, it was not reportable in any way.
The Solution
ArtsCorps reached out to DaizyLogik to propose alternative solutions that would allow teaching artists to manage and enter attendance for their classes, timesheets, and expense information through a self-serve online portal. After exploring several options, DaizyLogik recommended using Salesforce Customer Communities to build the teacher portal that would put the ability to manage class information, student attendance, and payroll information in the hands of teachers.
Salesforce Communities allow organizations to open up some of their Salesforce data to select communities of users and set up data sharing that ensures those users can only access the records they need to complete their tasks. Salesforce Communities has a cost based on the number of users who need access. It is a secure solution, ensuring that only teaching artists who have been granted access can view data and perform certain actions.
Simple and Self-Serve
DaizyLogik set up a Customer Community starting with the Customer Account Portal Theme and simplified it to make it very easy for teachers to navigate and perform the tasks they need to self-manage their class information and enter payroll information. This community is built with Lightning so teachers are able to easily access it from their mobile devices and tablets.
The use of data sharing settings and custom list views ensures that teachers see only their own classes, and are able to only modify relevant information. Teachers can also update their profile and contact information or reset their password directly through the portal, reducing the burden placed on staff to manage these processes.
Class list for Jane Teacher
Class information as displayed to Jane Teacher in the portal.
Tracking Student Attendance
To track student attendance for their classes, teachers can now enter student names, demographic information and record attendance directly into Salesforce. DaizyLogik developed a custom data entry page embedded in the Community that supports custom functionality such as matching existing students and creating or updating student enrollments and attendance hours.
For teachers, this solution streamlines the tracking of attendance, and reduces the effort required by ArtsCorps staff internally. Staff can now set up the initial class information and meeting dates from Salesforce, and easily enable teachers to access information as needed so they can enter attendance details. Staff no longer need to upload spreadsheets.
Class attendance entry page
Timesheets and Expenses
One of the other primary pain points for ArtsCorps staff has been the clunky process of collecting and processing timesheet and expense information received from teaching artists. Much like the process to track class attendance, ArtsCorps staff would review and process this information on spreadsheets, and lacked an easy way to consolidate payroll data for reporting purposes.
To address this challenge, DaizyLogik built a custom page exposed through communities that allows teachers to enter time, mileage, and other details related to payroll. By allowing teachers to enter this information through the portal, they can not only take ownership of entering hours worked and expense information, but the data will flow directly into Salesforce tied to the classes and their teaching staff. This solution consolidated all the data into one system and streamlined the process of collecting and reporting on worked hours and teacher pay.
Timesheet Sample for one of Jane Teacher’s classes.
Efficiency and Scalability
Using a combination of Salesforce Customer Communities elements and custom development, the DaizyLogik team was able to build on the existing database structures and provide a one-stop shop for teaching artists and other teaching staff to manage their own class attendance and time tracking. This solution empowers ArtsCorps staff to control who gets access through the portal and simplifies the tasks they have to perform to collect all this information. This solution also streamlines existing business processes and ensures all the data is tracked in Salesforce allowing staff to create and run the reports they need on both student attendance and payroll.
In the words of our client: “The portal is working very well. We now have 40 community user licenses and have transitioned all faculty to the portal. As a result, we’ve been able to shift faculty pay from monthly to bi-weekly, we can better monitor enrollments/attendance, faculty can update their class and contact information directly in Salesforce, and we can rely on the information to give us an earlier/more complete picture of our classes.” [Leslie Collins, ArtsCorps]
You can read more about Salesforce Communities (also known as Community Cloud) here: https://www.salesforce.com/products/community-cloud/faq/
Want to learn more? Contact DaizyLogik to learn more about how we can support you with specialized consulting and custom development and help you get the most out of Salesforce.
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