This article takes you through a very complex workflow. It's meant to get your imagination going about the kinds of things you can do to improve your work. I've chosen a very common scenario so that anyone can follow along. But think about your own scenarios and apply these principles to your own work.

Many companies get asked to make donations. Perhaps it's to support the local sports team of an employee's child. Or a local homeless shelter. Or to sponsor someone who is running a marathon for charity. Whatever the charity, getting all the data and approvals in place can be a struggle.

How does your company currently approach this scenario? Perhaps an employee approaches Finance to ask them to make the payment. Finance checks their own documents and sees that Compliance has a procedure in place. Checks need to be made about the validity of the charity, their tax ID, etc. Certain people in the company need to sign off for the payment and documentation is then presented to Finance to show that Finance can go ahead and make the payment.

But how do we actually go through the procedure? In many companies, Compliance tracks these in a spreadsheet. And emails. Lots and lots of emails. Perhaps even months of emails. The small amounts of money often don't justify spending so much time on these payements. So let's automate the process.

First, we will want the home page of our interface to look like a spreadsheet. A row for each donation request and some columns of important data. Like below.

Each request has a unique ID, a Requester who initiated the request, an Organization, the dates when the request was Created and last Modified, a Status, an Amount, and a Location. We can filter this list and sort. And there is a button to download all the data as an Excel spreadsheet. Who can see all this data? Well, a requester can only see their requests. But people in Compliance can see everything. Let's start a new request.

Clicking on the New Request button takes us to a blank request page.

At the very top are some basic instructions for the requester letting them know the process and any policies that guide the process. Then there is a workflow lifecycle with 6 steps showing that the requester is at the very first step. The Request Details always show where the request is in the process and its basic details. Below that is Form #1 Inputs from requester. The requester must upload a letter of request received from the potential recipient. They can upload multiple files. Then some initial compliance questions about the organization. The amount requested. And details about the finace business partner and whether they have been made aware. Finally some additional details that are optional and any extra files to upload.

Form 2 is all about the Organization. The requester might not know all the details and the next step is usually to send this form to the Organization for them to fill in. For us to be able to send the form to them, we need a few required data points, like the name and email address of the contact person at the Organization. The requester can fill in as many details as they can in the form. And then send the form to the Organization for them to add or correct. Below the requester has filled in the minimum details. The Organization can correct and fill in the rest.

When the requester clicks "Send to Organization for additional details and corrections", the request then goes to Step 2: Inputs from Organization.

Our company sees all details of the request in read only if we go to the request at this stage. The requester and anyone in compliance can cancel the request at any time and can send it back to the previous stage.

The requester receives an email:

They should have been told to expect this email by the requester. If not, the company requester is CC'd on the email. There is a link for the Organization to give further details.

When they go to the link we need a way to authenticate that the person is who they claim to be. Yes, there is a unique ID in the URL that we have recorded in our system, but it's possible for someone to forward email they received to someone else and then that person clicks on the link. So when the Organization clicks on the link we generate a 4-digit code and send it back to the Organization contact's email for them to retrive and submit. When they successfully submit the 4-digit code, we know that they not only have the link, but also have access to the origianl email account and we show them the form with data filled in.

The organization can correct and add additional information. They can see files that were uploaded before and can upload more files. When they submit, they see errors about things they need to do in order to submit. When everything is in order and submit, all the data and files are recorded on our system and the requester gets a message that they have successfully submitted the form and to reach out to the requester with any questions. If they try to come to this form's URL again, they see a message that the form was already submitted.

The requester gets an email that the Organization submitted the form and they can come review it.

The requester can now review what the organization submitted. The requester can make changes to anything. And we will see a history showing any changes made between the two parties as well. When the reviewer is happy with the data, the reviewer can submit the request for review by Compliance.

Compliance is finally brought in. Compliance is notified by email and they come to the page to review the request. Compliance can change anything. All changes are recorded and added to the history of changes.

Compliance has some extra questions for them to answer. Then below that in the Approvals section they must identify at least one Approver. Compliance said that the approvers needed for each scenario vary so greatly and people change so often that they would like identification of approvers to remain a manual step for them. Okay. So when all approvers are identified, they click "Send for approvals".

Approvers are notified by email and they come to the request. All past data is read-only. There are history links so approvers can see the version of every form. What the initial requester submitted. What the organization submitted. Changes made by the requester. And changes made by Compliance. Approvers can approve or reject and leave comments. Once all approvers give feedback, the request is "Complete".

Compliance and the requester are notified that the request is complete. Compliance can review the feedback from Approvers and send the request back a stage if needed. But now the request is Complete. All data is read-only. There is a button to download a PDF of all the data that can be given to Finance for their system. There is also a link to see all the raw data associated with this request so we can do deep analysis of all requests.

What would you give to have all your work organized like this? Would you be willing to map out all the steps and all the possible actions people can take at each step? It's possible. You can do it.