Situated right outside the vibrant Birmingham City Centre, Aston is a long established research-led University known for its world-class teaching quality and strong links to industry, government and commerce. Aston offer a range of undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes and is home to over 65,000 UK and international students.
Following the retirement announcement of Adobe FormsCentral early in 2015, like many other organisations, Aston was forced to source a solution to replace it. Aston’s Pre-Confirmation of Acceptance (Pre-CAS) online questionnaire was previously powered by the popular Adobe powered form builder.
The Institution was clear that it’s applicants could be offered a more enjoyable and streamlined journey. For applicants who didn’t have all the details they required to hand when they first started filling out the form, the problem of having to restart it from the beginning was a potential blocker reducing the number of applications actually completed and then submitted. For these reasons, Aston wanted to be able to allow the applicant to register, login, save and complete the Pre-CAS questionnaire from any computer, mobile or tablet device. Previously, forms would appear ‘broken’ on certain browsers, but knowing that their international applicants access their form from all over the world, they also wanted the new solution optimised to work on any browser of choice.
Staff members at the admissions office previously captured responses from prospective students inside spreadsheets attached to emails. from the admissions office at the University need an. This was not easy to manage or apply filters to for sophisticated reports. There were also several manual tasks in the processes which meant resorting to traditional pen and paper methods.
The University’s complex workflows were difficult to manage as separate forms were created for it’s 5 departments that provide multiple courses and programmes. Minor changes meant that all linked forms had to be changed. Not everyone in the team should have had permission to see and do everything that senior administrators could but it was extremely confusing managing this with a basic form builder tool capturing everything inside a spreadsheet. It is important the the University’s complex workflows for it’s 5 departments and multiple programmes for each are accounted for with pristine accuracy.