Application forms were paper based. Processing the forms and inputting the data into other systems was time consuming and error prone.
Manual processes such as data entry reduced overall efficiency of the business.
Staff were impeded by time consuming processes.
Managing data in Excel was not scalable. In order to run their data volunteering programmes, a new system was required to manage their data.
Digitalise the paper based application forms.
Automate any manual process to save time and reduce errors.
Improve organisation of the data, making it easier to administer.
Streamline the ability to collect more data.
Simplify collecting data throughout the lifetime of a project allowing for easy extraction and manipulation of the data for reporting.
Enhance capabilities to comply with GDPR regulations when handling sensitive data.
Submitted applications have a dedicated interface page where staff can view applications, leave internal comments on the application and set the volunteer status to active if they meet the critieria.
The volunteer profiles interface page gives staff quick and easy access to volunteer data such as emergency contacts, which sessions they've attended and other personal data for the volunteer.
The calendar interface makes it easy to see which volunteers are coming up, and clicking on a calendar entry opens up important information about the sessions such as the register, who's attending and email lists for the volunteers.
Logging attendance and taking registers are important to record important business critical information and also track a volunteers attendance over the course of their time with the farm.
The reporting interface developed provides the ability to drill down into the data collected in application forms, during a project lifecycle and throughout a volunteers time at the farm. This is valuable to allow the farm to easily see trends and patterns in their data, and also quickly extract data for quarterly reports.
Repetitive tasks such as creating registers, filtering out suitable and unsuitable application forms and remembering to complete monitoring forms are all handled using Airtable Automations. Staff can focus on their work rather than performing repetitive tasks like these.
Data privacy and correct data handling is essential when dealing with personal information. Airtable Automations will automatically keep track of when data needs to be deleted, and will perform the automatic deletion of data when it is no longer needed ensure the farm is always data compliant.
Discover
Initial discovery phase to scope the requirements of the project and learn how the SWCF volunteering programme operates. Complex workflows were explored such as automatically generating volunteering sessions in advance and auto-populating registers to allow staff to see future session capacity.
Design
Architecture diagrams, database schemas and prototype interfaces were created to test different designs for the system from both technical and user perspectives. A smart technical solution was designed that was also functional and easy to use by the end user.
Develop
Development of the Airtable system commenced once the requirements were finalised. This included building the Airtable database, building the interfaces, configuring automations and writing scripts to handle the unique business workflows and requirements.
Deploy
On passing user acceptance testing the system was made live for prospective volunteers to submit applications through Jotform, and staff members at SWCF were given access to the Airtable interfaces to start incorporating the system into their daily workflows.
To ensure staff were comfortable and familiar with the new system, onsite training was provided to upskill everyone on how to use the new Airtable software.
Documentation was written so that staff can self-serve at their convenience to refresh their knowledge on how to use the system.
Direct support was offered if staff had any questions or queries alongside monitoring the system to ensure everything was working as expected.
After deployment there were additional workflows that needed to be added to the system. These were added in frequent updates of the system.