Return Application for Edits

EthosCE Product Suggestions
1

It would be helpful to be able to return an application to the submitter for edits. There are times when information in an application is not complete or requires edits by the submitter before it can be approved.

Right now once an application is submitted, it can not be edited by the submitter. Perhaps adding a status such as “Changes Required” could trigger the application to be returned to the submitter for edits. A comment field with the changes requested by the reviewer could be added as well, and the text in that field could be included in the notification to the submitter.

2

This would be a big help. We just started using the application on Ethos and having submitters not being able to edit is a hurdle.

3

An added status that keeps the form editable is a great idea!

1 Like
4

I agree - this falls in with the other topic of having more than one contributor.

We would love to see more than one contributor AND the ability to edit the form after submission.

5

Added the activity application tag to this post and yours Julie, so if others decide to make a suggestion based on either of these features, they’re more likely to see the existing ones.

Wish there was a way to merge threads!

6

Hi Genesis, are you volunteering!?! :grinning:

We can give you access to manage threads/posts if you are interested in helping tidy things up.

7

Ha! No, I wasn’t quite volunteering! But, I would consider it if you are offering some perks in exchange for quality volunteer work :wink:

8

Any movement on this one? Really need it.

9

AHN would absolutely love this also and did not know this was not available. I just assumed that you should be able to send back to creator make edits.
Definitely should be just a given with this.

10

Yes, this would be a great change. While I don’t mind changing something minor, sometimes I get an application with so many issues that I have to just have the sender start a new one.

11

Yes this would be great.

Would this apply to any webform?

12

We recently began using the application add-on and were disappointed to learn that returning an application for edits was not a standard part of the functionality. I also want to add that I recently submitted the following questions through
Jira that may be useful to other groups.

  • Is it possible to attach a course application to a course without creating the course from the application? My staff often prefer to clone courses because it is easier than creating
    a course from an application. From my perspective, it is a huge benefit to have the course application attached to the course, but it isn’t possible if you are cloning a course*.* ** Answer: This is currently not possible so as to maintain an audit
    trail of where a course came from.**

  • Is it possible to have a field in our course application that is only visible to Site Administrators? The intent of this question is to be able to provide the internal person assigned
    to the course with additional information that would not be relevant to the person submitting the application.
    Answer: It is possible, but may include an additional fee.

  • Is it possible to make changes (e.g. changing the CME Reviewer or editing the gaps) without notifying the person who submitted the application? The point is that I don’t want the person
    who submitted the application to receive an email every time I make a change because it causes confusion (i.e. mostly because they think they did something wrong). **** Answer: -Emails only fire on specific Status changes: 1. When they set their form
    as complete and ready for review, 2. When a reviewer is assigned to their form, 3. When an admin sets the status to “Approved”**

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13

Hello! It’s been about a year since this was first posted.

We are about to give up using the activity application. I currently have someone putting the information from the application back into our old form so she can send back to the person for edits, and I have another person who is setting up an application in excel so that it can be shared among multiple people. I DO NOT want them to do these things, but I can’t force them to keep using a process that doesn’t work for us. HELP!

This fxnality and process flow exists in a similar format for RSS management. So let’s find a way to use it for application submission process!

  1. We need to be able to return an application for edits - and have auto-emails sent out for status changes.
  2. We need to be able to have multiple contributors (not just the person who submitted, but others as well - for example, we often have an adminitrative assistant filling this out, but we also need the clincian who is in charge of the activity to have access/contribute)
  3. Ideally there would be a similar process flow as we have with RSS - the ability to back and forth the application until it is approved.
  4. As was mentioned in one of the responses to this post, we would also see this as being more useful if we could connect an application to an activity - NOT create an activity from it. We have a lot of annual activities, and cloning from the last activity makes a lot more sense than creating the activity from the application.

Who’s with me! :grin:

14

I’m with you Julie, as this is part of the reason we did not purchase that module.

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15

We’re with you too and would love to see all of your points become a reality. We’re about to give up as well.

16

Hi Julie,

I agree, if submitters could edit their applications it would make the process so much smoother and save a lot of time. We also have to copy the information
out of the submitted application to send it back to the submitter to edit and then we have to enter their edits.

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17

With you all the way! Those changes/edits would be great for starters. We are using the application, but we spend way too much time talking our people through the process and/or making the edits after they have submitted it. As a standard set up, I create a course page in the course outline for uploading documents related to each course/session. It set up as not enabled, not visible in outline, and completion not required. The only people who see it are the ones who have access to edit. I print out a pdf of the application and add it to the first session in the series/ course.

18

In full agreement.

CLONING
Cloning courses is standard and not going away so DLC HAS to find a way to make it work. Honestly with so many annual conferences, I think we clone more than we genuinely have the need for new course pages altogether. Even if it is a first-time course, parts of page set-ups won’t change so cloning is still faster than starting over.

DLC’s answer to this has been that you can make applications have fields that will auto-fill some of the fields in the course itself. But I’ve found a couple of issues with that process and alot of the fields I keep when cloning an existing course, aren’t things we’d collect on an application (like our standard accreditation language, course instructions, registration instructions, etc).

If the audit trail is a concern, then just mark the fact an administrator overrode the standard process and is choosing to attach an application to a cloned course. Done.

APPLICATION WORKFLOW
100% should be able to:

A. Bounce the application between more than the submitter and the CME reviewer.
Adopting some of the RSS workflow is a good idea. We use “Action Required” as the status to let coordinators know their session needs edits. We could envision using that for the application, and similar to the RSS e-mail, there is the status change and a workflow comment section where we write why we need changes or anything else the applicant needs to know.

But even if that isn’t technically feasible, there is a plethora of apps and programs that use different workflows for form editing, I’d be hard-pressed to believe there is absolutely no way to do it.

B. Archive an application without sending e-mails.
We’d never archive an application that isn’t either rejected or in the state of approved. But you can’t archive without saving, and saving in the state of approved triggers an e-mail.

I did tell DLC about this and it’s a core ticket, but I don’t know if/when that’ll get fixed.

Couple of other things…

ADMIN FIELD: INTERNAL NOTES
I could be wrong, but I believe turning this field on is a matter of…turning it on. If that’s the case, definitely shouldn’t cost extra.

CONDITIONAL FIELDS
In every form creation tool I’ve ever used, not once have I been charged extra for the ability to create conditional fields. That includes Ethos, aka: webform. I understand that perhaps it’s more complex to do it on the application, but it’s also not a matter of choice to collect all the information we collect.

If we’re paying as much as we are, in part for friendly UI, that should include all standard survey/application/form question display formats available.

19

Hi Everyone,

For those of you I have yet to meet, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Scott Kuchinski and I am the Technical Product Manager at EthosCE. I was brought on to the EthosCE team about 6 months ago to assist our talented team with the task of growing our core product and, most importantly, interacting with our vibrant community of CME professionals.

As our industry of continuing medical education continues to grow, it’s imperative our EthosCE software continues to grow in unison. I was brought on to ensure our product continues to grow with the emerging needs of our community of CME professionals.

So what does this mean for you? Besides always having a set of open ears (seriously, please reach out! skuchinski@ethosce.com), It means we now have a dedicated resource to bring your CME needs to fruition in an efficient and thoughtful manner.

Some of the emerging product development efficiencies we are putting into practice include:
· Faster feature development and time to market
· Dedicated industry research on emerging CME trends and necessities
· Dedicated line of live product communication (seriously, let’s talk!)

And most importantly…

Streamlined efficiencies in prioritizing community concerns! Our 2020 product roadmap is almost entirely influenced by the feedback and feature votes voiced in this forum. We are actively listening, and your concerns are paramount to our product development research.

To give you an up to date overview of what our 2020 product roadmap looks like, I’d like to share a few pivotal themes we’ve identified as high priority within the product development cycle. As we recently shared in our 7.29 Release notes, we’ve identified our first quarter focus on the improved Course experience within EthosCE. Our team will be targeting enhancements and new features to the Course engine which is paramount to a successful learning experience. The majority of these soon to roll out features come directly from your request and discussions within this community.

Looping back to the discussion within this thread, the next theme in our product development roadmap will be improvements to the activity application experience! An overhaul to this feature has been on the roadmap for a long time due to the complexity and emerging needs of our EthosCE users. We wanted to make sure each and every detail of this improved activity application experience ensures success for all EthosCE users. We are looking to release these improvements as early as Q2!

As I mentioned above, my entire job is to stay closely connected with all of you. In the coming weeks, I will be reaching out to a number of users within our community to discuss all things EthosCE. I want to hear what is currently working well for you, what is left to be desired, and how we can further help you achieve CME success. In the meantime, please feel free to reach out to me directly any time (skuchinski@ethosce.com). I look forward to speaking with each and every one of you and hopefully meeting in person at our 2020 EthosCE User Group Meeting!

2 Likes
20

So excited that this is being worked on! Thank you! Additional fxnality:

  • Ability to have more than one application type (or I guess conditionals would work if need be). We would have different questions on RSS series and enduring applications.

  • Be able to ask questions that are NOT linked to fields in our course setup. For example, when we ask which credits they want, we really don’t want to have the entire list of credits we have on the backend available. We would want to only list the ones we can accredit through Joint Accreditation and MOC portfolio, and then an “other” option to let them list anything else they want.

Thanks!
JAM