Introduction

Travel can support students or faculty members who need to leave campus for experiential learning or research. It is important to track their activity for safety and general reporting purposes. Grants to travel for conferences or other activities may also need to go through a review and approval process.

Challenges

• Various individuals in different offices need to be aware of and approve travel.
• Specific information must be gathered in a particular way to comply with policies and regulations.
• Especially if funds are awarded for travel, it is important to collect information when the individual returns to document specific amounts spent and other outcomes from the trip.

Solutions

• Separate routing steps for each office that needs to approve can run concurrently to keep the process clear and allow the travel to be approved as soon as possible.
• The custom form builder on the Requirements page lets administrators build questions in a specific order that can be exported to Excel, such as start and end dates, amount requested (if a grant), and location(s).
• Progress reports can be used to collect both quantitative and qualitive information from travelers that can then be shared with relevant stakeholders.

Tips

• For quick eligibility or verification, use Yes/No questions on the application form, such as "Have you submitted international travel details to the Office of International Affairs?" 
• If the traveler needs to identify one or more individuals to approve the request, use Applicant-Driven Routing Steps. For example, students can identify a faculty advisor if the travel relates to their major. 
• Give clear instructions for all questions, especially supporting documents (file uploads). For scanned documents like passports or itineraries, ask travelers to combine all images on one Word or PDF file for easy viewing. 
• For group trips, use the co-applicants section to collect individual travelers' information in a standardized way.
• Decide if staff members in other offices need to be reviewers assigned to a specific routing step, or if they only need to view the requests after they have come in. If the latter, utilize the Viewer functionality. 
• Progress reports can be assigned after the trip to collect scanned receipts as uploads to verify exactly how much was spent. If the trip was for more experiential or research purposes, ask for outcomes achieved, such as a short reflection or data collected.

Have more questions about this topic? Go to the Community Forum to pose the question to other users or submit a support ticket to InfoReady.