Anthology Student consulting
Hands-on help with Anthology Student (formerly CampusNexus and CampusVue) from someone who has worked in it since 2007, first as a user and then building on it.
Workflow and forms automation: Take the retyping out of your staff’s day
Workflows and forms that do the routine steps for your admissions, registrar, financial aid and finance teams, inside the student system they already work in.
The problem
Ask any office in a college what they would stop doing if they could, and the answer is a list of small, repeated steps: updating a status after a document arrives, sending the same email, moving a record from one queue to another, typing a form into a screen.
The student system can usually do these things by itself. Often it was never set up to, or it was set up years ago by someone who has left, and nobody is sure what the existing automation does.
What I do
- Workflows in the student system. Built with Workflow Composer (Windows Workflow Foundation), running on the events and schedules that Anthology Student (formerly CampusNexus and CampusVue) provides.
- Forms. FormsBuilder forms for staff and students that validate what is entered and put it where it belongs.
- Power Apps and Power Automate. For the steps that live outside the student system, in email, documents and approvals.
- An honest inventory. A report that classifies and documents the production workflows you already have, so you know what is running before anything is changed.
Why the automation lasts
Automation fails when it encodes how a process is drawn on a whiteboard and not how it is really done. I have done these processes by hand: as a registrar, in admissions and at the financial aid desk. I know where the exceptions are, and I build for them, because a workflow that handles the easy cases and breaks on the rest just moves the work.
How it runs
I sit with the people who do the work, or read what they do in the system, and write the process down in their words. We agree what the automation should do and what it should hand to a person. Then I build it in test, your staff tries it on real cases, and it goes live with a way to switch it off.
Self-check
How healthy is your workflow estate?
Ten yes, no or not sure questions an IT lead can answer about an Anthology Student Workflow Composer and FormsBuilder estate, each with one line on why it matters. The answers score into one of three bands, with the pages on this site that speak to the gaps. It runs in your browser and sends nothing anywhere.
Nothing leaves your browser. The scoring runs on this page, and no answer is sent or stored anywhere. These are ten general good-practice checks for a Workflow Composer and FormsBuilder estate, not a description of any one school.
What drove this result
Show the text that will be copied
Your answers stay in this browser tab. The Copy button puts the text on your clipboard for you to paste wherever you choose, such as a message to Zak through the contact page. This page sends nothing on its own.
How the score reads
Healthy
The basics that keep workflow automation safe to change are in place: you know what is running, a test copy cannot reach real people, and a person stands between a change and production. Keep the list current, and treat each not sure as a small task.
Worth a look
Nothing here is an emergency, but a few gaps are the kind that turn an ordinary upgrade or a test refresh into a long week. The answers listed with the result are the ones to look at first. Most close with an inventory and a few conventions.
At risk
Several answers, or several not sures, point at an estate nobody can describe with confidence. That is common after years of automation by different hands, and it is fixable. Start with an inventory read from the system itself, then put guards and approvals in place before the next change.
Where the fixes live
- The workflow inventory case study: a self-service report that lists and classifies every production workflow, read from the system itself.
- How the workflow automation service runs: the process is written down in the staff's words, built in test, tried on real cases and switched on with a way to switch it off.
- The approach page: the rules for making changes: rehearsed in test, checked independently and applied to production by a person.
Show how the score is worked out
Each question has a healthy answer. The other answer is the risky one and scores the question's weight: 4 safety questions (the environment guard, credentials, test or debug endpoints, and approval) score three points each, the rest score two. Not sure scores one point, and a question left blank counts as not sure. 2 points or fewer reads Healthy; 3 to 8 reads Worth a look; 9 or more reads At risk, out of a possible 24. The answers that scored are listed under the result, risky answers first, then the not sures.
Common questions
Questions people ask
How small or large a project do you take?
Small is welcome. Many engagements start with one painful report, one process that causes rework each term, or one task chosen so that success is easy to check. At the other end I have built whole-population migrations and the integration layer that keeps several systems in step, and larger programs move to a monthly retainer once the first piece is live. DataZak is one person alongside a full-time role, so I do not take on more than I can deliver to the agreement we sign. See services.
What do you need from us to start?
A plain description of the systems involved, what is going wrong or what you want to exist, and any deadline such as a term start or an audit. Then a confidentiality agreement, read-only access arranged the way your security team prefers, and a test environment to build in. Before work begins we also settle in writing which tools may see which data, and name the person at your school who approves a change before it is applied. See security and data handling.
How do you hand over at the end, and who owns what you build?
You own everything I build for you. At handoff you get the code, the documentation, the runbooks for how it works, how to restart it and how to switch it off, the evidence from the build, and a walkthrough for your team, so another engineer can take it on. A hosted integration is defined in code with an exit plan written down, so it can move to your own team when you are ready. See security and data handling.
Other services
SIS integration
Connect your student system to everything around it, as changes happen, with a record of every change.
Reporting and dashboards
SSRS reports and Power BI dashboards your staff trust, including Crystal Reports rebuilt for the web client, by someone who has used those reports.
Data migration
Move student and financial aid data between systems with a rehearsal first and proof for every record.
Financial aid automation
Automation around financial aid data, built by a former aid administrator, with the evidence an auditor asks for.
Applied AI
Put AI agents to work on real operational tasks, with the controls and the audit trail a college needs.
Managed hosting
Nowhere to run an integration? I host and maintain it on Azure, in your subscription or a dedicated one.
All services
The full list, and the three ways an engagement can run.
Have a system that needs untangling?
Tell me what you run and where it hurts. The first call is 30 minutes, free, and you will leave with a clear next step whether or not we work together.