Like schools and universities throughout the world, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 the University of Dayton was looking for creative ways to safely bring back students, faculty and staff back to campus for the fall 2020 semester. A TeamDynamix customers for a number of years, Senior Director of IT Services, Jamie Luckett realized the potential of using the IT Service Management (ITSM) software to track COVID cases on campus.
Luckett said the committee responsible for COVID planning on campus was looking for a software that could track the many steps that need to happen when someone on campus tests positive for the virus, “We were looking for a case management system, and case management is basically service management. We checked with our legal team to make sure we could track COVID-related incidents within the system, and they said yes.”
The team had already been using TeamDynamix for ITSM, Project Portfolio Management (PPM) and across departments outside of IT for Enterprise Service Management (ESM), so they were able to quickly figure out a way to build in workflows to track COVID cases.
Building COVID Workflows
Lead Systems Analyst, Chris Wagner, the person responsible for managing the platform at the university, created mockups of forms that could be used to trigger various workflows the committee deemed essential. With the committee’s approval, he got to work building the forms and workflows within the system. “The platform’s no-code nature makes setup and configurable workflows a simple process”, explains Wagner who was able to build complex the necessary workflows in under a week.
The forms that Wagner built included a Positive Case Disclosure Form for reporting a positive COVID test result, a Close Contact Form for contact tracers to fill out, and a Daily Check-In Form for students and staff to report their daily symptoms.
Each form automatically triggers appropriate workflows and notifications. When someone reports a positive COVID test, for example, contact tracers are alerted so they can reach out and begin this process. If the affected person is a student, the Dean of Students is notified, and if it’s a faculty member then his or her department head and the HR department are informed. If the student lives on campus, the housing department receives notification to begin the quarantine process.
Several IT teams worked together to set up dashboards within TeamDynamix for tracking COVID outbreaks on campus. University leaders are using this information to target their COVID testing based on where outbreaks occur, so they can reduce the spread of the virus.
“We’re pulling information not only from TeamDynamix but from multiple databases, such as up-to-date information from our housing system showing where students are living and what buildings need to be cleaned,” Luckett says. “Because TeamDynamix has a very good API, it’s easy to collect information from multiple sources.”
Getting Back to Campus
With the workflows in place, the University of Dayton was able to safely and successfully open campus for the fall 2020 semester. Wager said, “I’ve been told by multiple people that without this system or something like it, we wouldn’t have been able to have students on our campus.”
To read more about the University of Dayton’s experience with TeamDynamix, you can check out their Customer Spotlight.