The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/163881
number of manual tasks and to eliminate any duplicate data entry. An important step in streamlining business processes is to make sure the responsible individual has all of the information needed to complete the task and make a decision. As a simple example, when reviewing a vacation request, it might not be enough information to know John Doe is requesting to take time off the first week of August. An approver might have to go to an HR system to verify the employee's balance of paid time off. If this information is available as a part of the request sent to an approver, the approver does not have to take the time to find it in another system. Better yet, if the approver is on a mobile device, they can now take action on a request that previously would have required them to wait until they were back in the office or on a laptop to access the HR system before making a decision. This is the most significant impact that mobile devices can have on business processes; they open up far more opportunities to interact with workflow systems, reducing the latency that would otherwise occur. Once your firm provides mobile access to workflows, every taxi ride, flight delay or long line for lunch becomes an opportunity to complete tasks. FRICTION-FREE MOBILE ACCESS Not all tasks are ideal candidates for mobile access. Here is the question you should ask to help determine if your workflow is a good candidate: Can you provide enough information to the individual to review the request adequately and take action on it? If the task is to be completed by an individual who requires substantial access to internal systems to complete the task, the answer is probably no. For example, assigning a task to a conflicts analyst to execute a detailed conflict search would not be a good candidate for mobile access. On the other hand, a finance committee member who must review alternative fee proposals potentially could review and take action on a mobile device if information about the client and fee arrangement were presented in summary form. So how are firms enabling mobile access to their workflows? The options can be categorized as Web-, app- or email-based. Each has its own pros and cons, but which is the best for your firm? Web-Based Access: Here a mobile browser must access a Web page. In this scenario, the user would likely receive an email with a link. Clicking the link would open the Web page for review and approval. This method provides a great deal of flexibility in terms of how request information is presented and in how one can interact with the form. For example, if the person declines the request and you want to capture several other fields of data regarding why it was declined, a Web form would allow you to collect that information easily. Web forms could also initiate a new request, provided the form is reasonably succinct or if the user would likely only do this on a tablet instead of a phone. If your workflow application is built on SharePoint, this is likely the easiest method requiring the least amount of customization. 80 Peer to Peer The complexity with Web-based access is in getting the mobile device secured access to your Web form. This can be done via VPN by exposing parts of your application externally or through thirdparty apps, such as Good Technology's secure browser. Whichever method is chosen, firms will want to be cognizant of minimizing prompts for user credentials as this can become frustrating quickly and will become a barrier to adoption. App-Based Access: In this situation, a mobile app must access workflow tasks. Several third-party workflow platform vendors provide their own apps for the major devices in use today. These have the advantage of requiring little work to expose multiple workflows to mobile devices. In general, once it is available for one workflow, any firm workflow can be accessed. These require that some portion of the application be externally accessible and appropriately secured. Apps are device-maker specific, so you might encounter varying levels of functionality and support across Apple, Android, BlackBerry and Windows devices. There are a wide range of capabilities in this area across workflow vendors, as well as those provided by other third-party app makers. This landscape is continuously changing, so it's always worth doing your own research to see what might be new. Email-Based Access: Email-based approvals rely on email messages to present information to the user and to collect their response. In this scenario, the email would include any details that the user needs. This could be an HTML-formatted email, giving nearly the same flexibility as a Web page in terms of the quantity and layout of the information. Email-based approvals have the advantage of being compatible with any mobile device. To take action on the task, one option is to have the user reply to the email and type a response. The text of the response would then be parsed, the user indicating keywords that match available workflow actions such as "approve" or "decline," and the task would be processed accordingly. This approach can succeed with users who understand specific keywords must be used and know that small permutations can be misinterpreted. For example, a response of "I do not approve" would be interpreted as an approval by systems doing keyword matching and expecting the word "declined." An alternative approach, and my preference, is to provide the user with links or buttons in the email tied to each available action. For example, the user would see the request information along