All BSL Pupil Database Modules have a workflow feature built in.

This has been very useful to our clients, and provides many labour saving features, taking the drudgery out of running your children's services department.

The best is that workflow modules 'talk' to each other - they pass messages and alerts which appear on cases in other modules, informing the recipient of any important changes of status.

This reduces unnecessary data entry, emailing and so on. Users soon start to rely on it.

Most pupil work involves managing a case - the activity starts, goes through some steps, and then either stops, or becomes quiet.

Workflow places each child case in the correct step in the procedure - and as a result you get the following benefits without requiring any further input:

• Users know what has got to be done next for each case
• The system provides screens relevant to the place in the process the case is at
• The system can produce - automatically - a history of the steps the case went through
• Any alarms or notifications to do with the case can be automatically generated
• The entire caseload can be analysed in to where it is in the process

Where the process involves sending letters, emailing someone, notifying someone else, the system can help in many ways:

• Letters, including data from the underlying database, can be produced at the click of a button
• These letters or other reports can be emailed to the correct list of people at the click of a button
• Information in the database can be analysed, and the results sent to interested parties

As a manager you will need to see how much work is actually getting done in your section.

Workflow provides the means of analysing all your processes to identify bottlenecks, resource usage, and specifically you get periodic reports on:

• The current state of affairs
• The number of alerts and alarms, and their severity
• Whether the cases are on or behind schedule
• Whether anything needs to be done to get you on track

This is a timesaving feature. Our integrated approach means that email addresses in the database can be used to address emails automatically. For example:

• an email which needs to be sent to the child's school, EP and parents can be automatically addressed
• a report to each school telling them their monthly list of SEN resources can be dispatched at the click of a button - each school will get their own list
• the results of meetings can be dispatched to the interested parties by email