Student Travel Requests

Overview

Managing student travel at boarding schools is an important task and Veracross offers the ability to submit and approve/deny those requests. Travel requests — available as part of the Boarding module — can be completed by students via a webform and submitted for approval in Axiom.

Functionality on the Boarding Homepage

The “Travel” section on the Boarding homepage has several queries useful for managing travel requests. All filter out canceled trips and all but “Trips in Progress” default to trips leaving on or after {today}. Parenthetical numbers show how many requests are in each category.

• Pending Travel Requests displays all requests that have not been approved.
• Requests Pending Follow-Up displays requests in which parent approval, host confirmation, or follow-up are needed but not received.
• Approved Requests by Dorm displays approved requests.
• Trips in Progress displays trips currently occuring, including one-way trips departing {today}.

Enabling Travel Request Access in Portals

The Weekend Permission Form can be enabled in the Student Portal with a Portal Link. Speak to an Account Manager to have an engineer set this up.

Creating a new Travel Request from Axiom

To create a new Travel Request in Axiom, hover over the Add button and select “Add a Travel Request.” Enter all relevant information (bold fields are required) and click “Add Travel Request” to submit.

Travel Request Detail Screen

A number of fields are available on the travel request detail screen, and can be used in a variety of ways by schools. For instance, one school may only use the “School Approval” fields, and another might use all of the “approval” fields to manage requests. Certain fields are highlighted here:

Basic Travel Request Data

• Request Type: Selecting a request type can be helpful in managing workflows. One-way trips must have a blank return date, but all other trips require a departure date and time.
• Student is the name of the student submitting the Travel Request. Selecting a student populates the Current Grade and Advisor fields when the request is updated, and MAY populate certain destination details, depending on other information in the Travel Request.
• Destination Section: If “Destination Home” is checked, the five non-editable fields below (Destination, Destination Name, Update Date, Destination Phone, and Student Cell) are automatically populated. If the student is not traveling home, enter information manually in the Destination Other, etc. fields as necessary. The “Method of Transportation” and “Other Driver” fields are informational only.

School Approval and Attendance

Select an “Approval Person” if desired and set the attendance status for the request. To approve a travel request, check the “Approved” field under “School Approval” to YES.

Attendance Is Set When a Request is Approved: When a request is approved, the Attendance Status populates the student’s Master Attendance Status for the period of time stated covered by the request.

Important Attendance Note: Attendance is only updated once, when a travel request is approved. If the travel request is subsequently unapproved, attendance needs to be manually updated.

Other Approval — Parent, Host, Travel Itinerary, Hotel, and Other — sections can be used by schools as desired to manage workflows.

Canceled can be checked if the travel request is canceled and it will no longer show up in the default travel request queries on the Boarding homepage.

Important Attendance Note: If an already approved travel request is canceled, attendance needs to be manually updated.

Request Management Workflows

Parental email notification is not enabled by default. Schools should speak with their account managers to set up parental travel request notification emails.

Here is an example workflow:

• A student clicks on the Student Travel Request Portal Link in the Student Portal, fills out the form, and submits it.
• The new Travel Request appears in Axiom as  pending travel request on the Boarding homepage.
• An administrator reviews the request in Axiom, then approves or denies it using the “Approved” field on the Travel Request detail screen. Other workflows may apply at this point, e.g. , if “Travel Itinerary Approval” is checked, other people may need to be contacted, etc.
• The school notifies the student who submitted the travel request whether it was Approved or Denied, and instructs them further.
• If the request was denied and additional steps need to be completed by the student, after they are completed, review the Travel Request again.