The Toronto District School Board implemented HP TeleForm and HP eForms Process Automation to digitize and streamline its student enrollment and other paper-based processes. This allowed the board to convert over 300 paper forms into digital formats, reducing costs and errors from manual data entry while improving access and efficiency. The new system automates form routing and approval workflows, integrating submitted data with backend systems. This has improved operations while supporting the board's initiatives for online access, mobile use, and reduced environmental impact.

1. School Board Automates Student Enrollment Process with a
Paper Route & eForms Solution
The Toronto District
School Board (TDSB) is the larg-
est and one of the most diverse
school boards in Canada serving
our 246,000 students and commu-
nities, improving academic perfor-
mance, managing business services
and providing over 36,500 staff
support to 595 schools within To-
ronto region.
TDSB promotes the use of technol-
ogy in its classrooms and day to
day operations while simultane-
ously streamlining the processes it
uses to teach and manage a bur-
geoning student population. As
part of that process, school district
officials began looking for ways to
digitally capture, manage, and pro-
vide wider online access to the
mountain of documents generated
during normal operations. These
include student assessment tests,
student records, personnel records,
financial and accounting docu-
ments and payroll forms resulting
from the activities of various stake-
holders i.e. Principals, Teachers,
Students, Parents and Heads of
Departments.
The Challenges:
Due to lower government funding,
and increased regulatory require-
Company: Toronto District School Board,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Industry: Education
Application: Document Capture of Pa-
per & eForms
Challenge: Had hundreds of paper
based forms that needed to be pro-
cessed and integrated with an online
eForms system
Solution: HP TeleForm integrated with
HP eForms Process Automation
Results: Lowered costs to deploy forms.
Captured forms results more accurately
with increased speed.
PROJECT SUMMARY
Connectis Project Story MUNICIPAL EDUCATION
ments, educational institutions
must become more cost effective
and efficient. How can schools
keep up with the more complex
application process and become
more efficient in light of this in-
creasing document burden?
TDSB is a leader in the use of tech-
nology in teaching, learning and
administrative services. TDSB firmly
believes that technology is chang-
ing expectations and the global
marketplace requires organizations
to be increasingly competitive, em-
ployees can no longer be restricted
by four walls and the stacks of pa-
perwork they contain. TDSB being
the largest school board in Ontario
faces many challenges, including
capturing accurate data from stu-
dent enrollment and other forms
throughout the district. Most of
the TDSB schools today continue
to use antiquated paper forms for
data-driven business processes.
These traditional forms and pro-
cesses are labour intensive, slow,
costly and hard
to track resulting
in significant op-
erational ineffi-
ciencies includ-
ing:

2.  Lack of universal access to accurate
forms and data
 Reduction of time devoted to teaching
and administration
 Difficult to migrate paper to electronic
forms
 Errors from unreadable forms and ineffi-
cient data entry
 Lack of electronic record
In the past, many administrative tasks such
as course registration and skills assessment
were analyzed and recorded by hand, often
resulted in-form errors and thereby in-
creased the time to correct. TDSB IT man-
agement was asked to identify a compre-
hensive software forms solution that could
transform paper based forms processing
into a paperless electronic forms system.
The TDSB head of Organization Develop-
ment and Research wing remarked ”Forms
are everywhere in our organization — in file
cabinets, on shared drives, on portals and in
many other places. In fact, up to 80 percent
of all the documents we process and scan
are forms. Some are hard copy and some
are electronic, and it’s difficult to get both
kinds into your ECM system and make the
data usable. Usually it requires time-
consuming manual tasks that delay key
business processes.”
TDSB organizational development and re-
search team assists all schools in maintain-
ing student information, and provides the
administration, collection and reporting of
all aspects of student data in compliance
with provincial and federal mandates. In order to save time
and money associated with these processes, TDSB initially
implemented HP TeleForm, a paper based distributed docu-
ment capture solution, which enabled the school board to
automatically capture, classify and extract information from
paper based forms reducing cost and lowering compliance
risks. TeleForm was set up three years ago to support TDSB
staff in various data collection and document capture pro-
jects.
TDSB recently wanted to put all their corporate static forms
and processes online to automate all aspects of form driven
processes through the elimination of paper-based processes
and keep consistent forms and processes throughout district.
One of the challenges was to retain the same layout and for-
mat used on the paper forms maintaining the logic and prop-
erty setting of each field configured during the design stage
of these forms at TeleForm Designer. All the existing 300 pa-
per forms need to be transformed into an online form system
so students, faculty and staff can complete and submit infor-
mation electronically from anywhere and the collected data is
shared automatically with the student, administration staff
and the business systems. The School board needed to find
an electronic form technology that’s easy-to-use and inte-
grates with critical business applications often used by school
districts and reduce the costs associated with printing, stor-
ing, and distributing pre-printed forms. There was compli-
ance requirement from the city to go Green and reduce envi-
ronmental footprint of having to throw the forms away when
they become obsolete. The electronic forms solution should
have an integration point using PDAs, iPads, tablets and
smart phones with offline form functionality as an option to
be used during the filed researches.
The Requirements:
 Create paperless, collaborative and secure electronic
forms-driven processes
 Easily create and publish new e-forms and convert exist-
ing (paper or electronic) ones that retain their original
structure
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Fax - Scan - Document Capture | Document Management | eForms & Workflow Solutions
At Connectis, our expertise is in Business Process Automation solutions
for business: providing consulting services, IT, software deployment,
and project management services focused on lowering organizational
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). We eliminate Paper, improve business
processes with on demand & on premise document automation solu-
tions with fax servers, document capture, document management,
workflow and scanning solutions.

3.  Provide a solution for the Apple iPad and
iPhone authorized users to interact with,
complete and apply digital signatures to
secure e-forms on the go.
 Capture correct and complete data auto-
matically without requiring manual correc-
tion
 Forms access across the enterprise
 Integrate forms with business applications
and content and document management
systems and document archiving in those
systems
 Enable electronic digital signatures on
forms for authentication
 Ensure documents meet provincial forms
governance requirements
 Support all major compliance and security
mandates
 Increase visibility and accountability by
tracking forms throughout their lifecycle
 Option of completing electronic forms
offline and then securely submitting the
data when online.
The Solution:
Currently using HP TeleForm, TDSB has de-
signed and implemented over 300 forms, in-
cluding: Admission application forms, Surveys,
financial aid, student transfers, grants and oth-
ers. The TeleForm system enables TDSB to
efficiently process this data using scannable
paper based forms. Quantitative data is col-
lected via check boxes and qualitative infor-
mation is entered more efficiently through the
TeleForm Verifier module. TeleForm Designer
enables TDSB to customize forms to specific
working groups as well as maintain a corpo-
rate identity. Online admission forms, surveys
and consultation forms have all been designed
using TeleForm and exported as fillable PDF or
HTML online forms for hosting on the TDSB
public and private internal websites. The exist-
ing forms designed in TeleForm are imported
and converted in electronic forms, retaining
the structure of the originals without the costs,
delays and hassle of paper versions. HPPA
eForms intuitive Designer module makes it
easy to update forms and design and publish
new ones that look the same as their paper
equivalents.
HPPA eForms provided TDSB a powerful, Web-based software
solution for creating, deploying and managing the routing, track-
ing and approval processes for electronic forms. The capabilities
of the solution ranges from internal corporate "web forms" to
the comprehensive rules-based forms that support the core of
the organization's business. Intelligence is built directly into the
form to improve data accuracy and determine the correct busi-
ness workflow, delivering the most efficient processes possible.
In addition, HPPA ensures compliance by transparently creating
an audit log of all activities and provides the security of both
HTML and PDF digital signature support. Using open standards
such as XML, HTML and PDF, HPPA eForms’ rapidly deployable
server and form design environment made it simply the fastest
way to put our intelligent forms and documents online.
Conclusion:
TDSB recently completed a survey of all grade 4-6 students
around “school climate” information. The majority of the re-
sponses were submitted to the school board electronically with
1/3 being done on paper as not every school has the resources
to handle electronic submissions. With HPPA eForms solution
TDSB was able to transform many paper forms into an online
form so students, faculty and staff can submit information elec-
tronically from anywhere. eForms are processed quickly, and the
collected data is now shared automatically with students, admin-
istration staff and the business systems. In conclusion TDSB was
able to
 Improve efficiency and service by automating paper-based
processes.
 Cut costs by eliminating printing, distribution, processing,
and storage of paper, and minimizes environmental impact
with electronic forms.
 Lower development cost through reusable forms compo-
nents.
 Integrates with existing infrastructure through improved web
service interaction.
 Provide improved performance and scalability through 64-
bit support in server.
 Enable higher productivity through anytime, anywhere ac-
cess on tablets
 Provide auditable, compliant records.