Universal Benefits Application Links Form Link (English) Form Link (Spanish) Universal Benefits Application (UBA) Video Show Transcript hello everybody thank you for joining um we're gonna get started here in a few minutes we'll give everybody a chance to get signed in and get settled and then we'll kick things off as we get started today if you do have any questions um throughout the training and the walkthrough please feel free to drop those questions in the chat um I'll be checking that as we go and also there'll be plenty of time at the end to ask your questions out loud as well we'll go ahead and give everyone another 2 or 3 minutes so feel free to get settled and then we'll kick things off in just a few moments good afternoon Colin hi no worries Maria I'm doing well thank you all right we'll give everybody 1 more minute I'm seeing we've got about 7 people here I think I was expecting a couple more so I'll give them another minute to join and then I'll get started um I am recording the session and I will send that out to everybody um later today or early next week week um so if you miss anything or you have to leave early or you pop in late you can come back and watch this training uh and just walk through um on another day all right I'm going to go ahead and get started since I'm not seeing anybody new enter the meeting room um thank you all for being here today um if I haven't met you yet on a previous training my name is Colin O'Neal and I am an implementation manager at informed K12 um we are working with your District to bring some of your most important forms online um perhaps some you are familiar with the um time sheets that we've been using or maybe you've seen some other forms um floating around the district that utilize informed K12 if you are brand new to inform K12 we are a platform um that allows you to take what once were paper forms and bring them online so that folks can fill those out um digitally and submit those forms electronically and you um as a really important folks um in these workflows can those forms online and keep tabs on everything in 1 place and so that's what we're going to be talking about today um specifically as it relates to the universal benefits application which is a really important process I'm sure you've been a part of it in years past perhaps um and it really uh is something that um that the district wanted to utilize informed K12 for um largely for the ability to track and compile and keep um all of those forms that are coming through in 1 place and so today I'm going to talk you through what we set up um as it relates to the to the uba process show you how these forms are going to be submitted and most importantly show you what your role in this process is going to to be and how um um the district is leveraging you all and your positions to help make sure that these forms get processed um so that families really get the benefits that they need um and that um um that are really important to them um so that's what we're going to talk about today um if you have any questions um throughout the training today feel free to post those questions in the chat I'll do my best to answer those as we go and like I said earlier we'll also have time at the very end to ask those questions and um you know come off and you can have a conversation um around anything that's confusing um for you um today um if there are questions after today's training I will be sending a follow-up email to everybody here with my email address so I can answer any question um as you get started and as these forms start to come in um um shortly um all right so let's talk a little bit uh you know first things first which is how do you get sorry Colin I I just uh reached out to the Selma hearnden group Rosa pendula Sarah Bell and Rocio and they can't log in I'm not sure why because I did the same thing I just forwarded the invite to them I just saw Rocio joined so it looks like maybe we're starting to get in okay all right good thank you I think it was slow because I had a hard time logging in and I had a download everything again so we're slowly working in maybe it was an update a zoom or something I don't think like I said this is all recorded so I will send you all the recording um later today um so that you can come back to this and for folks that did join or miss anything throughout the training just know that there will be a recording of this as well um first things first is you know I want to talk about informed K12 access I'm sure many of you already have informed K12 accounts especially if you're utilizing informed K12 for like the time sheet processes or you've been a part of any of those those other um forms that were utilizing informed k124 if this is your first time using informed K12 you you will also um after this call today receive an invite to join the platform so you will get an email that asks you to click the link sign in and create an account and that's probably the first thing that you're going going to want to do today is make sure you check your email create an account so that you have access um to track all of the forms that families are going to be submitting um to you when you sign into informed K12 you'll be taken to a home screen that looks like this um this is my home screen and it's really messy because I have all my different projects and forms and I'm working on a cross many different districts so yours will be a lot uh simpler um yours may even be blank you may not have any folders um but just know that each of these folders um the ones that you're able to see and you'll see different ones represent a different process and informed K12 once you receive 1 of these you'll a forms you will have that folder on your screen and clicking into that folder allows you to view all of the submissions um that families have sent in that require or need your approval um and I'll talk more about that in a second but that's kind of what the folders are folder represents a different process and you can see all the different processes I'm working on across many different districts right now a couple of other highlights from the home screen and again this is the screen you'll see when you log in to informed K12 have the ability to um edit your email settings um so for example there's this person icon in the top right corner of your screen if you click that and go to account settings this is where you can go to do things like update your name your email um you know put in your department or role it's where you can also set your email notifications because you're likely going to get a lot of emails from families so you may want to update your email settings um if you're getting too many emails or if you're not if you're not receiving any emails you might want to check here um to update um your email settings a couple other really important um places to to keep track of on informed K12 is the support button in the bottom right corner this is a really helpful resource if you ever get stuck if you ever need help if there's a question that you have um and you need a quick answer you can click that button and then you can click contact us and easily open up a conversation with our support team um they're really knowledgeable about these processes that can help troubleshoot any issues that you might be having or help train you on some additional um features that we don't cover today and then the last part I want to highlight for you all is this uh this letter icon this is your informed K12 inbox and this is where you can go to view all forms that have been sent to you for approval and we're going to go more in depth on that process in a second but the number that you see in this little badge here tells you how many forms are waiting for your approval how many forms are in other words sitting on your desk at that point in time so if you see if you're seeing a lot a large number here that means you you really want to get into that inbox and start processing through the forms that have been sent to you all right let's talk about the uba form because that's what we're here for this is again a really important process there's a looming deadline coming up so over the next you know month or so throughout August um you'll be receiving these forms and these applications um that will require you to process um and take some important action on those forms Now 1 thing to note is that the families are going to be the ones initiating the forms so families will be sent a link that link is going to be made available um in many different places um it's going to be sent out to the entire district and um that and they'll be instructed to fill out 1 of these forms um again it is linked based so families are going to have to start the form on an electronic device they can fill out a form on a computer they can fill out a form on a smartphone um I know we've also talked perhaps for families that don't have those devices they could come in to um the office and fill that form out you know with the help of somebody in you know 1 of the site School sites or in the district office when a family wants to fill this form out they'll enter their name and their email address and they'll press this blue button and it will take them to the form we will have a form in English and a separate form in Spanish so those are going to be 2 separate links and Maria is also ranging to send those links out via parent Square so everyone will be notified as well um and a lot of different places um there's some instructions here and again those instructions have been translated into Spanish on the Spanish form as well all right once a family is into the form this is what they're going to see and this is where they're going to enter in important information about their students and about their household um that's kind of what this form does it's trying to verify and get information on family income to see whether or not they qualify um for the universal benefits and the sunbucks program um so as I scroll through the The Forum is about 4 Pages um and there will be information that amilies enter in on each page the family is going to enter in the bulk of the information so they're going to enter information about their student they'll also enter in if they receive any of these benefits and then they'll put in information about other house household members as well I'm going to go ahead and just quickly enter in some uh of the information so I'm just going to copy that information over and you can see here um they'll select a school they have to pick a birth I'm just going to take a random date anything that's in red is going to be required field everything in yellow are optional fields and then once um the family has filled out the entire form they're going to sign the form digitally and they'll press this red continue button to push the form forward now this is where you all come in because at this point the family is going to send the form forward to an attendance at 1 of the sites and who they pick um is going to be they're not they're it's not specific because families only need to submit 1 form per family so if they have students at multiple sites um they might just pick 1 of the school sites that their children attend what we have done here is we've made a list of these all our tests approvers these are going to go away so these names will disappear and what's left is going to be this list of approvers at the bottom uh portion of the drop-down what we did is we created a list of primary approvers 1 for each site and so these are the individuals that the family is going to select we do have a backup at each site as well so um we did put this do not select option there um and the reason we did that is will be made clear momentarily um because it will just help if you have a uh for example if you're out of the office or somebody needs to um jump in and um uh uh approve for on your behalf so again once families have submitted their form they'll select who they need to send that to based on where their child goes to school I'm going to pick myself for now because I want to show you that second step um but again they'll pick somebody from the list and we tried to make it very clear that they should not select um 1 of these folks um these are just backups in case um 1 of the primary approvers is not available so I am the family member I press send now what happened well as the approver because you're the second step in the process you'll be notified in 2 places first you will get an email and that email will tell you that you have a new form that's been submitted in that email there'll be a link that you can click on and it will take you right to the form where it will direct you to take the necessary actions on that form there are 2 things that you're going to do on these forms and I'll explain that in just a second the second place that you're going to be notified is here an informed K12 so you'll see that inbox that mail icon I mentioned earlier on it used to say 18 now it says 19 and that's because I just sent myself another form of form that I need to go in and improve so my recommendation for you all is instead of relying on your email and kind of 1 by 1 um going you know email by email this is going to be really helpful for you because if you click on that mail icon again I've got all my other districts I work with here but you're going to see a list of all of the forms that have been sent to you and the vast majority most if not all will be um this uba application so you'll just see a running list of all the families that have started a forum and have sent it to you at the school site if you want to start clearing these forms off your desk and and processing them forward you just click on the um the form that you need that you're ready to approve and send forward so here it is 81 that's the 1 that I just sent over to myself and I'm and I will click in to show you um your step in the process there are 2 elements um that are um that we're are relying on your help to complete and 1 of those is entering in the family key uh every family in the district has a family key and so you'll look up that family key and enter that into the box at the top it's a required field so it won't let you submit this forward unless you put in the family key this is really going to be helpful to track down which families have and have not turned in this form so putting in the family key is really important and it also ensures that families don't submit more than 1 form per family um so we can cross-reference and see if families are are double submitting which they don't need to and should not do the other thing you'll need to do the only other action is entering the student IDs um parents likely don't know their students ID um so you'll have the ability to type in that information for them um which you'll type in to the box next to that Student's name um you can look up the student ID and add in the you know the student ID for any students that are on that first page and that's it that's all that's required of you um to really help make this process as success putting in the family and entering in any of the student IDs that are on the Forum once you've done that your job is complete nothing else to do nothing else that needs to be changed if you do notice for example that maybe oh actually that students in fourth grade you can update that information um but only in the instance where you know for a fact that information was entered in correctly once you've entered in the family key and the student ID on this form you'll press the red button I have reviewed this form and you'll click Send to next approver from here you're going to send it over so these names will go away you send you will be here as the uh to contact and you'll click that you send you his name and then send the form forward so that we can fully process the form all the way through um and Ensure again that everything is being submitted on time um so that everybody can receive those benefits so once again the most important thing for you all to know is when you get an email or when you see a notification in your account make sure to click in there and add in the family key and add in the student ID and send that form to ya oops after that you'll notice here's your list Universal benefits and now I only have 2 left so I would go in click on the next 1 and same thing and turn that family key and turn that student ID and send it forward to you and so on and so forth all right so that's how you will approve forms the other thing that will be helpful is tracking forms because as I mentioned you will receive receive a um an account that allows you to access 1 of these folders that folder will show up for you when as soon as you have a form to approve so even if you don't see the folder right away it will show up the first time that you you get 1 of these forms to approve clicking into the folder you're going to see a variation of this um but you're right now I have universal access I'm going to see all of the forms in the entire District you will only see the forms that get sent to you so you're not going to have full visibility you'll only see what's been sent and uh um to you uh and is is kind of has been processed through your desk this is really helpful um as a way to again see what information is waiting on you you can track and see where those forms are you really don't won't be responsible for too much of the admin work um at this point um but it is helpful to know that when you open up the folder that's where you can go and also see all of the forms um that have been sent to you or processed by you and you can see where they are in the process as well really though the main uh consideration the main thing to think about are just making sure that the forms get processed that when you get an email or a notification here and informed K12 that you're adding in the family key adding in the student ID and sending it forward as quickly as possible um that's going to ensure like I said that these forms are turned by the deadline and that families get those benefits um and you obviously play a big role um in that process um and so your help with this is is greatly appreciated and we want to make sure that you know you have the right the tools to be able to do it as quickly and as possible and not have to deal with pages and pages of paper on your desk in addition to all the other back to school Madness that is likely going to happen over the next month or so so that is really the main considerations a couple of things to take away from today before we get into questions first is um very shortly after we wrap the call I will make sure all of you have informed K12 accounts if you've never used informed K12 before please check your email and create an account um via the the link that will be sent to you and then once you do that just be on the lookout for forms that are coming um your way you'll get a email if a family submits a form and you'll also get a notification in your informed K12 account as well yes and as you're working through it if you have any questions you can reach out to me I'll send you an email that you can used to contact me if anything is confusing or unclear and you also have the support button always on the website to contact our team um and get help from them as well so with that in mind I know it's a very quick session but there's not too much for us to to cover so I want to open up the floor for questions or Maria if you have anything to add or you send you anything to add as well um we have about 8 more minutes left and we can um cover any anything that's top of mind for you all I have a question hi Sarah Bell here hi Sarah wondering um is there a way for us to track families who have submitted the form so that that we know who we still need to reach out to there will be and that's kind of where the family key comes into place that's probably going to happen at like at the um at Maria's level and yes level because they're going to be able to see all the submissions so they can pull a report um based on the on the family key that lets you know who's not submitted um and so as the deadline gets closer we'll be able to track who has and who has not turned turned in their form and then 1 other question thank you 1 other question just wondering if the program has the capability I know at first the um parent puts in their email address yeah is there any way to link that email address with the student ID so it auto-fills that way we're not having to type in unfortunately it wasn't and that is going to be a little bit of manual work is the ability to look up those those uh student IDs um we don't have the 1-to-1 connection to be able to pull that information automatically so uh to follow up um let me see am I to follow up on uh Sarah's question or mention of of the email address so um every family will need to enter an email address and I know that not all families have email addresses so um part of the process will include uh part of part of the process of helping families complete the form will include helping them create an email address um I mean and I not knowing what percentage of families have email addresses may maybe the school uh clerks have a better sense but uh we will um run a query uh generate a site level report that shows us who has an email address who doesn't and will print those for those folks who are helping families Sometimes some parents will actually have an email address but they don't remember it because they don't use it often um so we will uh want to have those handy um on a printed copy so that whoever's assisting the parent and completing the form will be able to enter the email address something to note in those instances as well um is that and it's a little bit of like a technicality this email it's really only utilized to inform the family when the application has been completed it doesn't if so if for example they don't know their email they can't remember their email or they don't want to enter in an email you could also if you're helping them entering your email and there's no harm in doing that either it'd be great I think to Maria's point if every family could get an email address and you can help them with that but if it's becoming a problem any email address in here would suffice it's not going to impact the ability to submit the form or turn in the form or track the form um the only thing it means is that family won't get a a digital email um like receipt of submission um so that's why we we we do need an email from them but if for some reason it's entered in correctly or it's not a real email or it's your email um it's going to be okay uh I just don't want that to be I could see that being an obstacle um for families and I um always like to just kind of let folks in your positions know it doesn't have to be their email um that's entered in to that box um it's preferable but if that's a big blocker um there are workarounds for those situations um I also want to add um for the attendance clerks I know you guys um the only thing you have to do is uh put the family key and the students ID but if you guys can go through the form and um make sure everything makes sense um because if let's say it's missing a name on on the bottom it it shows the name but not the it shows like the earnings but not the name I will send it back for any directions and you will have the ability to do that as well like let's say you notice something is I'm wrong let me pull this up here um that's a bad example let me see if I can find a good example here if you notice something is wrong I'll have to use this 1 I think no I can use step 3 inverse information is wrong and again it's like oh you know like I said you could change the grade level because you know that student is you know actually in fourth grade um or you notice you know they don't go to Compass Park they go to Selma and something like that you can those changes you do have the ability in this red button in addition to sending it forward you can also request Corrections and send it backwards and that's what you're saying is getting at if there's an error you send you might send it back to you or you could always send it back to the initiator granted they provided you with an email that they can be notified at um um and then you can explain why and you can leave a message so we hope that there's not a lot of issues like that we hope that everything gets entered correctly the first time or it's little errors that you can fix um as you go um but it is important that that information is entered Colin this is Miss Ramirez um I have uh hi I Quest I have a question is it possible to program or I'm going to use the word program just because I can't think of the other word um where it has this the fields must be completed the ones that are strictly must be completed so that way it reduces the number of errors or going back and making Corrections so we're able to do that partially um and the reason being is because we we don't really know for example how many students a family might have so we can we can um require you know this first line but if a family has 2 3 4 5 students we can't really require that because it they'd have to enter in something and it'd be a must enter field so um that's kind of where the limitation is when it comes to some information like entering in a case number that is something that we can require from them um other household members we do require them to enter at least 1 because they have to enter in themselves um as a household member um and then at the bottom there are required Fields here for name address um phone number and signature as well so if there's ever an issue um you will all they'll they'll we have to enter in their phone number so you can call them if there's an issue that can't be addressed online perfect thank you thank you you're welcome um let's see any other questions off the top of your head today I will be as we get this the form launched um I know the Hope um Maria correct me if I'm wrong is that it's going to go out Monday as as the expectation so I'll be checking in tracking things I'll be here to help like I said um so definitely don't feel like you're alone in this you have um our support here to inform K12 to make sure that this goes well um I think that deadline for submission I believe is August 27th is that right yes um obviously we want to get them in as soon as possible so encouraging families to turn them in as quickly as they can um we'll go a long way um to make sure everything gets submitted on time all right if there's no other questions I know it's 3 oclock so I will let you all go um check your email in just a few minutes here for um your account invitation if you haven't used informed K12 before and as you're getting started if any questions come up um please reach out to me I'll also send you an email directly from me with the recording of the session um um to help you all out as well as the links to the applications to in case anybody's asking you for them I'll I'll make sure you have those available too um so reach out to me if there's anything that comes up and otherwise we'll check in next week just to make sure um what you know I'm sure questions will come up as you get started so I'll be checking in with you all next week as well to make sure um um you have the help if you need it all right okay thank you Colin thank you so much everyone um have a great weekend and um we'll we'll talk soon thank you thank you bye bye
