As part of the Arbor Workflows suite, you can automate the manual task of data entry by pushing information directly from a workflow form into your Arbor MIS. This ensures data accuracy and saves your administrative team time during the admissions or mid-year transfer process. This step will create a default student record which will then allow staff to from retrieve the record within the MIS to add additional information, edit and assign the classes or groups. This feature does not have an inbuilt duplicate checker. This means that if the student exists in your MIS already, as an applicant for example and you use this step, it will create a duplicate record.
Overview
The Create Student Record action is an automated "Arbor Data" step. It allows the workflow to take information captured in an earlier step (like your initial trigger form) and use it to automatically generate a new student record within Arbor MIS.
Prerequisites
Tier Access: This feature is available to Schools on the Comms and Perform tiers, and MATs on the Plus and Advanced tiers.
Upstream Data: Before adding this step, ensure your Trigger Form or a previous Form Step collects the required student details (e.g., Legal First Name, Legal Surname, Date of Birth).
How to set up the 'Create Student Record' step
1. Add the Step
In your workflow builder, click the (+) icon to add a new step and select Arbor Data from the automated steps menu.
2. Select the Action
From the dropdown menu of available Arbor actions, select Create Student Record. This will open the pre-configured required in order to automate this step.
3. Mapping Data with Tags
To ensure the right information goes into the right field in the MIS, you will use Tags. Tags represent the "answers" provided by users in earlier stages of the workflow.
Find the Field: You will see a list of Arbor MIS fields (e.g., Legal First Name).
Insert the Tag: Click into the field and select the corresponding tag from your trigger form. For example, if your form asked "What is the child's first name?", select that tag to map it to the Legal First Name field.
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If a piece of information you need (like 'Gender' or 'Entry Date') isn't appearing in your tag list, you need to go back to your Trigger Form and add a question to capture that data first.
Note - certain fields require the data to be collected in a pre-configured format using the My Arbor Data or Arbor Option Set question types. If no tag is available to select, then the form does not currently have the correct question type to receive the data in this way. This will need to be amended for the tag to become available.
All required fields must be populated with a tag that matches the expected format.
The fields and formats required are:
If the workflow reaches this step and mandatory information is missing from the tags or not in the correct format, the step will fail. We recommend making all fields required in your initial trigger form to ensure the automation runs smoothly.
FAQs
Can I add a document to the record at the same time? The "Create Student Record" step creates the profile. If you wish to upload a document collected in the workflow, you should add a subsequent automated step such as Add Medical Note, Add SEN Note or Add Pastoral Note.
Does this step check if the student already exists on the MIS? No this step can not read the data in your MIS. This step will create a default student record which will then allow staff to from retrieve the record within the MIS to add additional information, edit and assign the classes or groups. This feature does not have an inbuilt duplicate checker. This means that if the student exists in your MIS already, as an applicant for example and you use this step, it will create a duplicate record.