Squirrel SelfServe

A cloud-based, self-service web portal for online forms and questionnaires with workflow.

Imagine your customers logging into a self-service web portal to access the information they need from you and to provide you with the information that you need from them. From filling in complex application forms, online questionnaires or satisfaction surveys to downloading pdf brochures, product specifications or even insurance documents, all can be handled via Squirrel SelfServe. Where back-office functions then need to process or assess the online forms this is controlled via BPMN 2.0 business processes all defined using graphical editors allowing business analysts to create and maintain them.

Squirrel SelfServe provides an integrated solution providing the web portal, online questionnaire development software, assessment workflow and management reporting for a range of business use cases.

Squirrel SelfServe can be provided as cloud service to give SMEs a professional cloud-based customer access portal, or can be installed onto your own corporate server infrastructure. Baytree IT Services provide full technical and platform support for Squirrel SelfServe and its cloud infrastructure and our consultants are available to provide bespoke installation, configuration and integration solutions.

Open Source

The customer access portal is via the Joomla content management system (CMS), workflow is provided by ProcessMaker, a BPMN 2.0 compliant workflow engine, the questionnaire component is provided via LimeSurvey and finally the reporting component uses Metabase. The advantage of using these open-source components is that they each have large user bases and are very configurable to provide functionality required. Each component is also extensible should they not provide an exact match for a given requirement. Since none of the components are proprietary and are built around PHP or Java, the only requirement for maintenance is that the developer can code in PHP or Java.

Responsive

Customers are increasingly mobile and require to access services via PC, table or phone. All user facing content created by Squirrel SelfServe components uses HTML5 and CSS templating to be responsive to the browser and device being used.

White Label

Squirrel SelfServe provides a cloud-based, self-service customer access portal which can be the one stop shop for communications with your customer. All CSS templates which drive the look and feel of the site are available for editing so content can be driven from your corporate design standards. Content editing is via WYSIWYG editors so business staff can maintain the content without the need for large-scale technical IT support.

Extensible Security Model

Squirrel SelfServe has a built-in security model which is both organisational and role-based. This model will cope with the majority of standard service models but if it does not it can be changed by an administrator to include further layers of roles and groups. Access to services is configured via the security model so no one can access the services they are not allowed to use.

Assessment Workflow

The workflow component provides an off-the-shelf capability whereby the submitted form can be assessed by a back-office user with the appropriate role. This questionnaire with BPMN 2.0 workflow capability is unique to Squirrel SelfServe. Assessment can be simply by the assessor making a judgement based on the form, by a scoring mechanism calculated by rules within the submission, by assessment questionnaire in which the assessor is lead through the assessment process answering questions about the submission or this process can be fully or semi-automated using business rules and scoring. Depending on the decision the workflow can request further information from the respondent, reject the submission or move it to the next acceptance workflow step.

Communication

Submitters can be emailed with results or at various points in the workflow as required. Email or messaging via the portal can be used for internal communications. Escalations due to time-based SLAs can also be set to reduce the likelihood of customer dissatisfaction.

Questionnaires and Forms

Lime Survey is an incredibly well featured questionnaire tool and provides an excellent basis for building on-line forms. In addition to the 28 different question types that are available, Lime Survey will also allow rules to determine the path through a questionnaire depending on the answers given. Questionnaires can also be reused in part or as a whole and can be exported in multiple formats including to print for a paper-based form. Squirrel SelfServe adds to this capability in linking questionnaires for assessment but also for providing re-submission of information where this is required (e.g. for car insurance a user may look to renew and need to submit a new questionnaire but pre-filled with information about the car which is unlikely to have changed).

Links to other systems

The information captured in Squirrel SelfServe can be dealt with through its end-to-end process entirely within the Squirrel SelfServe workflow component. Where existing systems are in place for example CRM systems, billing systems or fulfilment systems, Squirrel SelfServe provides an export facility to CSV or XML documents which can be transformed using XSLT style sheets to provide an interface to an existing system. Should this not suffice then bespoke PHP code can be created, or data can be fetched directly from the underlying MySQL database.