Innovations in Policy Draft Development that Saved Me Time and Tears

It was 10 p.m. on the night before the new draft of our Title IX policy was due for review by our Chief Policy Officer, the final step before it could move to President’s Council and on to Trustees for (fingers crossed) approval and adoption. It was crunch time, just a couple of weeks out from the new Title IX rule’s August 14th deadline, and I was elbows deep and hours into a heavy edit of what I was promised was the final draft from its writing committee. That’s when the emails started.

First, it was, “Just one more quick thing . . .” and “Can you change these lines, too?” then a flurry of discussions, and with it, more and more requested revisions, which I dutifully and meticulously incorporated. And then it happened. The dreaded “I made some additional changes to the draft throughout; see the attached draft.” No, no. I protested internally. That is not the Draft. I have the Draft. That is the Ghost of Drafts Past with (groan) new revisions!

If you have ever edited anything for anyone ever, you likely just visibly shuddered at the above scenario. Every editor will inevitably, at one point or—more likely—many points, experience the same sinking feeling when the sanctity of version control is casually disregarded. But with documents as important as policies (especially ones as critical and time sensitive as the one mentioned above), the balance between editorial courtesy and non-discretionary necessity becomes heavily (and rightfully) skewed toward the latter. So, what’s a policy editor to do, besides swallow her tears and play a very long, very high-stakes game of Spot the Differences? Which is, inevitably, exactly what I did for the next few hours of my evening.

The following morning, I woke from a (dismally short) sleep and decided something had to change about our editorial process. Over the past few months of remote work, our institution has embraced using Microsoft Teams to keep in touch with co-workers and collaborate on projects, but, at the time, we were still using shared Box folders to store working drafts and their numerous past versions. And while Box integrates well enough with Teams, files hosted through Box do not have the same advanced capabilities as files hosted on Microsoft’s cloud services SharePoint and OneDrive. As long as we continued to insist on keeping files scattered on Box, in emails, and on our internal drives, we truly weren’t utilizing Teams to its full potential, and we were creating a lot more unnecessary work for ourselves. Little did we realize we were needlessly complicating a system already automated and optimized through Office 365.

How it Works and How it Works for Us

Like ours, many institutions have adopted Teams for remote communication and project collaboration as we all continue to navigate the new normal of current events. But many Teams users are not aware of what happens behind the scenes of Teams. Every file (including all documents, notebooks, wikis, Planner tasks, calendar entries, and everything in between) shared or created within a Teams channel is uploaded to SharePoint (or OneDrive in the case of files shared in chats). (If you use Teams and haven’t already, I highly encourage you to take a few minutes and explore what your SharePoint site looks like. Think of it as Teams’ central repository—because it is.)

The benefits of this, besides embedded organization and easy access to needed files without leaving Teams, are the integrated collaboration and cross-app features you only get with SharePoint and OneDrive files (Microsoft hosted files play nice with Microsoft apps, go figure!). These features include automatic saving (no more losing progress), automatic version record keeping (eliminating the need for multiple version files), and, most importantly for our office, collaborative editing between multiple authors in real time (goodbye, Ghosts of Drafts Past).

By embracing and encouraging the use of Teams instead of email for sending drafts and Box for housing versions, we were able to ensure that a single working draft was always live and available for authors, editors, and reviewers. Consequently, the next round of review and revision for our Title IX policy went far more smoothly. We were able to work together, simultaneously, on a living document in real time and chat seamlessly with each other as needed, eliminating the need for tracking down relevant email chains, sending out and downloading multiple drafts, re-uploading them, and other general draft babysitting and housekeeping. The sanctity of the working draft was respected without effort. It was a game changer.

Since then, we have integrated this process into how we handle every document that comes through our office, and we continue to explore additional ways to utilize the automation, collaboration, and project management features embedded within SharePoint. It might be dramatic to say that it has revolutionized our editorial process, but it certainly has spared me a lot of extra work and frustration (not to mention, late-night tears).

For those who are interested in utilizing collaborative editing but need additional guidance, Microsoft provides tips and tutorials on their support pages, a few of which I will link below:

• Collaborate on files in Microsoft Teams
• Document collaborations and co-authoring
• Collaborate in Word tutorial

Using Technology and Automation to Augment Your Policy Process

When I was an editing student in college, an older professor asked me to proofread a nonfiction book he had authored and get it ready for publication. He emailed me his files and a letter from his publisher that outlined their style guide, and mentioned that the publisher had rejected the files in their current state because of “formatting incompatibilities.” I didn’t know just what they meant until I attempted to format the document myself and noticed a host of bizarre issues: certain passages were locked, fonts and margins were inconsistent from page to page, and some paragraphs had collapsed entirely upon themselves into a single jumbled line of incomprehensible text. The most frustrating part was the more I attempted to fix the formatting through the normal Word interface, the more issues and problems it would introduce.  

So how does this apply to what we do in policy and the vastly unique roles of our individual policy offices? Little did I know (but would quickly learn), that underneath the text we see on a digital screen is an extensive web of coded language that instructs the program how to respond to a user’s inputted action (keystroke, voice, touch, etc.). This code can act in unwanted ways when a user inadvertently introduces invisible instructions to the program (usually through formatting marks, bookmarks, styles, etc.). In the case of my professor, he had unknowingly used some formatting options that had left invisible, residual coded marks after the original text was deleted in earlier drafts. By exposing these marks through advanced formatting options in Word and then eliminating them through the outline view, I was able to fix the coding issues. This was the moment I learned that Word is so much more than a word processor; that it, and other Microsoft Office products (Excel, Publisher, OneNote, OneDrive, etc.), contain a pre-coded network of untapped potential for application, productivity, and automation solutions that most casual users never know is even there. And with a little instruction, these and other programs that we already use can be customized and applied in individualized ways to solve the unique demands of our offices.

For example, my position in my university’s Policy Office involves editing policy drafts and completing research for policy writers. These writers, while incredibly intelligent subject-matter experts in their field, come with varying levels of technological proficiency. When I first started, I would email out our university’s template files for policy drafts, summaries, comments, etc. to writers, and what I would get back would sometimes be barely recognizable as our own template. A lot of my time was spent fixing accidental formatting errors caused by inexperienced users, multiple authors/drafts, or general human error: fixing fonts, sizes, and margins; moving stray lines and logos back where they belong; and just generally enforcing our university’s style guide (e.g., fixing section numbers, alphabetizing). All manual, repetitive, and tedious—but necessary—tasks.

Through a little Googling and dabbling in some of the advanced capabilities and developer options of Word (VBA), I was able to create a template that does not allow a writer to do anything I don’t want them to and automates the stuff I don’t want to do. The design is locked down. The styles, locked. The numbering and alphabetizing is all automated and customized to our style guide. They cannot misnumber a section; my template won’t let them. They cannot move, alter, erase, or change anything other than the sections they need to. And that was just template version 1. Using that template, I am currently creating a custom UserForm app (all through Microsoft Word using its existing features as intended) that will automate all the templates that we use in our office. Upon completion, a writer will be able to simply fill in the UserForm fields and submit, and the template will be generated and auto-populate with their answers.

The above is just one example out of the countless customizable solutions that anyone can create with just a little advanced insight and know-how. By understanding and harnessing the full capabilities of these programs, advanced users easily automate repetitive tasks, eliminate user error, increase efficiency and productivity, seamlessly enforce institutional standards and styles, and create better, cleaner documents and spreadsheets that enhance their policy and research processes.

The purpose of this post then is to gauge interest for a reoccurring segment on the Policy Matters blog (alongside its other fabulous editorial content) that that will educate interested ACUPA members on different ways they can optimize their own policy process by creating simple solutions customized to the unique needs of their office. This segment would consist of short, beginner-friendly tricks and tips for utilizing the popular office programs that we already own and use to their full potential, tailored to a policy administration environment.

Now, I’d like to hear from you. Do you think this information might be helpful or applicable in you and your office’s functions and roles? What unique administrative challenges do you face that you would like to find solutions for (anything, seriously!). Is there anything else in particular you would like this segment to cover?

How Internships Benefit the Student and the Policy Office

Nine years ago, when I left corporate life to join Utah Valley University (UVU) as its new policy office director, I realized right away that I needed some extra help. Ongoing contract or freelance help would not fit our small budget; but student interns would. I knew from my own college experience that interning in one’s future field builds marketable, real-world skills; I had hired student interns in corporate America, some of whom stayed on after graduation as valued, full-time employees.

While internships are incredibly beneficial to students, they also provide benefits for your office and your institution’s policy process (aside from just being cheap labor, which is definitely a plus). I’ve seen overwhelming positive benefits to both my own office and many others at UVU. Benefits such as:

• Access to innovative ideas and unique perspectives - College students learn about the latest trends in the industry through their coursework, so student interns can bring with them academic and technical knowledge that is useful in your office. Even more importantly, as higher education policy administrators, what our offices do heavily impacts students, and we may be so “deep in the trenches” that we have overlooked how our policies may impact and read to them. Having access to the student perspective is invaluable to this process.
• Decreased turnaround time and increased office productivity - The extra sets of hands can help your office be more productive and prevent it from becoming overburdened by side projects, allowing you and your staff to focus more time and energy on tasks where more advanced expertise is required. And you may be able to offer and complete extra projects and services for both your department and others, because of valuable student interns.
• Enhance your office culture and improve staff morale - Not only does having extra help increase overall staff morale, but an internship program provides an opportunity for your office and staff to connect with students, meet with them, speak with them, and ultimately mentor them, which promotes and fosters vital leadership skills for both mentors and mentees.
• Test drive the talent - An internship program doubles as a recruitment method without recruitment costs. Seeing how interns work will give you a more accurate view of how they would be as full-time staff members. The internship serves as a hands-on training period; the intern to whom you extend a job offer already knows the basics of the job and how your office works.

At the UVU Policy Office, we hire political science interns and editing interns. The political science interns helped us refine our policy research procedures and develop a policy research document template. This service has assisted policy writing committees that did not have the resources or time to conduct their own research. Last year’s political science intern helped us develop metrics we use to assess our office’s effectiveness. 

Our editing interns have helped us improve our policy template, web site, and editorial procedures.  One of those interns, Jennifer Gallagher (whom many of you know from previous conferences) has now been my full-time employee going on two years. Her reputation as an outstanding editor is spreading across our campus. When I get a phone call from a vice president asking for editing assistance on a policy—they don’t ask for me—they ask for Jennifer. Her success as an intern, and now an employee, has improved our office greatly and enhanced its reputation as a service provider.

I am always learning from my student employees. They keep our office fresh and learning—which is the whole point of higher education.