Automation and Innovation at the FRA

 The Federal Railroad Administration saw the need to speed up manual, and time-consuming processes that were taking up valuable time from its employees. From project management and tracking to support ticketing and new employee onboarding, the FRA saw the need for automation and modern redesign of outdated processes.

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The Need for New Solutions

There were several main areas of need identified for more efficient solutions:

Support Ticketing Systems
New Employee Onboarding, Benefits and Retirement 
Course Registration
Purchasing Requests
Awards and Granting

Development with Modern Tools

Capitol Presence was able to create customized applications for the FRA designed to streamline daily processes.

Power Apps

CPTL implemented low-code-no-code design and created several major interactive and customized Canvas applications using Microsoft Power Apps.

Power Automate

Power Automate was used to create automated workflows and pass along information to the appropriate users, create support tickets, and was used to carry out approval processes for activities such as purchase requests and monetary awards.

SharePoint

Microsoft SharePoint was used to organize ad store essential application information, along with the use of SharePoint lists designed to integrate with Canvas applications.

Power BI

Power BI is a allowed users to analyze and visualize data  by creating interactive dashboards and reports. Power BI allowed multiple data sources to be connected and shared within the FRA.

Modern, Simple, and Efficient Solutions.

FRA Ticketing System: Used to track requests and issues for DevOps, D365, Records Management, and new project requests.

Benefits and Retirement Portal: Used to track inquiries around benefits and retirement including New Employee Onboarding, Retirement, Transers in or out, Qualifying Life Events, Military Deposit, and Military Deployment.

OFAM Support Application: Used to track facility requests throughout the DOT including cleaning and maintenance requests.

Honorary/Monetary Awards (Operations and Maintenance) Application: Used to grant awards for both honorary mentions and monetary awards.

GPC Purchase Request Application: Used to track Purchase Requests of under 10,000 dollars.

Course Registration Application: Allows users to register for courses, submit course requests, and remove themselves from a course. Admins can check attendance, export attendance records, approve/reject course requests, edit course details and registrants, and create new courses.

Optimized Results.

CPTL worked with FRA to develop and implement several Canvas Applications that have helped the organization become more efficient. By automating and streamlining various processes, the FRA has been able to save time, money, improve its overall productivity, and focus on its core mission of promoting safety and innovation in the rail industry.