Bethlehem Health Bureau in Pennsylvania Streamlines Special Event Management with Workflow Orchestration System

The Bethlehem Health Bureau in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was officially founded in 1980 and aims to ensure the health of the local community by providing services that protect and promote optimal health. The accredited city health department serves Bethlehem, its school district, and some areas within Northampton County and has three distinct divisions to offer high-quality public health services.

An important part of the health bureau’s work is community outreach, and they partner with various organizations including schools and community-based organizations to represent the bureau at events and provide health-related education and activities. The special event request process involves event organizers submitting an initial request, the request getting reviewed and assigned to staff, and post-event reporting. 

All event requests were sent using multiple methods, making tracking the requests difficult. To streamline request management, Sherri Penchishen, director of Chronic Disease Programs at Bethlehem Health Bureau, partnered with Esri to build a new automated workflow with ArcGIS Workflow Manager in ArcGIS Online. 

The use of Workflow Manager has reduced the processing time for events and improved the visibility of event schedules and staff assignments, creating one central place for event data. This helps the bureau better serve the community and deliver the critical education residents need to stay healthy and safe. 

The Bethlehem Health Bureau receives a vast amount of special event requests for the city. These special events can include health fairs, block parties, or back-to-school events, and bureau staff attend three to four events per month. Event organizers for these local groups submit the requests in different ways, such as a phone call to the health department, a direct call to a staff member, or an email to the Bethlehem Health Bureau.

The bureau didn’t have an efficient way of tracking these initial requests, how many special events were attended throughout the year, the number of staff going to each event, and the number of hours spent working at each. Previous methods involved Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and manually filling out paper request forms, which was a time-consuming process that led to difficulty tracking data. 

“We've had many reiterations of trying to refine the special events process, just to try and have a central point of where the events are coming into and then how they're dispersed out to the staff,” says Penchishen.

In the most recent process, a fillable PDF on the bureau’s website was completed by event organizers, which would then be emailed to the front desk secretary, printed, and sent to the health director for review. The request would then be presented and discussed at a weekly managers’ meeting. If approved, it would then take additional time to assign a staff member who would create the plan for the event. 

This lengthy process would often cause delays in events being reviewed, assigned, and scheduled. The overall handling of the request could take up to two weeks. 

In addition, tracking which staff members were committed to events was a challenge. If a staff member had already been assigned to work an event, or there were two events on the same day, there was no simple way to communicate with other departments to get coverage. Also, it was not easy to see scheduled events.

The Bethlehem Health Bureau receives money via grants from donor organizations and the state, so reporting on programs, activities, and events attended throughout the year is required. As such, a new solution to help better track events would improve reporting and ensure the events they attend will have a significant impact.  

“If we're going to have staff go out on a weekend . . . we want to make sure that the event is worthwhile . . . and that it's directly linking back to their program initiatives,” says Penchishen. 

Penchishen says she had been working with Aaron Brouse, Esri account manager for the City of Bethlehem, to begin utilizing geographic information system (GIS) technology to help digitize processes and incorporate more real-time data into their work. To better manage event requests, Penchishen says their Esri sales representative recommended ArcGIS Workflow Manager, a scalable workflow orchestration system designed to automate, streamline, and simplify all business processes. 

The health bureau first used Workflow Manager for their compensatory time process, and with its user-friendly interface and successful deployment, Penchishen thought it would work well for special events. She discussed using Workflow Manager with Luci Coleman, a senior technical consultant with Esri, during one of their technical meetings.

Penchishen began by illustrating their current events process on Lucidchart. Then, Coleman partnered with Grant Thompson, an Esri technical consultant, to start the behind-the-scenes work of designing the new workflow. According to Coleman, the chart created with Lucidchart helped to identify key decision points in the workflow. 

“From there, we mapped those decision points to their data—specifying what specific data attributes contributed to a decision point. Once we understood how the data overlayed on the workflow, we could diagram it in Workflow Manager,” she explains. 

The revamped workflow begins with event organizers filling out a form created with ArcGIS Survey123—a tool for designing smart forms and surveys—to request staff assignment. Once the completed form is submitted, it initiates a job in ArcGIS Workflow Manager. ArcGIS Arcade, a portable and secure expression language, was used throughout the Workflow Manager implementation. Coleman says they leveraged Arcade directly in Workflow Manager to automate tasks. 

The event form is immediately visible on the Workflow Manager manage page so staff can see the request. Additionally, an email notification with information is sent directly to the front desk secretary for routing to the appropriate department. Staff can also see what events are coming up, who is assigned to work the events, and which program area(s) will be attending. 

The Bethlehem Health Bureau launched the new Workflow Manager process in early 2024, and Penchishen describes it as faster, more efficient, and user-friendly. From a managerial standpoint, she says the streamlined process has helped leadership take a critical look at the events staff attend to ensure they support the bureau’s mission. “We want to make sure that when we're going, we're making a big impact with the community,” she explains. 

Penchishen says the time savings have been significant. The previous process, which was several weeks from the initial request to approval and assignment, has been reduced to about three days. The paper-based process, which is now digitized and automated, has led to less time spent on manual data entry and reduced the number of steps an event organizer would need to take.

 “It was just complicated before. So, I feel like it's a really nice, friendly user-interaction interface with the person who's trying to solicit our services,” says Penchishen.

Penchishen says the easy-to-use interface has been very helpful, including the ability to add links to their survey forms in emails. The link leads assigned staff directly to the form they need, which she describes as efficiency at its finest. 

With a central place for all event information, Penchishen says everyone is in the know. Staff can access the dashboard for a full listing of events and check to see who is assigned. She says this has added another layer of communication for staff that has enhanced collaboration. The easy access to these details also helps with reporting and the accuracy of the information is more reliable.  

Having a central information hub has also helped them when developing programs. The group now has a repository of activities done at past events and can access them to help tailor plans for upcoming events.

The streamlined workflow for special events has improved the bureau’s credibility in the community. Since there was not one standard way previously to track staff assignments, multiple staff from different divisions would often attend the same event. Now, with a central events hub, assigning staff is simplified. 

“As a public health department . . . we should be the resource center for our entire community,” says Penchishen. “So, I feel like Workflow Manager helps us with that validity, reliability, [and] our credibility.”

The feedback from within the bureau has been very positive. According to Penchishen, the health director of the bureau appreciates the central database's functionality to easily access event information. Staff also say the new workflow is much easier and event requests are now searchable in their inbox. 

The bureau looks forward to streamlining more processes with Workflow Manager in the future, including managing requests for community gardens. Residents must submit an application to set up a community garden in a public space, and Penchishen plans to launch a new workflow soon with a digital application that will be sent automatically to all departments for review. 

“The more efficient we can be with the time-consuming logistics, the more time we have to plan and execute programs in the community . . . [and] the more time we have for our constituents,” says Penchishen.