FOIAXpress Tips to Enhance Team Adoption Rates

Many federal agencies depend on FOIAXpress to streamline their redaction workflows and close cases in an efficient, highly satisfactory manner. With FOIAXpress, these agencies have managed to automate manual tasks, close communication gaps between stakeholders, and eliminate redundancies — i.e., all the usual suspects that would otherwise slow the FOIA process to a crawl and potentially introduce a variety of mistakes in the final redacted output.

During the OPEXUS Annual Summit 2024, Cindy Dillow, OPEXUS Director of Special Initiatives, and Amith Kedilaya, OPEXUS Technical Project Manager, two of our FOIAXpress OPEXers, took to the stage to share ways to better leverage FOIAXpress and increase your ROI even more.

You can watch the session in full here. Otherwise, keep reading for an overview of the FOIAXpress tips and tricks Cindy and Amith shared with attendees during their time on stage.

1. Take Advantage of the OPEXUS Product Resource Center

The OPEXUS Product Resource Center makes valuable knowledge of FOIAXpress readily and easily accessible. If you ever have a question or need assistance, Cindy recommended bookmarking the Product Resource Center in your browser. As she went on to explain, the Product Resource Center is a toolkit that contains:

• User and service manuals
• Release notes
• Add-on, deployment, and integration guides

But these items only scratch the surface of what can be found. You should consider the Product Resource Center as a knowledge repository. The manuals are version specific, so you can get assistance tailored to the version of FOIAXpress you’re using. And while the guides show you how to best utilize various application features, the available technical and security documentation help ensure software performance is optimized and compliance is maintained.

OPEXUS continuously updates the Product Resource Center, meaning FOIAXpress users and administrators can confidently rely on it for the latest knowledge and most recent updates.

2. Simplify Your Annual Reporting

When prompted by Cindy, roughly half of the session attendees acknowledged they still update their annual reporting information to FOIA.gov one field at a time.

FOIAXpress allows the people responsible for compiling your annual report to sidestep this time-consuming and error-prone manual process. As this video tutorial shows, FOIAXpress users can quickly generate a comprehensive and accurate report, then export that report and import it directly to FOIA.gov, eliminating the need for manual field entry.

In other words, FOIAXpress enables automation and the easy import/export of XML data to save immense time, reduce errors, and ensure compliance without the hassle.

3. Unify Stakeholders with the Collaboration Portal

The FOIAXpress Collaboration Portal is a valuable resource to connect authorized users within your agency so that they can seamlessly request and receive documents.

Collaboration Portal users don’t need FOIAXpress access. Furthermore, they can use the Collaboration Portal to retrieve records and conduct consultations/third-party reviews without resorting to emails or managing access and documents across shared drives. And with version 11.8 of the Collaboration Portal, users even have redaction capabilities. This can eliminate the headaches of version control and make FOIA processing even more seamless for already strapped agencies.

Key Features of the Collaboration Portal

• Task management: Users receive task notifications and can upload documents directly within the portal, creating a seamless workflow
• Messaging capability: A built-in messaging system allows users to communicate, reducing the back-and-forth typically seen with email
• Document management: The portal allows for document attachments, searches, and redactions (with the upcoming redaction feature in version 11.8)
• Customization: Agencies can tailor the portal to their specific needs and permissions, ensuring secure and efficient document handling

4. Conduct Configuration Check-ins

Your FOIA redaction needs will always evolve over time, which means your FOIAXpress configurations should too. During the session, Amith advocated for configuration check-ins. These check-ins help to streamline your FOIAXpress interface and improve efficiency by making the platform more user friendly.

Watch the session to learn about the specific reasons why a configuration check-in would be necessary.

5. Keep Users in the Loop with System Notices

For best practices when undergoing a FOIAXpress update, Cindy recommended putting up a system notice for all users to see when they log in to use the software. This should be done as soon as a maintenance window is set, so users have plenty of notice ahead of the software going offline and an understanding of when the software will be available again.

These system notices can be preset with start and end times, so the messages only show within a given timeframe. They can be updated at any time as information changes, and they can be used for a variety of messages, such as reminding users of upcoming SOP changes or critical deadlines.

System notices also help keep support tickets to a minimum in case of an IT issue. Once one or more users submit a ticket, an administrator can post a system notice on the main dashboard to inform users that the issue is already being addressed and there’s no need to submit a ticket.

6. Add Useful Support Links to the Help Dropdown Menu

System administrators can add items to the FOIAXpress help dropdown menu and customize support for users within the platform. This ability to add items directly to the help dropdown menu is so beneficial, it’s a key feature Cindy brings up during each client’s configuration check-in.

The help dropdown menu can hold URLs to searchable databases, OIP guidance, and recorded trainings as well as program documents like SOPs and forms. Administrators can even add PDF attachments to the dropdown menu.

7. Make Small Adjustments to Improve Your ROI

Finally, Amith introduced the audience to Managed Services. This is a team of dedicated and cleared staff that serve as an extension of your team. As Amith explained, Managed Services provides post-implementation support across three pillars:

1. FOIA Program Assessment support consists of experts reviewing your FOIAXpress configurations and addressing pain points to ensure your processes are optimized for efficiency and accuracy.
2. Business Services support provides ongoing program management support, security and ATO assistance, change management, and training to ensure operations remain smooth.
3. Program Support offers dedicated FOIA analysts and helps your IT team manage day-to-day operations, upgrades, and security assessments.

Learn more FOIAXpress Tips & Tricks

Curious to learn more tips and tricks you can use to optimize your FOIA workflows and improve user productivity? Watch the session in full here.

If you’re ready to fully leverage FOIAXpress as a modern platform for efficient FOIA processes, get in touch.