ApproveThis manages your EDlumina Integration approvals.

When Bureaucracy Meets Automation

Let’s be real: educational institutions aren’t exactly known for moving fast. Between course approvals, student enrollments, and compliance paperwork, most administrators spend more time chasing signatures than actually educating. EDlumina’s platform already handles the heavy lifting of course management and student data. ApproveThis? It’s the missing piece that stops approval bottlenecks from tanking your productivity.

Connect these two through Zapier, and you’ve got a self-running system where requests move automatically between teams without manual follow-ups. No more lost forms. No more “I thought YOU approved it?” emails. Just actual progress.

Why This Combo Works

EDlumina organizes academic workflows. ApproveThis forces decisions to happen. Together, they handle three critical pain points:

• Speed: Automatically escalate requests that get stuck
• Compliance: Enforce approval chains for audits without micromanaging
• Cost: Approvers don’t need EDlumina licenses - perfect for external reviewers

Example: A community college’s finance team auto-approves course purchases under $5k using ApproveThis thresholds. Anything over? It routes to the board via email. No logins required. Meanwhile, EDlumina tracks every dollar spent against department budgets.

Real Uses for Real Institutions

1. Certificates That Don’t Collect Dust

When a student earns a certificate in EDlumina, your registrar’s office needs to verify it before it’s official. But chasing down faculty for sign-offs? That’s a week-long game of phone tag.

Automation Fix: EDlumina triggers an ApproveThis request the second a certificate is earned. The system pings the department head via email, shows them the student’s EDlumina transcript, and lets them approve/deny right from their inbox. If they don’t respond in 48 hours? ApproveThis bumps it to their dean automatically.

Who benefits: Nursing schools needing quick clinical placement approvals, coding bootcamps verifying graduation status for hiring partners.

2. Enrollment Without the Papercuts

Admissions teams juggle hundreds of applications. But when course availability changes, manually updating EDlumina enrollments is a recipe for errors.

Automation Fix: ApproveThis sends approved applications to EDlumina as pre-enrollments. Once final approval hits (say, after scholarship verification), the Zap auto-enrolls the student. If a course fills up mid-process? The registrar gets an alert to suggest alternatives before the student notices.

Who benefits: Universities with rolling admissions, corporate training programs with strict cohort sizes.

3. Course Purchases That Don’t Require a PhD in Accounting

Departments order new course materials through EDlumina’s catalog. But without proper checks, budgets spiral.

Automation Fix: Any EDlumina course purchase over $1k triggers an ApproveThis workflow. The request shows the vendor’s contract terms, historical pricing, and the department’s remaining budget. Approvers can click “Approve” or flag discrepancies. Bonus: ApproveThis’ calculated fields auto-deny requests that exceed budget limits.

Who benefits: Continuing education programs buying third-party content, corporate universities managing L&D budgets.

Setting This Up Without Losing Your Mind

Zapier’s the glue here. No coding needed. Here’s the playbook:

1. Connect EDlumina to Zapier: Use EDlumina’s Zapier triggers (like “Certificate Earned”)
2. Add ApproveThis Actions: Map EDlumina data (student ID, course code) to ApproveThis’ request fields
3. Set Escalation Rules: In ApproveThis, define who approves what, deadlines, auto-approval thresholds

Pro tip: Use ApproveThis’ vacation delegation to avoid summer approval blackouts. If a professor’s on sabbatical, requests auto-reroute to their interim without IT involvement.

Who Gets Their Time Back

Academic Teams

Faculty can approve research grants or curriculum changes from their phone between classes. ApproveThis’ real-time dashboard shows where each request is stuck - no more “the system ate my form” excuses.

Administrators

Registrars track enrollment approvals and certificate requests in one place. EDlumina stays updated without manual data entry. Plus, external accreditors get read-only access to approval trails - no more scrambling for audit proof.

Finance Offices

Auto-approve routine purchases (lab supplies under $500) but require VP sign-off for big-ticket items. ApproveThis logs every decision in EDlumina’s payment records, so there’s always a paper trail.

Features You’ll Actually Use

ApproveThis isn’t just another inbox clogger. These features matter for education teams:

• Conditional Routing: Send scholarship approvals to the foundation board, but facility requests to operations
• Dynamic Fields: Show remaining budget when approving purchases
• Compliance Mode: Lock approvals once submitted - no takebacksies

Example: A university uses calculated fields to auto-approve travel requests under $800 if they’re within the department’s Q3 budget. Anything over? It goes to the CFO with a comparison of past conference costs.

No More “Approval Amnesia”

Let’s cut the crap: education moves slow because there are too many hands in the pot. ApproveThis and EDlumina through Zapier force decisions to happen on the record, in less time, without license headaches.

You’re not just buying software. You’re buying back the 12 hours a week your team wastes chasing people down. That’s 624 hours a year. Or, as the math department would say, “enough time to grade 2,376 freshman essays.”

Register for ApproveThis and connect your EDlumina account in under an hour. Or schedule a demo to see how a 500-student university cut approval delays by 70%.