If your team is juggling lesson materials, student submissions, staff forms, or event documents, folder automations can take a lot of repetitive setup work off your plate. It’s a simple way to create more consistency without adding more manual admin work. Our team put together a short video walkthrough showing how to set up an automated folder so files are organized the moment they arrive.
Watch Folder Automation in Action
What’s really great is that automations can be added to folders that are already in existence, so you can standardize aspects of how content is handled in the folder, even if there’s already data in it. That means fewer steps for staff, less time spent renaming or sorting files, and a clearer structure for everyone who needs to find materials later. For higher education teams especially, that can make a real difference during busy periods like the start of a semester, grading cycles, admissions review, accreditation prep, or campus-wide events.
Here are a few ways you could build this into your workflows:
- Department resource management: Set up shared folders for course materials, departmental templates, research documents, and planning files so content stays consistent across departments and administrative teams.
- Admissions and enrollment workflows: Keep applications, supporting documents, and applicant communications organized as materials come in, reducing back-and-forth during high-volume review periods.
- Staff onboarding: Create a more repeatable process for HR and IT teams by automatically organizing new hire paperwork and training materials.
- Student assignment collection: Route incoming files into the right structure automatically so faculty and TAs spend less time organizing submissions and more time reviewing them.
- Events and communications: Use automated folders for orientation, alumni events, campus programming, conferences, or department events so planning materials stay easy to locate.
What I like most about folder automations is that they support the systems educators already use instead of asking teams to adopt a whole new process. Addition of a little automation can make shared spaces easier to maintain, especially when multiple people are contributing files over time.
We hope this is helpful for you, and if you have any other automation tips we would love to hear them!
~ Angie
