Honor Health Network, a fast-growing network of community-oriented healthcare services, was up to its ears in paper. From patient forms to job applications, the company relied on physical folders storing paper documents, with chaotic results in content management, organization, and the allocation of office space.

That all changed when the company partnered with Jotform, a web-based form builder, and Egnyte, a provider of cloud-hosted content management software. Through the elegant integration of their two services, Jotform and Egnyte digitized Honor Health’s forms and cloud-enabled its workflows, streamlining operations for 10,000 users across countless offices and patient homes.

Challenge: Find a Digital Alternative for Messy Paper Workflows

Honor Health’s reliance on paper created numerous inefficiencies that caused the amount of time the team spent on document management to balloon. It also posed serious risks of document loss and threats to data integrity.

“To share documents among our different offices and home health aides, people would have to drive from place to place to pick up their files. Less tech-savvy staff members and patients would even print out forms, fill them out, and drive to their local library to fax them in,” explains Kayla S., Service Center Manager at Honor Health Network. “Then there’s the human error issue. Files would get lost. Offices would fill up with file cabinets containing documents that were often poorly organized. Missing or incorrect data would go undetected until the next audit. This forced us to spend valuable time chasing people down and correcting mistakes.”

It was clear that, to gain better control over their files and make better use of their time, Honor Health would need to digitize. However, not just any digital solution would suffice. “As a health network, a lot of our files contain people’s PHI, PII, and other highly sensitive data,” says Matt Koveleski, Director of IT at Honor Health. “We needed something cloud-based and secure, so that we could see and control who has access to what documents and so people wouldn’t have to rely on VPN connections to access data from other offices or patients’ homes.”

Solution: Digitize Forms with Jotform, Manage in Egnyte

Honor Health had previously implemented Egnyte’s cloud-based content management system as a replacement for a physical server the team was using for active directory. “We used to have to attach a SonicWall VPN client to home aides’ and office workers’ computers, and Egnyte freed us from that,” explains Koveleski. To digitize their forms, Honor Health kicked off a two-pronged plan that involved integrating Egnyte with Jotform. Jotform embeds forms directly into websites and apps for easy online submission, nullifying the need for paper forms. When a patient, staff member, or job applicant submits a form, Jotform automatically sends the submitted data into Egnyte, where it can be managed intuitively, securely, and efficiently.

“Jotform offers tons of features, like Jotform Tables and Approvals, that really reduce the time it takes people to fill out forms,” comments Kayla. “For example, conditional logic condenses forms based on the answers people enter. When someone enters their mailing address, they can check a box that says it’s the same as their home address, and the home address field disappears. The conditional logic feature can also automatically route an email based on the office of the form filler, which is huge.”

Jotform also enabled patients and aides to complete and submit forms remotely from their mobile devices — a major benefit for a company that largely provides care at patients’ homes rather than in the office. “People can access forms via a Jotform link without needing their own account or login, and fill them out on their personal devices,” Kayla explains. “That way, we don’t have to email forms for people to print out, complete, and fax back to us.”

Once forms are submitted, Egnyte organizes and displays them in a simple folder structure that appears on users’ desktops as a common mapped file drive. This made finding and accessing files easy — even for less tech-savvy users. “If someone wants to see how many people completed a form, they can find the form within Egnyte very quickly and easily,” says Kayla.

It wasn’t just easy to find and access files. Egnyte enabled team members to share files securely as well — a critical capability for a company that handles so much sensitive data. “With Egnyte, I can control exactly who has access to which folders, and disable access at any time,” explains Koveleski. “Egnyte also alerts me to anomalies, like someone accessing a file from outside the country or someone deleting large amounts of data. There are times when we need to provide someone, including third parties, access to PHI, so it’s great to have the visibility to ensure everything is handled properly.”

Benefits: The IT Workflow Necessary for Successful Acquisitions

Since integrating Egnyte and Jotform, Honor Health Network has created efficiencies that have improved the user experience for patients and employees alike. As Kayla puts it: “The office staff is happier because they don’t have to spend time searching through file cabinets for a particular file or chasing people down to correct mistakes. Home aides are happier because it’s much easier to get forms completed and submitted. And the simple folder structure Egnyte provides means we don’t have to give everyone extra training on navigating the backend of Jotform to find files.”

The team has also enjoyed the peace of mind that all stakeholders are able to manage files securely. “Egnyte and Jotform Enterprise in combination are such a powerful force for improving our workflows,” says Koveleski. “Egnyte’s Secure and Govern features help us manage how content is shared, and Jotform’s HIPAA-specific forms allow us to keep tabs on exactly where sensitive HIPAA information is stored. Things are fast, easy, and secure across the board.”

The new workflow has even helped facilitate Honor Health’s continued growth by accelerating the process of applying for jobs there. “Applying to work with us previously involved filling out and signing each individual form in a 20-page packet,” Kayla says. “Now that it’s digitized in Jotform Enterprise, all someone has to do is enter a piece of information once and it replicates across every form where that information is needed. After it’s submitted, Egnyte makes it easy for HR to organize and access each person’s application materials.”

The Honor Health team expects the integrated solution to be a major part of their workflow going forward. “I loved Egnyte right when I saw it, and our CEO did too,” Koveleski says. “And Jotform Enterprise has been absolutely indispensable. Putting the two together is all we could ever ask for.”

Cybersecurity and content governance are paramount when managing a city –something the government of Fullerton, a city in Southern California with over 140,000 residents, understands well.

After switching from an on-premises file server to Egnyte’s cloud-hosted system, the City has gained critical visibility into the content lifecycle, with the assurance that sensitive data stored across various city departments is restricted to the proper stakeholders.

Challenge: Strengthen Data Security with Cloud Technology

Like any city government, the City of Fullerton is responsible for managing and safeguarding a wealth of highly sensitive information. “The City’s databases include people’s PII, HIPAA data, payment card, industry data, and more,” says Marty Miller, Chief Technology Officer at Glass Box Technology, an IT provider hired by the City. “As just one example, the Police Department regularly gets involved with subpoenas, which involve a lot of personal information.”

To store this information, the City was using an on-premises Windows file server that lacked critical features around security and governance. Miller’s team wanted more confidence in their ability to track the City’s data or share it with internal and external parties securely. “Our goal is to understand, across various city departments and external stakeholders, when sensitive data has been loaded onto the platform, where exactly it’s stored, and who has access,” explains Miller. “The legacy system didn’t give us this information. It also didn’t have any sort of content controls to prevent inappropriate disclosure.”

To gain the level of control necessary to maintain a strong security posture, all signs pointed to the cloud. Miller’s team began reviewing cloud-based alternatives to their on-premises server, including Dropbox and OneDrive, but none of them met the team’s needs. “In each system we looked at, the controls we needed were either lacking or required complex rule-writing to set up,” Miller says.

Solution: Replace On-Premises File Server with Egnyte

The team began looking into Egnyte, focusing specifically on Egnyte’s sensitive data and anomaly detection capabilities. “Our question was: Do we have information in our environment that shouldn’t be there, like credit card numbers or social security numbers?” says Miller.

To find out, the team moved a subset of their data into Egnyte and ran Egnyte’s sensitive data and anomaly detection features against it. The system quickly found numerous instances of the kind of data Miller was looking for, indicated who had uploaded that data and when, and displayed a measurement of the City’s risk level based on the findings. “That was proof that Egnyte could give us the visibility we wanted,” Miller explains.

With the success of the test run, the team decided Egnyte would be the perfect cloud-hosted replacement for their on-premises server. Miller describes implementing the system and migrating data to the new environment as stress-free. “The implementation was really straightforward. It took maybe four weeks to prep, and just a week to migrate the entire organization.”

Once the system was in place, Glass Box brought in Aaron Fry to serve as Chief Technology Officer and oversee IT operations citywide. Fry was immediately impressed with Egnyte’s capabilities not just in sensitive data and anomaly detection, but in ransomware detection as well. “If someone moves or deletes a large number of files, or if there’s a ransomware signal, not only does an alert appear on our dashboard, but our security team gets a notification,” Fry explains. “Those alerts automatically feed into our help desk ticketing system so the team can track and investigate.”

Secure content sharing was another critical capability that set Egnyte apart. Egnyte allowed the team to provision access to specific files and folders to specific individuals, or to set access permissions based on parameters such as role or title. The team could then share files to the appropriate stakeholders via secure links or by sending invitations to collaborate. “Egnyte provides a really simple process for external sharing,” Miller explains. “We just have to set up an external folder and make the appropriate person the owner of that folder, which enables them to invite others to collaborate securely on the documents.”

Benefits: Clear Oversight and Control over Sensitive Content

With its data in the cloud, where it’s subject to Egnyte’s Secure and Govern features and access controls, the City has gained confidence that its environment is safe and properly managed. “We can now find and remove prohibited data from the system in a heartbeat. And if we see other sensitive and protected data in the system, we don’t fret,” Miller says. “We can see exactly where it is and who put it there and know that we have the security features in place to make sure only the right people have access.”

The improvement over their old on-premises system is stark. “Without a properly configured, sanctioned, centralized tool like Egnyte, and the content controls and Secure and Govern features it offers, there would be much less security in the way people store and share content,” comments Fry. “Egnyte gives us the confidence that City workers can access files from various devices, share them internally and externally, and meet the needs of a modern workplace, all without compromising on security.”

“People can even conduct these workflows outside of the office,” adds Miller. “If a Department Head or someone from the Police Department is out with an iPad, they can just hit their Okta dashboard, click the tile, and access their data in Egnyte.”

For the workers’ part, their experience with Egnyte has been purely positive. “There was no resistance from the team. Egnyte feels more modern to them than what they were using before, and they appreciate that,” says Miller. “Police, Fire, HR, City Manager’s Office, Parks and Rec, and lots of other departments are all using it. It’s part of their day-to-day and they enjoy working with it.”

Egnyte has proven so reliable that Fry and Miller are now looking to establish it with the State of California as a trusted system – that is, one that can store and preserve the content loaded into it with no unauthorized alteration of the source files. This would allow the City to free up space currently dedicated to storing paper documents. “It’s a testament to the level of control Egnyte gives us over the integrity of our data, as well as the ability to know that everything we need is right where it should be,” says Fry. “It’s truly invaluable.”