How Simplifying PDF Forms Makes Work Easier for UC Davis Employees

For many UC Davis staff members, what’s known as the “covered services carve out” process has a reputation for being complex and time-consuming. That complexity reflects an important goal — ensuring that work stays within UC Davis whenever possible — while documenting the limited instances when departments are allowed to contract out services. While not intended to be burdensome, the process brings together multiple policy requirements and approvals that can make it feel onerous.

It’s exactly this kind of experience that Crystal O’Hara and her colleagues set out to address when improving Supply Chain Management’s suite of administrative forms. In partnership with Administrative Innovation and Technology, their effort was an official FOA Goal in 2024-25 and nicknamed the “Year of Re-Form.”

O’Hara shared achievements and insights from the Year of Re-Form as part of the first FOA Efficiency Series webinar, held in March, which focused on DocuSign uses across the university.

The Supply Chain team didn’t specifically start out with a goal of moving forms into DocuSign, but to rethink them entirely.

“I know a lot of times we just keep doing the same things over and over again because we’ve always done them,” O’Hara said. “But you don't think about, what is that form doing? And do we still need that?”

Rethinking PDFs and other traditional forms

They started with a broad inventory of about 55 forms owned or partially owned by Supply Chain Management teams. From there, they evaluated what to keep, what to change and what to eliminate. The team looked for the most effective way to achieve each form’s purpose, which sometimes meant moving them into existing systems like AggieExpense or AggieLogistics, creating a simple webpage form in SiteFarm, or eliminating them altogether.

O’Hara used these questions to guide that work:

• What is the purpose of this form or document?
• Does the process require signature(s), or is it just gathering information?
• Is the purpose achieved somewhere else? Could it be?
• Is all the information on the form or document still relevant? Could steps or fields be removed?
• How can we make this as simple as possible for the client and the signers?

O’Hara also noted that she is not a technical expert by nature, but does keep striving for clarity and simplifying the user experience. Improvements don’t necessarily require a new technical system, but instead start with a willingness to ask the right questions, find the right partners, and rethink how work gets done.

Ultimately the Supply Chain teams moved six of their forms into DocuSign, and 27 forms were moved into other online solutions (with some others remaining as PDFs, primarily ones filled by hand or used very rarely).

Along the way, the team also eliminated duplicative steps. In one example, a form that required a fiscal officer’s signature was deleted as a duplicate step, after identifying that the same approval was already being captured in AggieExpense.

Updating how to request a ‘carve out’ from UC Covered Services

One of the most visible transformations came through the covered services carve out process.

The request for a carve out requires multiple signatures, including an initiator, their dean or vice chancellor, multiple Supply Chain reviewers, representatives from Employee and Labor Relations, and, in some cases, the Chief Human Resources Officer. 

Initially built as a DocuSign PowerForm, the process worked, but was challenging. Users had to choose between multiple versions of the form to start, navigate dense and often irrelevant fields, and review lengthy, cluttered PDFs.

Watch this story's video from the FOA Efficiency Series

You can watch Crystal Ross O'Hara presentation on simplifying forms on YouTube.

Explore slides and other resources from the FOA Efficiency Webinars, hosted by the Administrative Innovation and Technology team.

“There was a lot going on with this form,” O’Hara said. “Each initiator had to wade through all the field options that might apply to them, even if it doesn't apply to them. Each signator had to look through all that information and [find] that little checkbox … and the resulting PDF was really, pretty hideous looking.”

So the team redesigned the process into a DocuSign Web Form, which added options for conditional logic, dropdown menus and dynamic routing. Instead of presenting every possible option, the form now adapts based on user input, showing only what’s relevant, linking to supporting text definitions and routing automatically based on cost thresholds.

“The form is interactive and flexible,” O’Hara said. “It can be set up for conditional logic display, which is a fancy term for saying: If you say yes here, then the form drops down and allows you to provide more information. If you don't say yes, you don't have to wade through that. There's a lot of mental load in filling out forms every day, and we're trying to avoid that for everybody.”

The improvements also benefit those reviewing and approving requests. Final documents are clearer and allow approvers to focus on the specific justification rather than sorting through extraneous information.

Efficiency can mean reducing mental load for users

Reducing visual overwhelm was something that caught the eye of the webinar facilitator, Alicia Webber, as well. 

“I loved the thought that you put into the customer experience,” said Webber, who is a process and change consultant with Administrative Innovation and Technology. “The idea of simplifying it with those dropdowns, and hyperlinks letting people go where they need to, without being overwhelmed visually. Thinking about that mental load piece is really great.”

The webinar panel agreed that improving administrative forms is an ongoing responsibility.

“Efficiency is not a destination. It is a journey. Each step is a benefit, and you build on it each time,” said Kim Stephens, project manager and DocuSign leader with Admin IT. “To go from a paper form with handwritten signatures, to a PowerForm wasn't perfect, but it was better. Then to go from a PowerForm to a Web Form was an even better improvement. The next iteration will be an improvement on that. This is always a journey. We just keep improving.”

More Information: 

• Overview of Covered Services policies and the carve out process
• DocuSign resources for FOA teams
• FOA Efficiency Series webinars
• More about FOA Goals