Example Workflow: Building an RFA Checklist

Understanding the Challenge

Research Funding Announcements (RFAs) present a common challenge for research administrators. While they contain critical information about deadlines, eligibility requirements, award details, and application components, this information is rarely organized consistently across different funding agencies.

This is where Vandalizer truly shines. Let’s walk through creating a workflow that transforms varied RFA documents into standardized, actionable checklists that your team can rely on.

Workflow Overview

Standardized output

Creating Your RFA Checklist Workflow

Step 1: Upload Your RFA Document

Begin by uploading an RFA document to the Document Viewer window. You can simply drag and drop the file or use the Upload File button.

Uploading an RFA document to Vandalizer

Vandalizer will immediately begin analyzing the document with its Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process, indicated by the spinner icon in the corner. Wait for this process to complete—when you see the icon, Vandalizer has successfully extracted all the text and is ready for the next step.

Document processing with OCR
Tip

Take a moment to click the icon and review the extracted text to ensure the document was processed correctly before proceeding.

Step 2: Design Your Tasks

For an effective RFA checklist, you’ll need to create two types of tasks:

  1. Six Parallel Prompt Tasks - These tasks will identify and pull out specific categories of information from the RFA document regardless of where it appears or how it’s labeled. You’ll create separate prompt tasks for:
    • Dates & Deadlines
    • Eligibility Requirements
    • Award Information
    • Application Components
    • Budget Requirements & Policies
    • Submission Details
  2. Formatting Prompt Task - This task will organize and consolidate all the information gathered by the six prompt tasks into a clean, standardized checklist format.

Click the Tasks button on the bottom right and then click the +NEW TASK button. Select Prompt from the options and type in your prompt. Repeat these steps for all 6 prompt tasks and then the formatting prompt.

Creating a new prompt task

Step 3: Build Your Workflow

Navigate to the Workflows tab in the Toolbox window and click on the +New Workflow button.

Creating a new workflow

Then, click on the Add Step button.

Adding a step to the workflow

Now click on the Add your first task button, click Prompts, and select your previously created prompt task. Repeat these steps to add the other 5 prompt tasks (In the same step).

Adding prompt tasks to first step

All 6 extraction tasks added
Note

The parallel prompt task approach is particularly effective for RFAs because it allows each task to specialize in finding a specific type of information, even when that information is scattered throughout the document or described using different terminology across funding agencies.

Now we will add a new step and do the same thing to add the formatting prompt task in a new step.

Adding the formatting prompt task

Step 4: Run Your Workflow

With your workflow built, you’re ready to put it to work:

  1. Make sure your RFA document is selected in the Document Viewer
  2. Click the Run Workflow button in the bottom right corner of the Toolbox window
  3. Watch as Vandalizer processes each step, first running all six prompt tasks in parallel and then formatting the combined results into your checklist

Running the workflow on your RFA document

The result? A comprehensive, well-organized checklist containing all the critical information from the RFA, presented in a consistent format regardless of how the original document was structured.

Final checklist output from the workflow

Step 5: Reuse With Future RFAs

The real power of this workflow is its reusability. The next time you receive an RFA:

  1. Upload the new document
  2. Select your saved “RFA Checklist Builder” workflow
  3. Run the workflow with a single click

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