An institution’s educational software should simplify operations. The whole point of incorporating a service discovery tool and modern portal for your campus community is to make teaching, learning, and administration more convenient and straightforward.
"OneCampus empowers the end-user to create their own experience."
- Ryan Vallow, Lead Business Analyst and Product Owner of One.IU
Indiana University - Bloomington
TransACT’s OneCampus centralizes all of a school’s services and departments into one place that is accessible and intuitive to navigate. Designed to be familiar to most end users (a Google-like search design and intuitive AI that quickly connects students and staff to resources they need), OneCampus is easy to implement and cost-effective for technology administrators and staff.
With more than 40,000 students and over 1,000 services, Mr. Vallow and his team chose OneCampus to serve its large, diverse, unique learning community. To highlight how this works, Indiana University’s Lead Business Analyst Ryan Vallow discusses everyday IT tasks he no longer stresses over thanks to the automation offered by OneCampus:
Among the most tedious IT tasks, data validation is nonetheless absolutely vital. State and federal guidelines require specific data updates. In many cases, this means that university staff must create and monitor data collection on things like citizen status, immunization records, and home addresses. This process eats away at staff hours and decreases their effectiveness.
"Data is key to the success of any software system. OneCampus is a cost-effective and intuitive service discovery tool that makes it easier for our students and campus community to find what they are looking for,“ Mr. Vallow says. “It has a low IT lift -- because it works on a cloud-based solution. Once it’s up and running, there is not a huge drain on human resources to manage it.”
Mr. Vallow says OneCampus utilizes a centralized system for digital information verification.
Additionally, safeguards exist to keep sensitive data secure. OneCampus lets users verify their information before proceeding with other tasks, ensuring that students and staff comply with a request before engaging with university-related projects.
Every campus environment is unique and has specific needs that evolve. For Mr. Vallow, OneCampus’ analytics capability is essential to making the system more efficient for everyone.
"Using metrics to make educated decisions at the university is crucial for future planning. The built-in reporting and compliance tools within OneCampus help provide information on demand,” Mr. Vallow explains.
Understanding what resources are most popular, what pages are most visited, and granular insights allow university administration to better support students in their learning. Manually tracking analytics can be a difficult and unnecessarily time-consuming process.
OneCampus automatically tracks analytics and gives staff immediate insight into what tools students utilize most.
Prospective students typically start their research of university or college online with specific keywords and then continue on to the institutions’ website. Public institutions need to share research and accomplishments with the world. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) becomes essential.
Higher education is already a competitive environment, and campuses with a robust web presence will attract more prospective students. SEO is vital for improving internet visibility and brand recognition. OneCampus’ built-in SEO tools make it easier for universities to leverage SEO strategies, enhancing appearance and rank in search engines.
Refined SEO can boost an institution’s credibility and make it easier to attract new students by delivering the information they’re after. The media and community members can find information more quickly if it’s optimized for internet searches as well.
Mr. Vallow says monitoring SEO using OneCampus reduces the need for additional marketing help or dedicated SEO training.
Mobile formatting is arguably more critical than traditional desktop formatting today with the prevalence of smartphone usage. With multiple platforms available to users, this means universities must learn to code to make their web pages mobile-friendly.
OneCampus automates this process. All web pages and resources have a mobile-first design, allowing students the most streamlined academic experience possible. Meanwhile, the staff is free to focus on delivering the content in which they are experts. The task of formatting no longer falls on IT.
Academic studies require a host of uniquely tailored tools and resources. In many instances, IT staff must go out of their way to find these tools and connect them to their university’s software.
OneCampus makes connecting existing campus apps and software a simple process. Using a RESTful API, OneCampus offers easy access to multiple services without logging in repeatedly.
"OneCampus has a short problem-resolution time window for users when they are struggling to find services. They can quickly search for tasks or reports without the need to reach out to other support services for help,” Mr. Vallow says.
Reducing the campus community clicks to find a resource or connect with a person saves IT hours of time. Since the search leads to a task connected to a static URL, Mr. Vallow’s team doesn’t have to go through a campaign to inform users of changes. Instead, one person can change the URL in the back end without any interruption of service.
“People dollars are real dollars,” Mr. Vallow says.