Back in Fall 2012, Executive Director of University Commons Joe Regier and I had a single goal: evaluate classroom and event management solutions capable of providing UMBC with a robust, responsive, and integrated solution serving the entire campus.
A scheduling group was created to review products and options that would replace or upgrade the current system from CollegeNET known as R25. The new software, 25Live, would be a result of a joint collaboration between The Commons, Registrar's Office, and DoIT. “It was a great partnership,” said Kirby, “everyone collaborated greatly with their different aspects.” Below are the members of the core team who participated in every aspect of the project and were directly responsible for the success of the project:
• William Archer, The Commons
• Joel Dewyer, The Commons
• Michelle Drummond, Registrar’s Office
• Cheri Putro, DoIT
• Drema Wentz, The Commons
The new process will allow all users to sign into 25Live and view room schedules based on their myUMBC account. Those in departments who coordinate with event scheduling for submitting events will be able to do all of their advanced functions through any web-based system and won't need special software installed on their computer.
DoIT was interested 25Live based on the scalability, reliability, and business continuity since the solution is a cloud based Software as a Service (SaaS). The new system also provides a set of programming interfaces, called APIs, that will allow scheduling offices and DoIT to develop ways of sharing the events information through myUMBC and mobile.
Another benefit involved more product updates compared to the old R25 software, allowing 25Live to continue to add more features and improvements. “The nice thing about this is there are mandatory annual updates to the software,” said Kirby “because it’s in the cloud they are promising predictable response times, even during our peak usage periods.”
Other key figures supported the 25Live project as well. Chief Mark Sparks, head of Public Safety wanted more complete information in times of an emergency. The software will provide searches for class schedules with the correct room locations, and event searches by the time and day of the week.
Juliana Simpson, Assistant Director of Planning and Michael Dillon, Assistant Vice President of Institutional Research, Analysis & Decision Support (IRADS) will benefit from more complete data source for reporting purposes as the classroom and event data becomes part of UMBC’s data warehouse solution known as REX.
You can access 25Live and view upcoming events without the need to sign into your UMBC account.
For more information on 25Live, The Commons has created some helpful videos that provide an overview on the software and features, including event creation, event details and pricing, as well as starring items and searches.
