The CampusData Project began in 2011 as an online directory and today is the core of over a half dozen web tools using a REST API. We continue to add features to this robust system, further increasing its value.

Before we began work on our CampusData Project, we suffered the same issues plaguing many organically-built web presence that any large entity has. Multiple websites with database backends, which were developed by different people at different times to solve similar issues.

We started with an updated campus directory to replace our printed version. The typical directory information was no problem, as we simply pull this from our information systems. However, there was much information in our printed directory that does not exist in our information systems, such as office information and mail stops.

Our first integration with another project was with our campus map. To start this we built a REST API against our directory and the map. We then took the office information for a staff member and passed that to our map to bring in the mapped location to the profile page of the person.

If we stop here and look at the issues solved they were:

• Moved from a print directory to a digital one, cost savings was about 12K a year.
• The digital directory has interactive features allowing people to find, sort and physically locate an individual or department.
• We made both using MVC for purely native UX for mobile.
• We had a great new campus map that had an API we could leverage in other ways.
• Directory information updated in our information systems can now cascade down to many different locations in our digital space.

Quite a lot of benefits from 2 projects!

Our current phase of the directory is to add all of the profile information that one would expect to see on a faculty profile page from a department directory listing. Again, leveraging our REST API we can pull individuals from our directory to directory lists and subsequent profile pages. This gives us both a one-stop shop for updating personnel and relieves the web managers from having to fuss with managing directory pages. In addition, we now have a database of information related to faculty to be used in other places.

Moving forward, we are now integrating our news and experts platforms into CampusData. With this phase, we are again leveraging the directory information combined with news articles written by or about our faculty. News articles can flow to our experts profile pages automatically, experts can be profiled on relevant news articles at the click of a button.

As we continue to build on this project, we continually gather analytics both from the user’s browsers sessions in addition to server side performance data. However, our current strategy is built more on making smart connections with other data and reducing the work needed to manage all of this information. To that end, we are making great strides.

In addition to these, we have seen a myriad of intangible benefits, such as greater awareness of content accuracy by our staff because of the heightened visibility, better working relationships across departments and more.

Want to learn more? Chris will be presenting at High Ed Web next week.