Nebraska ends campus mobile app
21 April, 2017
category: Mobile, Privilege Control
At a time when institutions are clamoring to deploy campus mobile apps to make life easier for students, faculty and general campus visitors, it’s only natural that some apps will fall by the wayside. That seems to be the case at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where the campus’ MyRED mobile app was end-of-lifed last week.
According to a report in The Daily Nebraskan, the MyRED app was initially designed to provide convenience for students by enabling access to the university’s student information portal. But updates to Oracle’s PeopleSoft product, which Nebraska-Lincoln already uses, inspired the campus to EOL the MyRED app.
MyRED was pulling its data from the campus’ PeopleSoft applications as it was, while the app interface was being provided by HiPOINT Technology Services Inc. In total, the MyRED app cost roughly $17,000.
According to university officials discontinuing the mobile app will bring a reduction of cost, redundancies and maintenance for the university. By eliminating the mobile app and using only PeopleSoft the university can move from two separate softwares to a single, unified platform.
A recent update to PeopleSoft’s functionality made it so that the Oracle product was offering similar tools to that of MyRED app provider, HiPOINT. Recognizing that the entire app could be operated via PeopleSoft, the university was able to streamline the operation and cut ties with the app provider.
Key to the new PeopleSoft update for Nebraska is that the student experience is now seamless across desktop, laptop, mobile and tablet. The new, responsive design makes the student information portal adapt to different screens. This means that even without the mobile app, students can still access the new PeopleSoft-only version of MyRED from their mobile devices.
