University calendar replacement project underway; feedback sought on selection criteria

A broad-based project team representing a range of campus units has been convened and charged with evaluating and selecting a new events calendar tool to replace the current university calendar.

In replacing the current calendar tool, the goals of the project are to increase awareness and visibility of campus events and activities among internal and external audiences, improve event attendance, make it easier for campus units to add events to the central university calendar and reduce the number of additional stand-alone event calendars in use across campus.

Areas represented on the project team are:

• Agricultural Communication.
• Athletics.
• Conferences.
• Enrollment Management.
• ITaP.
• Krannert School of Management.
• Marketing and Communications.
• Office of the Dean of Students.
• Office of the Provost.
• Parent & Family Connections.
• Procurement Services.
• Purdue for Life Foundation.
• Student Life Programs.
• Student Success.
• Visit Lafayette-West Lafayette.

This team has identified several key requirements for the new calendar tool, which will be included in a request for proposals (RFP) that will be issued next month. The overarching key requirements identified are that the new tool offers:

• A scalable event listing system that tracks event details, images, sponsors/hosting department, etc.
• Ability to tag or categorize events and to filter events by these tags or categories.
• Improved user experience when submitting events to the calendar.
• Ability to grant administrator roles and various levels of access privileges.
• Ability to pull information from and share information to third-party sources through the use of API calls that return data in common formats (e.g., JSON, XML, etc.).
• Mobile-friendly display.
• Adherence to current university branding and accessibility guidelines.
• Event submission approval capabilities, including the ability to flag duplicated calendar entries.

The project team is seeking campus feedback on these identified key requirements from anyone who uses the current university calendar to either add or search for campus events. Feedback can be submitted via this brief survey through Sept. 7.