University of Montana Celebrates First Anniversary of campusM Mobile Solution Implementation

 August 16, 2017

Chicago, Illinois—August 16, 2017. Ex Libris^®, a ProQuest company, is pleased to announce that the Ex Libris campusM™ mobile solution and portal has powered the University of Montana’s campus app for a full year, with resounding success.

The University of Montana (UM), an early North American adopter of the internationally popular campusM solution, launched the app in August 2016 and has received nearly 12,000 registrations in just one year. The solution’s ease of use and robust administration interface led to a rapid implementation brought about by only a small core team of four people, a few student employees, and IT colleagues across campus to assist with some of the development.

According to analytics available through the campusM solution, the most popular services and functionality provided by the app include the LMS integration with Moodle, food menus through the Food Zoo option, and personalized class schedules and grades. Food Zoo, which was developed with the campusM App Extension Kit (AEK), displays cafeteria menus, nutritional information, and daily updates for students.

In a particularly successful campaign, the UM team used the campusM app, leveraging its push notifications mechanism, to host voting in the annual student government elections. This voting system, which resulted in an extremely positive turnout, replaced the Ellucian Banner^® system used previously.

Upcoming developments for the UM campusM app include a tutoring service to help connect students with tutors on campus, an International Development Studies (IDS) service to connect students in the IDS program with scholarship, internship, and program information, and integration with the university’s Cascade Content Management System so that content owners can more easily manage their service content.

”The University of Montana wanted a mobile infrastructure that is independent of any student or financial ERP systems and that offers the autonomy to develop interfaces to consume data from any internal or external systems,” said UM Assistant CIO Jeff Abbott. ”We also wanted to be able to present relevant data to end users quickly and easily in a UM-branded view. As we discovered, customization and connectivity are a key strength of Ex Libris products. Our development team was able to leverage the independent and robust integration infrastructure of campusM and quickly deploy tiles and data to our end user community with great success and adoption.”

Ex Libris Mobile and Learning Solutions Director Derek Rathel commented, ”The University of Montana leadership and Ex Libris have formed an ideal partnership. As demonstrated by the popularity of the app among students, UM has done an outstanding job of leveraging the campusM development kit to best cater to the needs of its community. The university is clearly striving to realize the full potential of the campusM platform.”

The University of Montana is a place where top-tier students, educators, and researchers from across the country and around the globe come and thrive. UM is located in Missoula, Montana’s second-largest city with a population of 80,000 residents. The University draws a diverse population to Missoula and helps cultivate an educated, engaged, and vibrant community. More than 12,000 students attend UM and Missoula College, where they receive a world-class education in a broad range of subjects, which include the trades, liberal arts, graduate and postdoctoral study, and professional training.

Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, is a leading global provider of cloud-based solutions for higher education. Offering SaaS solutions for the management and discovery of the full spectrum of library and scholarly materials, as well as mobile campus solutions driving student engagement and success, Ex Libris serves thousands of customers in 90 countries. For more information about Ex Libris campusM, see our website, and join us on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter.