Event Management (R25)

R25 is a comprehensive event management system acquired from CollegeNET, Inc. (UMass Dartmouth and UMass Lowell also use R25, as do over 700 other institutions.) R25 maintains information on all events occurring on-campus, and off-campus of interest to the campus community. In addition to centralizing this information, it manages the use of facilities (all indoor and outdoor spaces) and resources (all staff, equipment and services) in support of these events.

At present, the five departments that handle the majority of events on campus are actively using R25. They are: Campus Center Administration, Marine Operations, Special Events, Registrar, and the Customer Service Center (that handles support services for events). Using R25, event managers are able to locate and assign everything needed for an event, without conflict and within availability.

For example:
R25 prevents the accidental assignment of a room to more than one event -- unless the event manager specifically overrides that and intends double booking.
R25 will only allow as many folding tables as we have available at a given date and time to be assigned to an event.
R25 will allow an event manager to assign Public Safety officers for traffic control to an event, if they are available.

As an interactive system, R25 will then notify all appropriate departments and staff about events and what's needed.

The Registrar also uses a special module called Schedule25 for classroom scheduling. For any given term, Schedule25 will assign rooms to classes in a non-conflicting, best-fit manner by interfacing with the PeopleSoft Student Administration system to read the term schedule and any special room preferences or requests. For final exams, Schedule25 is used in conjunction with another non-R25 system called ScheduleExpert to create a final exam schedule with the least amount of individual student conflicts, and assign rooms to classes in a non-conflicting, best-fit manner by interfacing with the PeopleSoft Student Administration system to read all the individual student schedules in a given term.

As we continue to implement R25, the goal is to have all facilities, all resources, all events and all departments included in R25. A "central event management office" would handle everything that occurs on campus (and those off-campus events as well) in the most efficient, professional and consistent manner. Just as the university's One Stop student service center provides quick and complete services to students, a central event management office (supported by R25) will provide quick and complete services to anyone wanting to hold an event at UMB.

Departmental Access

One of the most significant benefits of centralizing event management is that it provides a universal calendar. Another module of R25 called the WebViewer essentially allows web access to the list of university events. To look at our current R25 WebViewer, click on User Access at the top of this page. After spending a few moments on the WebViewer, you will see it is fairly easy to "slice and dice" the event calendar to exactly your liking. One can view events by type or location, you can select individual dates, a week view, or a month view, and you can look at any point in time -- past, present or future. Clicking on various "hot spots" will bring you more levels of detail.

To go along with this high level of automation of event management, we have also created an on-line event request form. If you need to schedule an event on campus -- anything from an impromptu department meeting to commencement itself, click on Event Request Form at the top of this page. Completing all the questions on that form and submitting it will result in your request being processed by an R25 event manager. You will immediately get an event request acknowledgement by e-mail while the event manager determines if what you are asking for is available. In the vast majority of cases, you will receive an event confirmation in your e-mail with no need for further communication, often within a day or two.

As we continue to implement R25, frequent requesters will be able to log in to the WebViewer to submit event requests, and track them as well. The added benefit of this will be an even faster turnaround.