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Montclair State University Unlocks the Full Power of Series25®

When a powerful platform goes unnoticed, the solution isn’t a new system. The solution is someone who knows how to utilize what you have.

The Challenge

Montclair State University had a scheduling and reservation platform that was, in many ways, a well-kept secret. Despite being a university with a full conference center, academic scheduling operations, and several university services to coordinate, many departments across campus had little awareness of the full capabilities of 25Live® and Series25® applications.

Some colleagues were scheduling events and managing meetings through Google Calendar. At one point, conversations began about exploring other options.

That gap in awareness had a compounding effect: powerful features of the platform, including X25® Analytics, sat largely unused. Zachary Bonelli, the Student Applications Coordinator for the Montclair State University Conference Center, had worked with 25Live for roughly four years before formally taking over as the main administrator. When he stepped into the role, he quickly recognized both the untapped potential of the platform and the cultural challenge of getting people to use it.

Meanwhile, the physical campus was seeing peak scheduling periods, Tuesdays in particular, reaching nearly 90 percent room utilization.

The Solution

Bonelli’s approach was not to seek out new software. Instead, he set to work exploring the full capabilities of the system that Montclair State already licensed, Series25. He built integrations, automating workflows, and surfacing data that had never been presented to the people who needed it most.

One success came after attending an X25 Analytics training. He presented X25 Analytics data to colleagues who had never seen it. The reaction was immediate.

About Montclair State University

Norfolk State University Campus
© Photo provided by Montclair State University

Montclair State University is a public research university located in Montclair, New Jersey. Consistently ranked among the top public universities in the Northeast, Montclair State offers more than 300 programs of study across a wide range of disciplines and serves a diverse student body of over 22,000 students.
The university is home to a full-service conference center and a robust network of academic and event spaces managed through the Series25 scheduling solution.

“Once I presented it to people and let them know we had this—and they’re already paying for it — they were all like, ‘Wow, this is super useful. How can we use it in all these different ways?’”

His most ambitious technical project is a hoteling system for faculty and staff workspace reservations. Using the Series25 WebServices API, Bonelli and the former administrator built a check-in system. Faculty and staff reserve spaces through a custom embedded form, scan a QR code tied to their reservation upon arrival, and the system automatically verifies the reservation. The space will also auto-release if the user doesn’t check in within 20 minutes, preventing “no-show” reservations from locking other users out.

On the analytics side, X25 Analytics utilization dashboards used by the Registrar’s Office are helping make the case to academic departments for scheduling Friday classes to lessen stress during peak utilization times. 

University facilities planners are seeing that predictive modeling can show what space demand might look like once a new interdisciplinary science building opens.

“If they give me an estimated headcount—how many locations, how many seats on average—I can show through predictive modeling what a class schedule push through Banner would look like, where the foot traffic would be, and what the utilization would be. That’s something we’re heavily looking at with X25.”

Bonelli also connected X25 traffic data with campus safety. By sharing expected headcount maps with the university’s police department, he gave officers a data-driven view of where people are concentrated at any given time. That’s information that can become critical in an emergency.

For faculty and staff still attached to Google Calendar, he is working to bridge the gap rather than force an abrupt change. Expanding the Google Calendar sync integration available within 25Live will ensure space conflicts are avoided even when users aren’t booking directly in 25Live.

What's Next?

Bonelli continues to be an active participant in the CollegeNET customer community to help him make full use of Series25 application features. He attended both the national user conference and the Northeast Regional Conference and engages regularly with the Feature Upvote platform. He is consistently positive about CollegeNET’s support team helping him expand the use of their scheduling and reporting tools.

Using what was already at their disposal has inspired new automation and integration project ideas, introducing Series25 applications to corners of the university that have never engaged with them before.

Potential projects include:
•    Completing the ambitious hoteling project and implementing a similar project to reserve student study rooms that are sometimes over-booked by no-shows.
•    Increasing use of WebServices API calls to improve integrations.
•    Utilization of predictive modeling to further inform planning for any new campus buildings, helping administrators make smarter decisions, and aiding planning of room types, technology, and capacity before construction begins.
•    Potential integration of 25Live’s native pricing features for external conference clients.

The work at Montclair State University reinforces a straightforward truth: the most powerful tools are only as valuable as the awareness surrounding them. With that awareness and full use of the tools they’re already licensing, the University is realizing the full value of its investment in CollegeNET’s Series25 scheduling solution.

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