Academic Scheduling and Event Management Software Solution

The Vendor is required to provide academic scheduling and event management software solution must be delivered through a combination of vendor provided software, professional services, and ongoing technical support to ensure continuous functionality, high system reliability, and sustained institutional effectiveness.
- Standard compliance
•    Must demonstrate compliance with applicable higher education standards and industry best practices.
•    Solution shall support institutional scheduling policies, academic calendars, and governance structures currently in use at college.
•    The system must meet recognized accessibility standards, including WCAG 2.1 AA or higher, to ensure equitable access for all users. 
•    Provide a voluntary product accessibility template (VPAT) document.
•    Must demonstrate a history of successful implementation within community colleges or comparable public higher education institutions.
- Scheduling capabilities (academic, facilities, and events)
•    Support configuration and management of academic term schedules, academic calendars, scheduling cycles, and standard meeting patterns.
•    Support room and space scheduling (classrooms, labs, shared spaces) including capacities, features, and usage types; support equipment/resource scheduling as applicable.
•    Support non-academic scheduling including single events, recurring events, and bulk event creation, with configurable approvals, notifications, and calendar invitations (e.g., confirmations, reminders).
•    Coordinate with campus services for events (e.g., operations/custodial, campus police/security, and Media and AV services) through configurable workflows and notifications.
•    Support service/resource requests tied to event bookings from a configurable, college-defined catalog. 
•    Examples may include: tv, projector access, audio system access, lighting turned on, HVAC (a/c or heat) turned on, desks/chairs, and internet connectivity.
•    Support operational readiness via either (a) integration to a facilities/building/work order system or (b) automatic creation of tasks/work orders with reminders, escalation, and completion confirmation prior to event start (with emphasis on lighting/HVAC readiness).
•    Support configurable lead times and buffer windows for events and associated service/resource requests, including setup/teardown time blocks and operational lead time (e.g., time needed to enable lighting/hvac). 
•    Buffers must be configurable by event type, room, and service category.
•    Support testing “what-if” scheduling scenarios prior to publishing, including conflict analysis, capacity constraints, and policy violations.
- Testing capabilities
•    The solution provides tools to test scheduling scenarios prior to production deployment.
•    The solution can identify conflicts related to room usage, course overlaps, capacity constraints, and policy violations.
•    Supports sandbox or staging environments for testing integrations, configurations, and system updates.
•    The solution must allow validation of data accuracy and workflow logic prior to implementation and for ongoing change management.
•    Testing capabilities support ongoing system reliability.
- Reporting and remediation guidance
•    The solution should provide robust reporting capabilities to support academic scheduling, facilities utilization, event management, and fiscal intake (where applicable).
•    Reports are expected to be customizable and accessible to both technical and non-technical users and available through dashboards and exportable formats.
•    The solution must support exportable reports and dashboards to assist with planning, budgeting, and resource optimization.
•    The solution must identify scheduling conflicts, inefficiencies, and underutilized resources and support actionable guidance to improve schedules and utilization.
•    For events, reporting should support analysis of utilization, resources requested/used, and service request completion status.
- Integration and workflow
•    The solution must integrate seamlessly with colleague to ensure consistent and accurate academic data.
•    Automated data exchange must minimize manual data entry and reduce the potential for errors; vendor must describe integration method(s) and error handling.
•    The solution supports configurable workflows aligned with academic, facilities, and event scheduling processes, including approvals and notifications.
•    The solution shall integrate with outlook for scheduling of rooms from the outlook calendar.
•    If college elects to publish schedules/events to the website or other platforms, vendor must describe available options and supported integration mechanisms (e.g., apis/exports).
- Usability and support
•    The solution must provide a modern, intuitive, and accessible user interface.
•    The solution must support efficient navigation and task completion with minimal training requirements; interface must be user-friendly for technical and non-technical staff.
•    Enables role-based access and team collaboration.
•    Provide comprehensive training materials, documentation, and onboarding support, including training plan/timeline for administrators and end users.
•    Must offer responsive customer support with clearly defined service-level expectations and escalation paths.
- Payments (conditional and if enabled by college)
•    The solution shall support integration with a merchant payment solution to facilitate secure payment processing, should college elect to allow users to submit payments for event space reservations and rentals.
•    Must describe supported payment workflows (e.g., hosted redirect vs embedded), reconciliation reporting, refund handling, and payment status synchronization.
•    Review item (TBD): if the solution supports chargebacks/cost recovery for non-academic rentals and selected services/resources, vendor should describe options and reporting.
- Scalability and performance
•    The solution must support the ability to schedule rooms accurately and scale to accommodate future growth in enrollment, programs, facilities, and events.
•    The solution shall provide 99.9% uptime and support at least 300 concurrent users.
•    The solution must support cloud-based hosting models that ensure flexibility and availability.
•    Must demonstrate system reliability, including documented uptime and performance metrics.