Students should prepare to say their final goodbyes to OrgSync.
According to Ferris Coordinator of Activities Nicholas Smith, a new program called Presence, which will be explicitly branded to Ferris as Bulldog Connect, will soon replace OrgSync.
Students can expect to see the change beginning in April as Bulldog Connect is rolled out in pilot groups, and OrgSync will no longer be available starting July 1.
“This is going to be cool,” Smith said. “When students are looking for something, it is much more visually appealing than OrgSync. Not putting that program down, don’t get me wrong, but we are changing for a reason.”
Following the switch will be several new features that are expected to benefit student organizations on campus and the student population as a whole.
Bulldog Connect will allow student organizations to view attendance demographics for the events they put on. Ferris social media accounts will be embedded directly into the program, and there will be a mobile app where students can log their volunteer hours from their cellphones, Smith said.
The switch to Presence marks the end of a long relationship between Ferris and OrgSync. OrgSync has been in use for 11 years, but a competitor purchased it three years ago. Administrators had considered staying with the new company, but felt that it would not meet the needs of students, Smith said.
Ferris business administration senior and American Marketing Association President Lucy Reigle used OrgSync to register the organization’s events and log community service hours, but said general members don’t take full advantage of OrgSync the way they could with Bulldog Connect.
“I think it’s a really great administrative tool for keeping track of members and five star events and hours, but a lot of our members just go on OrgSync because we require them to and they don’t use it to keep up to date with our RSO, they use other social media platforms,” Reigle said. “I think that the fact that they’re integrating social media into it is a step in the right direction.”
Other students are more skeptical about Bulldog Connect. “I don’t think that updating the system would necessarily make it better,” Ferris information security and intelligence sophomore John Harman said. “It might make it slightly easier, but the fact that it’s a different system means that I would have to relearn how to use it, which is basically another chunk of time, and I tend to think that most systems work about the same and it’s just a matter of what you get used to.”
The hope of Smith and other administrators is that Bulldog Connect will be more user-friendly for the average student.
“This is going to be much easier for students. I’m expecting much higher use with this. It’s going to be very beneficial,” Smith said.
Students should keep an eye out for more information in the upcoming months as messages are sent out, and information tables will be set up on campus with promotional items.