RMS Enews

RMS is extremely excited to announce our exclusive partnership with UMatch and their RoomBug product. RoomBug is a fantastic tool for allowing students to select their own roommate utilizing Facebook.

The RoomBug application runs within the Facebook platform and is free for students to use. Facebook now has over 300 million users, 50% of which log in on a daily basis. Each day more than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook by users. Most importantly, more than 85% of all college students are active on Facebook. The profiles that a Facebook user creates have been shown to be highly accurate and descriptive of their owners. The RoomBug application takes advantage of the enormous, and continually growing, popularity of Facebook and uses it to the students’ and school administrators’ benefit.

The RoomBug application takes advantage of the enormous, and continually growing, popularity of Facebook and uses it to the students’ and school administrators’ benefit.

Students become a part of a RoomBug “network” and within that network they are able to set up a profile in addition to their traditional Facebook profile. Their RoomBug profile includes answers to set questions about neatness level, sleeping habits, social life, activity level, and academic focus. There are also free form text fields where students can add additional information about themselves or their ideal roommate, such as “I like soccer.” Once a student sets up their profile they are then able to search for or browse a list of other students in their network. This is where the RoomBug really shines. The system allows users to take advantage of Facebook’s messaging service to communicate with one another or to view a prospective roommate’s full Facebook profile to get a better overall picture of that person. More and more often, students are using Facebook as a way to learn about their prospective or assigned roommate at multiple stages of the assignment process. Rather than having students react to their assigned roommate, RoomBug allows the students to have a proactive hand in determining who they would like to room with.

So, you might ask, how does RMS fit in? We’ve developed a pair of Interfaces that will communicate directly with RoomBug.

First a network is set up for your individual institution. Then, through an Export Interface, you are able to send a list of students from a particular application period(s) over to RoomBug. The applicants you send over are put into a sub-network where they are only allowed to choose a roommate from the other applicants that belong in their sub-network (application period). This lets you as an administrator have control at the Application level of the population of students in RoomBug. Once the pre-determined matching period ends, a file will be sent back to your servers and will be pulled into RMS via an Import Interface. Each individual pairing places a mutual roommate request on each respective student’s application. So, for example, if A and B choose to live together then A has B as a roommate request on the application and B has A as a roommate request on their application. Once these mutual requests are present, you may then use them when you run Auto Allocation, Manual Allocation, or even if you’re using Student Web!

RoomBug is a roommate matching tool. It is important that school administrators communicate with students that a roommate match in RoomBug does not guarantee that they will be living with that person(s), nor in any certain bedspace. What comes out of RoomBug is a roommate matching preference that can be altered or removed from a student’s application as you see fit.

We’re currently going through Alpha testing and have a planned production release time frame of early November. RMS is thrilled to be partnering with such a unique and innovative company as UMatch and we look forward to the new options this will present users and students.

If you have questions or are interested in RoomBug, please contact RMS’ Customer Success Manager, Kyle Hammett, at kyle@rms-inc.com or 919-845-9004.