The University of Oxford has become one of the largest users of Microsoft Power Apps in the UK.
The world-renowned institution, which teaches around 25,000 students every year, has created a range of easy-to-use apps that help people in various roles across the university.
These include apps that handle course fees, funding applications, assigning colleges, ID cards and email accounts to new students, and childcare services and travel insurance for staff.
Power Apps lets anyone quickly and easily create their own apps by simply pointing and clicking. It’s so simple to use that staff with limited IT skills have been able to build their own apps to improve processes within their department.
Matthew Castle, head of application platforms in central IT Services at the University, said: “If we didn’t have the Power Platform or Microsoft 365, we would be in a very challenging situation. We would be looking to next year and trying to figure out how we going to interview 25,000 students and help them prepare for life at our university. It’s a lot of work that’s made easier by using Power Apps to automate many of the manual and repetitive tasks that our staff have to do. This frees up time that our staff can use to focus on more pressing matters.”
The University of Oxford is looking to build on its success with Power Apps by using Power Automate and to empower more departments to create their own solutions to specific problems that their staff may have.
It will enable the university to progress its IT Strategic Plan which aims to ensure that technology is appropriately deployed for the benefit of staff and students.
Chris Rothwell, Director of Education at Microsoft UK, said: “PowerApps is putting organisations in control of their data. The Power Platform tools are perfect for any team that wants to increase agility, solve problems and improve how they work. I am inspired by how the University of Oxford is using this technology.”
