Carousel Digital Signage is continuing to strengthen relationships with long-time customers by transitioning server-based digital signage systems to the cloud, helping IT departments simplify operations while also establishing end user models that invite more content contributors. Carousel’s latest success story involves Butler University, an Indianapolis-based higher education campus that has now expanded to more than 80 screens across 15 departments.
With just over 5,000 students, Butler University markets itself as a “relatively small” university that places a strong emphasis on student engagement. That message resonates for students, staff and visitors that regularly see fresh and timely digital signage content on displays positioned throughout the campus.
“Carousel is our vehicle for pushing out timely and important information,” said Sierra Davis, information systems analyst, IT for Butler University. “We use it to promote our campus events and provide general information, and increasingly find new and creative ways to use the network. We have just started to publish QR codes that connect to our Calm App, a collaboration between our HR and Student Affairs teams that offers students a meditation, sleep and relaxation app to reduce stress and anxiety. We are also now connecting Carousel to our emergency alert system through its integration with CAP (Common Alerting Protocol), which will provide alerts on all campus screens in the event of severe weather and other urgent matters.”
The migration to Carousel Cloud simplifies daily functions of the network, including content management and system maintenance. Davis shared that departments generally have free autonomy to contribute content, and the cloud platform makes it easier for contributors to log in, upload and schedule content from anywhere. “We do have a marketing team that oversees everything, and they also publish a lot of content that spans across the different colleges and departments when it pertains to more general audiences. However, students at the College of Pharmacy will see information about events that matter to them, and each department in general will personalise content that will show appreciation to coworkers, highlight student achievements, and generally promote a message of community for those in the building.”
Davis added that Carousel Digital Signage makes the learning curve easy for everyone involved. “We find the higher ed templates they offer particularly useful when we get a new department off the ground,” said Davis. “It provides a general outline for new users to quickly modify layouts, and colorus that align with branding, and arrange the text and images precisely how they want it to appear on screen. We all appreciate how easy they make it to create bulletins and personalise content in ways that matter to each audience.”
