Universities Cooperate on License-Free Campus Management System

The University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien (FHTW) has been developing and operating the campus management software FH Complete (FHC) as free software for 20 years, currently in version “FHC3.3”. Thanks to its sustained success and many years of use in the community of universities of applied sciences and universities, UAS Technikum Wien has gained extensive knowledge about the needs of users.

FH Complete covers the entire course of study – from system administration and maintenance, communication between staff, students and external lecturers, to the student life cycle, student and staff administration, from teaching assignments to fully web-based curricula. The software package comprises several applications that work with a central database and are thus optimally interlinked.

Cooperation agreement with a community managed by UAS Technikum Wien

Components and modules of FH Complete are continuously developed, supplemented and advanced in line with the state of the art in order to take further steps towards digitalization. The focus is particularly on UX usability, accessibility, efficient working, workflow automation, self-service and IT security. Cooperation with partners from the university sector such as St. Pölten UAS, Burgenland UAS, BFI Vienna UAS and the Catholic Private University of Linz, which use the free software, has recently intensified.

In order to ensure the joint evolution of FH Complete, this collaboration was agreed with all universities as part of a cooperation agreement in a community managed by the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien. The university is pursuing the approach of a collaborative management system, which has already proven itself in complex tasks.

The unique selling point of the FH Complete Community is that UAS Technikum Wien is happy to share the products it has developed as free software with the participating FH Complete Community members, thus enabling collaborative further development.

Coordinating function for FH Complete Community

Florian Eckkrammer, Managing Director of UAS Technikum Wien and key initiator of the project, says: “We are happy to take on a central and coordinating role for the FH Complete Community in the future in order to create added value for our project partners. We offer services – our cooperation with the Federal Ministry of Defense BMLV is exemplary. In addition to the implementation of FH Complete (installation & system & document setup, data migration and training), the server administration and hosting of FHC for the BMLV on the UAS Technikum Wien’s own data center was also entrusted to our UAS team. Our long-term partnership aims to create stable solutions for a period of well over 20 years and is an example of the versatility and adaptability of FH Complete to the different needs of very different educational institutions.”

The goal: saying goodbye to outdated systems in campus management

Ernst Rindhauser, Head of System Management at UAS Technikum Wien and Community Coordinator of FH Complete, adds: “Our goal with FH Complete is to always be at the cutting edge of technology when it comes to campus management systems and to say goodbye to outdated systems. Manually typing data into tables is much less productive than a system that can quickly and effectively provide, exchange and analyze important information via interfaces, automate workflows and thus represent real added value for users – be it for students or employees, from management to the executive board and the rectorate.

According to Rindhauser, the focus is on “creating the technical possibilities to be able to work even more efficiently. The journey of digitalization began many years ago, when FHC was developed from scratch and the framework conditions were created. Defining and following this path together with our FH Community partners brings significant added value for everyone. Many constructive and productive collaboration discussions have already taken place.”

Rindhauser is enthusiastic about “how the entire team has set itself this common goal. The trust that the FH Complete community partners place in the expertise of our university of applied sciences is also reflected in the cooperation agreement. Thanks to the funds provided by the partners, we can now concentrate much more on implementing the roadmap and achieve significant milestones in the next few quarters. Everyone involved will therefore benefit from faster delivery cycles and will be able to use new features more quickly.”

Ensuring smooth functionality of the interfaces

Andreas Österreicher, Chief Solution Architect and co-founder of FH Complete: “We want to ensure that the basic functionalities and database structures remain standardized in order to guarantee smooth functionality of the interfaces both in the respective UAS-specific IT architectures and to external standard interfaces that are used by all UASs (e.g. BRZ data network).”
The vanilla version (also known as FH Complete Base) will be developed by the community coordinated by UAS Technikum Wien and will continue to be implemented as free software by the UAS software development team, which is financed by the FH Complete Community.

In addition, components based on this, such as add-ons or extensions, can also be programmed by each FHC partner themselves and integrated into the FHC Tool Suite. This ensures that each partner retains the necessary flexibility for individual requirements.

Some pictures of FH Complete:
Here in the cloud folder.
(Photo credit: FH Technikum Wien)

Printable press photos around the UAS Technikum Wien:

https://cloud.technikum-wien.at/s/WdHJJsCS7MWo5Df
(Photo credit: FH Technikum Wien)

Queries: