In late 2020, every university in the UK was told to test its students before they traveled home for the winter break. The announcement came with almost no notice, and the deadline didn’t move.

The physical side was hard enough: tents, staff, supplies. The harder part was the flow of people. Thousands of students had to be tested in two steps, without queues forming, without anyone who wasn’t a student taking a slot, and with every result reaching the right person quickly.

The University of Strathclyde needed a system for that, and it needed it in days, not months.

What the team built

The university’s team built the complete system on Plant an App in two days: a student app, a back office for the testing centers, and the integrations that tied them to the university’s existing systems.

For students

  • Sign in with university accounts. The app connected to the university’s Active Directory, so students signed in with the accounts they already had, and only students could book.
  • An intake form before booking. Students answered the required questions first, with the form’s conditions and follow-up actions built in.
  • A booking calendar. Students picked a date and time with one click. The calendar was synchronized through an API with availability at every testing point, so everyone arrived with an appointment and no queues formed.
  • Two linked appointments. Testing took two steps, and the app managed the dependency between them, so students always saw where they stood.
  • Notifications. Confirmations went out by email the moment a student booked, followed by automated updates on the booking and, most importantly, the result.

For the testing centers

  • Two roles. Testing operators saw, confirmed, and rescheduled appointments and recorded the activity at their center. Administrators managed users and had the overview.
  • Walk-ins. Despite the bookings, some students would simply show up, so operators could record walk-in tests in the same system.
  • Analytics. Administrators saw every appointment across the centers, so they could plan operators, working hours, and capacity.

“Out of all the different ways of creating data-driven digital experiences, this is the most straightforward, approachable way of doing it.”

Jim Everett, Development and Innovation, University of Strathclyde

Why it worked

The deadline was fixed, so the team couldn’t spend it on infrastructure. Sign-in, forms, scheduling, notifications, roles, and reporting were already part of the platform, so the two days went into the parts that were specific to Strathclyde: the testing process, the rules between appointments, and the integrations with the university’s systems.

That’s the pattern behind most important systems, urgent or not. Start with one critical problem, and put the team’s time into what makes it yours.