Submitted by Chad Kreitler
Enterprise Applications is often asked to help evaluate and recommend solutions to applications that are no longer meeting the needs of a department OR are approaching end of life. Earlier this year, Quadrangle Housing asked for support in replacing their Apartment Referral Services (ARS) website, which provides WashU students with a means to research off-campus housing options. Students can search listings for available housing, find a roommate or sublet a property. Other features include planning, budgeting, transportation, utilities, and community sustainability information. Developed as a SharePoint 2013 site, the existing ARS site was set to reach end of support in April 2023.
The migration of the ARS site presented both challenges and opportunities. Initially focused on implementing the site in WordPress, the team quickly realized that a hosted vendor solution was the best option. Off Campus Partners was selected as the University’s off-campus housing site partner. The Off Campus Partners site provides the required functionality without the support and development overhead of a custom solution. The Off Campus Partners offering meets the feature requirements of the existing site and provides additional functionality including online landlord registration, sort and filter functionality, ability for landlords to edit property listings, secure roommate search, regional resources, and walk and transportation scores. Off-Campus Partners is part of the Apartments.com network and maintains off-campus housing sites for America’s top universities. The Off-Campus Partners solution provides Washington University with a modern, feature-rich, and sophisticated web presence. Site management, promotions, and listing approvals will continue to be maintained by Quadrangle Housing. Students, faculty, and staff registration is WUSTL key protected. Guests (including incoming students or new hires) who do not yet have a WUSTL key can create a temporary account that expires after 60 days. The site is free to the university. Revenues generated from site listings are shared with the university. The site went live on January 6th and can be accessed at ars.wustl.edu.
ARS Landing Page
ARS Rentals Page
