As a Campus Cloud Administrator, you can link directly from the campus guide to another app on a student’s phone. For example, you could use the campus app to provide links to a transit app, an app for students in residence, or any other useful app.
In this tutorial, we'll create a tile, in the campus guide, that students can tap to open a 3rd-party app.
Where examples are needed, we'll use Zoom. Zoom is a good example because students can use it to meet in virtual study sessions, and many of them have it already. We will put a link to Zoom directly into the campus app.
This tutorial takes about one hour, and a moderate level of technical skill. Here is a summary of what we'll do:
- Get Background Info for the 3rd-party app
- Set the fallback behaviour
- Create the campus guide tile with Campus Cloud Studio
- See the results
Get Background Info
To link the campus guide to an app on a student's phone, you need to tell the app how to launch the app. You'll do this once for the iOS platform and once for Android. So, you'll need two pieces of information:
- the "custom URL scheme"; and
- the "Android package name"
There are a few ways to get these two pieces of information. For details, please see:
Make a note of the custom URL scheme and package name to use later in this tutorial.
Set the fallback behaviour
What happens if a student taps the tile, but does not have the 3rd-party app installed? The campus app needs to know what to do in this case. So, you will tell the campus app what webpage to open as a fallback, if the student does not have the 3rd-party app installed.
The iOS and Android apps can open different pages as fallback.
A good idea is to fall back to the App Store and Play Store. If a student does not have the 3rd-party app installed, they can easily install it. Here are the steps:
- Open the App Store, and find the 3rd-party app. Right click and select "Copy Link." Make a note of this as the "iOS Fallback URL."
- Go to the Play store, and find the 3rd-party app. View its page, and copy the URL from the browser address bar. Make a note of this as the "Android Fallback URL."
Create the campus guide tile
You'll use Campus Cloud Studio to create the tile in the campus guide, where it will appear in the campus app. Here are the steps:
- Log in to Campus Cloud
- Click "Studio" in the top menu bar
- Select an app experience, then click "Customize."
If want the tile to appear in more than one experience, you must create one tile for each experience by repeating the steps below.
Then:
- Click "+" to create a new studio tile.
- Type a name for your tile, choose a colour, and upload an image.
- Select “3rd Party App” from the Content menu.
- Add the “iOS Universal URL”, “iOS Fallback URL”, “Android Package Name” and “Android Fallback URL”.
- Click “Save”.
With Studio, you can drag your tile up and down to change where it appears in the campus guide.
See the results
After you save your tile, students will be able to see it when they browse the campus guide. If you have a campus app account, you can log in, select the app experience and view the tile.
Tapping the tile opens the app if it is installed on the student's phone. Otherwise, the student is taken to the fallback URL.
In this example, we've provided students with a link directly to a useful app. Now, students can use the campus app to launch Zoom and start a virtual study session. In doing so, you're increasing the value of the campus app and you're encouraging students to use it.
BEST PRACTICE: If there are apps you know students are going to use, create links for them in the campus guide. Encourage students to look to the campus guide as the best place to find useful information and links.
If you have comments or feedback about this tutorial, please leave them in the comments below. Thanks for reading!