To find the best solution, Pima sought out recommendations from other colleges. “We heard that StatusCast was a very strong product, and we decided to move forward,” Wilson said.

Pima worked with StatusCast’s customer success team to set up the systems they needed. StatusCast also provided training so Pima’s IT team could build within the environment. “Implementation was seamless,” Wilson said. “We were up and running within two weeks.”

Pima used StatusCast’s Third Party Status Beacons to integrate with external systems and provide visibility into their performances, including live updates on outages. Internal Status Page Beacons enabled Pima to integrate its own systems and automatically update the status page in real time. Whether it’s a network or phone outage, an electrical issue or an application outage, any issue with an integrated application is reflected in the status page. Additionally, in Pima’s help center, a StatusCast widget provides at-a-glance updates.

Pima also uses StatusCast to alert staff and students of scheduled maintenance. “Microsoft releases patches on the second Tuesday of every month, so we schedule rollouts to the rest of our servers, and post them in our data center,” Wilson said. “We’re able to schedule maintenance windows for the entire year, which empowers all staff, including the application teams, to know what’s coming and plan ahead.”

In addition to live updates on the website, Pima takes advantage of StatusCast’s SMS and email subscription services for proactive outreach. The school sends two notifications of scheduled maintenance to those who’ve subscribed: one a few days in advance and another the day prior to the maintenance window. “It's great that we're able to set up multiple notifications in case people forget,” Wilson said. 

With multiple campuses across Southern Arizona, there was a need for distinct weather alerts, especially during monsoon season. “Monsoons can be focused on one side of town,” Wilson said. “With StatusCast, we're able to focus our beacons on the affected sites. We can easily alert everyone on those campuses if there’s a phone issue, power outage or system downtime just for that area.”

Pima especially values its business relationship with StatusCast. When the IT team has questions, StatusCast is readily available to support through its chat portal, “Our StatusCast contact is helpful when we need additional assistance. Working with StatusCast has been amazing." And the partnership goes two ways – the Pima team can view scheduled updates and provide suggestions to improve the application.