We're running into the "problem" of limited time and would love to streamline the process of booking student housing. We currently keep all of our student housing data and booking within Populi for the sake of ease in tracking and billing. However, one of the more frustrating "manual" duties that comes with this is found in re-contacting students each year to see who is going to stay, seeking to move out and go elsewhere, seeking to move out on account of degree completion, etc. While we've created housing request forms in Populi towards this end, we still find ourselves performing a fair amount of manual labor to secure housing.
It seems that a helpful feature would be something of an "online enrollment window" functioning for returning students wishing to sign up for housing. Similarly to the online enrollment function within Populi, this would allow students to manually sign up for another six months/year in their current student housing without the influence or need of any administration. Dissimilarly from the online enrollment function, this would be an option *only* to those who are currently in student housing rather than to all students. In this way, students who are wishing to stay on campus/return next semester can stay in the same apartment without any administrative time being used. Moreover, once the housing "online enrollment" window is closed, the administration immediately knows who is planning to return and who is not, at which point we can then proceed to contact students and to find the right fit for the open spots.
