CampusLink: One App to Unify the Employee Experience

CampusLink, a mobile app recently developed by my real estate team at Microsoft, provides employees and visitors at the Microsoft Puget Sound campus a more thorough, unified, and intelligent connection to the Microsoft workplace and the people around them. CampusLink works like a mobile personal assistant, aggregating our most frequently used services—commute management, campus navigation, on-site café menus and more—into a single information hub.

CampusLink was conceived as a way to tie together the numerous disjointed sources of campus information into one seamless experience. Until now, employees have had to go to one site to book a shuttle, another to locate a conference room, and still another to find the location of the nearest café. My real estate team envisioned a more integrated system that would enhance personal productivity while reflecting Microsoft’s culture of inclusivity.  

We used employee focus groups to identify the most desired services for the app. The top four identified were: find available meeting rooms, find a location or person, book a shuttle, and submit vacation days.

With these insights, we went to work, partnering closely with the engineering group to build the app and support it long-term. Created in the open-source coding library React Native and managed centrally within Azure, Microsoft’s cloud-computing service, CampusLink modernizes the delivery of services in a way that highlights the importance of mobile technology in helping people achieve more. 

Watch the video below to see CampusLink in action!

Bike lockers, ATMs—and soon printers and Mother’s Rooms—are also available in CampusLink. A future partnership with the human resources team will allow employees to manage time off, view upcoming holidays, and see organizational structure to identify opportunities for collaboration. Even our lobby experience will soon be enhanced, allowing visitors to preregister, then upon arrival simply scan their personalized QR code for a quick check-in. Long term plans for visitors include creating a continued rich experience for the visitor and customer, focusing on ease of getting to Microsoft and engaging more with the environment.

Accessibility is of singular importance. Our engineering group was intentional about partnering with our accessibility team to ensure that the app would meet the needs of all within a secure interface. Today users on both iOS and Android platforms can utilize device native screen readers and voice-over capabilities. In time, users with low vision will be able to navigate through buildings via audible turn-by-turn directions. Users with limited mobility will be able to map a path to their destination based on the most accessible route.

We have exciting plans for CampusLink to make it global and cover all Microsoft buildings. We plan to allow our remote locations to build into the app whatever microservices might be valuable within their building. Using the CampusLink Software Development Kit (SDK) allows for and encourages a democratization of features standardizing to universal UI/UX guidelines around usability and accessibility. Local teams can develop specific experiences that can be seamlessly pushed into CampusLink, enhancing user experience in that location. 

As the program evolves, we’re building intelligence into CampusLink so the app (with user consent) will provide smart recommendations on user actions to optimize time and increase productivity. It will “learn” your preferences, integrate with your calendar, and more to provide the best actions to take throughout your day. If it knows you have a meeting in 15 minutes in another building, it will help you pre-book a shuttle from your location to the meeting. it will send a push notification during your regular lunch times to cafes that nearby even suggesting a burger it knows you’ve had before—and asks if you’d like that burger waiting for you when you arrive or have it delivered where that service is available. If you're in an unfamiliar building, it will show you an indoor map to familiarize yourself with the layout and recommend spaces in which to work, such as quiet rooms or collaboration areas, depending on your needs. If you have a customer coming for a sales meeting, they can pre-register with the app, get directions to the location and be personally greeted by the receptionist when they walk through the doors, creating a seamless arrival experience.

This kind of intelligence is the ultimate evolution of CampusLink, and it will be even more empowering to help employees and visitors connect and achieve more through Microsoft technology. 

If you would like to learn more about the CampusLink program, please reach out to Patrick McDonald ([email protected]) and Mark Vega ([email protected]) on my real estate team.