As universities scale student support services across advising, financial aid, career counseling, and faculty engagement, scheduling often becomes an operational bottleneck. UMass Lowell addressed this challenge by implementing OnceHub as a centralized scheduling infrastructure layer across the institution. Today, more than 180 faculty and staff users rely on OnceHub to manage over 1,000 monthly appointments while reducing administrative overhead, improving scheduling accuracy, and delivering a more seamless student experience.
The University of Massachusetts is a large public research university serving tens of thousands of students across undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs. From academic advising and career counseling to financial aid and international student services, the university delivers a wide range of high-touch, time-sensitive student services every day.
Since 2018, UMass Lowell has relied on OnceHub to power appointment scheduling across the institution. What began as a replacement for high-maintenance appointment tools has evolved into a deeply embedded scheduling layer that integrates directly into the university’s internal systems, enabling advisors to focus on students, not administration.
Today, more than 180 active users rely on OnceHub to support thousands of appointments each month, across both in-person and virtual formats, while maintaining clean data, operational consistency, and a seamless student experience.
Before implementing OnceHub, UMass Lowell faced challenges common to large academic institutions:
As the university grew and student expectations shifted toward self-service digital experiences, these limitations became increasingly unsustainable.
“People were getting like multiple meetings. They were double-booked. And, in those applications, I felt that the users didn’t have much control.” - Neha, UMass Lowell
With hundreds of advisors and multiple departments operating under different workflows, the university needed a solution that could scale without forcing everyone into the same rigid structure.
UMass Lowell selected OnceHub in 2018 based on three core criteria:
Unlike tools that impose a single workflow across all users, OnceHub enabled the university to design scheduling experiences that aligned with each department's existing workflows, while still maintaining centralized oversight.
Just as importantly, OnceHub empowered end users to manage their own schedules, reducing the burden on central IT and administrative teams. OnceHub acts as the university’s scheduling infrastructure layer, connecting advisors, students, and internal systems into a single automated workflow.
OnceHub supports a wide range of use cases at UMass Lowell, including:
Some departments operate with tightly controlled, standardized scheduling configurations. Others, particularly faculty, require more flexibility, creating meeting types on the fly based on course or program needs. OnceHub accommodates both models within the same environment.
The most critical aspect of UMass Lowell’s implementation is the integration of scheduling directly into the university’s internal system of record.
Rather than treating scheduling as a standalone activity, OnceHub extends the university’s engagement platform, ensuring that every appointment is tied to the correct student, advisor, and department.
Advisors initiate scheduling directly from within a student’s record using a one-click scheduling action. This workflow:
This approach removes human error from the process and allows advisors to stay focused on the conversation rather than the system.
Different departments at UMass Lowell track appointments in different ways. Financial aid interactions may require a different record structure than career services or academic advising.
OnceHub’s page-level configuration allows the university to:
This flexibility is essential for large institutions where operational requirements vary widely across teams.
At UMass Lowell, data cleanliness is not optional, it’s foundational.
By automating record creation at the booking-page level, the university:
This architecture ensures that leadership can trust engagement data across departments, programs, and time periods.
One of the most impactful outcomes of OnceHub has been the shift in control from administrators to end users.
Advisors can independently manage:
This autonomy dramatically reduces administrative overhead, especially important when supporting more than 180 users across campus.
“The wow factor I feel, as compared to the previous tools, is that OnceHub gives the end user more flexibility. It can be leave time, turning their booking pages on and off, and things like that. That’s one of the great wins for us.” - Neha, UMass Lowell
From the student perspective, scheduling is simple and intuitive.
Students can:
OnceHub’s customized notifications ensure that advisors know exactly who they’re meeting with, and students feel recognized, not processed.
The result is a frictionless experience with virtually no negative student feedback.
UMass Lowell is a high-touch, long-term OnceHub partner, with bi-weekly strategy sessions and ongoing collaboration.
Neha Madhia, Senior CRM Administrator
Neha manages the end-to-end scheduling infrastructure across the university, working closely with OnceHub to continuously refine workflows, reporting, and scalability for 180+ users.
This partnership approach has enabled UMass Lowell to adapt as needs evolve, without disrupting mission-critical scheduling operations.
When asked what she would tell another university evaluating scheduling solutions, the answer is simple:
“Flexibility. It works for both administrators and end users, it’s easy to adapt, and it doesn’t require constant support.” - Neha, UMass Lowell
As UMass Lowell continues to scale student services and modernize its digital infrastructure, OnceHub remains a critical component of how the university delivers timely, personalized, and data-driven support, without sacrificing operational control.