Kuali Foundation Releases KPME and Kuali Mobility Enterprise 1.0

• By Leila Meyer
• 10/25/11

The Kuali Foundation has released Kuali People Management for the Enterprise (KPME) 1.0. KPME is an open source human resources and payroll system for higher education and consists of both standalone and integrated modules. This release includes the Time and Attendance module, which provides an enterprise-wide system for tracking and approving employee time. The next module under development is Leave Management, which will track accrued benefit time and provide an interface for employees to request and report time off. Additional modules to follow include payroll, benefits administration, position management, and HR core transactions. The aim of the Kuali Foundation is to develop an enterprise-wide, comprehensive human resource and payroll system for higher education.

KPME was developed collaboratively by Iowa State University, Indiana University, San Joaquin Delta College, and VivanTech, with assistance from Colorado State University, University of Georgia, and the City of Bloomington, IN.

"KPME 1.0 marks the first step in delivering open source software that addresses the functional needs of higher education for human resources and payroll," said Maury Hope, associate CIO at Iowa State University and KPME Project Board chair. "It is a key piece of the puzzle that is building the foundation for comprehensive administrative systems with the business processes unique to higher education as the primary requirements. I am extremely pleased with the collaborative efforts demonstrated by the universities and our Kuali commercial affiliate on the KPME project. They are working in conjunction with the other Kuali projects to provide solutions for higher education that reach far beyond HR and payroll."

Another recently released Kuali Foundation project is Kuali Mobility Enterprise 1.0, also called Kuali Mobility or KMobility, an open source framework for connecting campus information and services, such as the library, teaching and learning systems, research systems, and bus locations, to any mobile device. It is designed to process transactions securely and supports mobile clients on multiple platforms such as iOS, Android, and Blackberry.

Key features of Kuali Mobility Enterprise 1.0 include:

• Mobile Web gateway that enables higher education institutions to interact with public or securely authenticated servers;
• Mobile platform based on HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and other open source mobile projects such as JQuery Mobile and PhoneGap; and
• Support for writing, testing, packaging, and delivering mobile applications through the mobile Web or through one of the application stores.

Kuali Mobility was developed collaboratively by Indiana University, University of Cambridge, Cornell University, University of Michigan, HTC Global Services, and VivanTech. Indiana University deployed a prerelease version of KMobility to its 115,000 students, faculty, and staff across eight campuses in August.

All software and materials delivered by the Kuali Foundation are available under the Educational Community License and can be adopted by colleges and universities without licensing fees. Visit the Kuali Foundation site for more information or to download KPME or Kuali Mobility.