Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam's Journey With HEIapply as an Admissions System

As digital photography and video have become more accessible, Rijksakademie have seen a considerable uptick in the quality and variety of media that artists wish to submit in support of their applications to the Open Call. The result is that staff were spending lots of time transferring large files and checking that media was viewable. With no end in sight for the increase in submitted media, a new system for processing these submissions was crucial.

Rijksakademie review their pool of applicants and selected artists after each Open Call, and therefore regularly identify information it would be useful to track. It is important to be able to make changes to application forms as part of this review process. As a result, Rijksakademie looked for a solution that would allow flexibility to change forms at need and for that process to be easy for administrators to undertake.

Rijksakademie academic staff are primed to receive very high levels of electronic communication in the weeks leading up to the deadline for applications and had traditionally managed the process of responding to applicants through the usual inbox. However, finding messages and reviewing previous communication was a time-consuming process. In addition, collating contact details for applicants where problems with submissions were evident required a lot of manual effort.

Document upload and view
Applicants can upload media in a wide range of formats. These are stored in the cloud, which removes the need for tranferring files from place to place. HEIApply also offers an elegant method of viewing media that provides information about the media on display.

Communication inbox
Using the HEIApply portal to communicate with applicants has saved staff lots of time. Messages are automatically included in the applicants timeline making it easy to see the applicants history, and the ability to filter applicants streamlines the process of communicating in bulk.

Easy to customise forms
Rijksakademie find the form builder and editor user-friendly and fast, allowing them to make changes and add new forms as they need to without any technical assistance. There is no limit to the number of forms that can be created, and they can be embedded on any web page.