- What does Kahu actually mean?
- Kahu is a Hawaiian word that means caretaker, guardian or honoured attendant. The name was chosen as it encapsulates our vision of an application that looks after and manages an entire organisation's resources.
- What is Kahu?
- Kahu is the happy marriage of a resource booking system and a helpdesk, developed with the specific requirements of the education sector in mind. It became clear through our work with numerous schools in the UK that 21st century educators should not have to face the disruption caused by non-funtioning or double-booked resources, so we did something about it.
- Even though we're at the beginning of this exciting project we have already started implementing continued improvements to Kahu based on user' feedback. We already have a good list of features we're keen to implement. All suggestions will be assessed against stringent criteria, not least being that we want even the most technophobic among us to be able to get to grips with each feature with the minimum of explanation.
- If there's a feature you would like to see added to Kahu, please contact us.
- Who's behind Kahu?
- Kahu is a joint venture between RTS Technology Solutions, an education-focused systems integrator and Untyped, a talented development house. Both companies are based in Birmingham, United Kingdom. Between us we have listened to a broad range of experiences from across public and private sector organisations such as those from administrators, teachers, tutors, network managers, consultants and support staff. We have the benefit of hearing about and experiencing many frustrations associated with existing systems and decided to do something about it, the result was Kahu.
- How does Kahu differ from other helpdesk or resource booking applications?
- The availability of resources in an education environment is crucial. If teachers and their classes arrive to a room or set of resources and are unable to meet the needs of the lesson then disruption is caused and valuable teaching time is lost. Kahu monitors both the bookings for and issues logged against resources so staff can be proactively notified of issues arising and make changes to their planned activities as necessary.
- Kahu has been designed from the ground up with end-users in mind. All non-essential features have been stripped out to leave a clean, easy to use system that provides users with at-a-glance views of their open work requests and bookings for the coming days and weeks.
- Why doesn't Kahu do XYZ? Can you add XYZ to Kahu?
- We've worked hard to focus on absolutely essential features specific to the applications two core activities; booking resources and tracking work requests. We are always working on new features to make Kahu even better but if you think we've made a glaring omission then we'd be happy to hear about it via the contact us page.
- Can we install Kahu on one of our local servers?
- Afraid not. We thought long and hard about local installations and ultimately decided that the vast majority of our users would benefit from having the application managed for them on the internet. This means users can instantly see the benefit of applied upgrades, we make sure your data is backed up and ensure that the whole lot is adequately secured. It also means that you are not tied to a particular network - Kahu is accessible from anywhere with an internet connection.
- Can Kahu take data from my school Information Management System?
- Absolutely. Creating resource lists and timetable events is easy and we've already done the hard work in investigating what data you need to extract and how to go about it. Kahu cannot yet mirror timetable updates directly between systems but the interface lends itself to making quick amendments.
- How can I quickly set up all of my users in Kahu?
- If you're running a directory based authentication system such as Active Directory or OpenLDAP then our documentation will help you export all of the required user details to get everyone up and running quickly. When you're ready to launch the application internally all users can be imported and their login details sent out en masse.
- Is my data secure?
- Yes indeed. All of your data is stored in UK data centres, physically protected by multiple layers of security. We apply a secure hash to all passwords so they're never stored in a human readable format. All data is passed between our servers and your user's browsers over a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection, ensuring that if anyone does happen to be looking, they'll be unable to read any of your information.
- Where's your phone number?
- In order to keep the cost of the application to a minimum for you we only deal with support requests via email. We don't outsource our support so you can be sure than your answers are coming directly from a member of the Kahu team or one of the developers of the application.