This week, we released CloudCard Image Server, which allows you to securely use your cardholder photos in your websites and apps. Best of all, IT'S FREE and open-source, so you can change the source code to suit your specific needs.

USES:

Use #1: Profile Photos

Your customers have gotten used to seeing their profile photos in the top right hand corner of pages they log into; you already have all their photos in your cardholder database so why not use them? Now, it's a snap to display your cardholder photos as profile photos when your students log into your website.

Use #2: Online Yearbooks

Yearbooks are an important part of the student experience, but it can be impossible to herd each student in to get their pictures taken. Now, thanks to CloudCard Image Server, your yearbook team can easily take advantage of your extensive database of photos.

Use #3: Class Rosters

Your professors deserve a little love. Now, you can make it easier for professors to connect with their students by putting a face to the names on their rosters.  In addition, although we hate to think about it, cheating does happen.  Giving professors and teaching assistants the ability to quickly scan the faces in a class and know when someone doesn’t belong will help them enforce your honor code.

Use #4: Student Security

It’s a dangerous world out there; and let’s be honest, students sometimes make choices that get them into trouble.  However, giving your campus security and/or police department instant easy access to student photos will help keep your students safer.

FAQs:

How Do You Keep Unauthorized People From Seeing Our Photos?

We built CloudCard Image Server with security in mind. Every photo is assigned a super-long, random security key.  There's enough randomness in these image keys that it would take an average computer 18 duodecillion years to crack a key.  We don’t even know what a duodecillion is, but we know it's big!

What If We Don’t Use Blackboard Transact?

Currently, CloudCard Image Server only supports on premise Blackboard Transact systems; however, please contact us if your school is interested in implementing Image Server with a different card system. It would be a relatively small change to support a different system. If a few institutions are interested, the distributed cost of making the change would be minimal.  

Of course, the source code for CloudCard Image server is readily available, so your developers are free to customize it to best fit your card system.  If they do, the community would certainly appreciate it if your developers would contribute their code back to the project for everyone to use.

What If We Need Help Installing CloudCard Image Server?

Just contact us and we’ll be happy to walk you or your IT guys through the installation process.  We can even completely install and host CloudCard Image Server for you if necessary.

Other Ideas For Ways To Use Your Cardholder Photos

Leave a comment below to let us know your thoughts or to share other good ideas for new ways to use your cardholder photos.