Using University Resources
Today, this guide asks little of your tooling beyond accounts and data rules. That changes at a specific moment: when your app needs university resources — Notre Dame logins, OIT-managed hosting, or institutional data. Here's what that moment looks like and how to get ahead of it.
The resources — and what they'll ask of you
Sign-in with ND accounts (Okta SSO)
The moment your app authenticates real ND users, it joins the university's identity fabric — integration patterns, session handling, and role expectations come with it. No hand-rolled login systems for ND users.
Hosting in OIT-managed AWS
University hosting brings real operations — deployment standards, scanning gates, cost ownership — and in return your app gets infrastructure someone else keeps patched, backed up, and running.
Institutional data integrations
Reading from or writing to enterprise systems is the strongest signal you've left Explore. Data agreements, security review, and the sensitivity rules at full strength.
Where this is headed
Requirements in these areas are being defined now as part of a broader effort to give citizen-developed apps a real path to production — sanctioned hosting, clear intake, security scanning, and shared-responsibility terms. This guide will link the specifics as they land. What won't change: the account rule, the data rules, human review, and the principle that you own your app.
Signals it's time to talk to us
- You're about to share the app beyond yourself, and it touches anything above Public data.
- You're tempted to build a login system, or to ask users for their ND credentials.
- You want data that lives in an enterprise system (Banner, Salesforce, the data warehouse…).
- Your department wants to fund, staff, or officially adopt the thing you built.
- Someone asked, “what happens to this app if you leave?” — and you didn't have an answer.