Configure an All At Once Room Selection
Last updated: October 7, 2026
All At Once Housing Selection in Housing.Cloud enables administrators to grant access to the housing portal for groups of students simultaneously, based on predefined phases. Instead of assigning individual selection times, you can open the portal to entire groups at once, using tags to determine which students enter the process in each phase. This approach simplifies the selection process and ensures that students within the same criteria can select housing at the same time.
This guide will walk you through the steps of setting up an all-at-once housing selection, configuring phases, and notifying students when their selection window opens.
Creating An All At Once Phase
Navigate to Housing Cycles under the Setup section of the admin portal.
Click the name of the cycle you'd like to configure for the housing lottery. Click here for more on creating a new housing cycle.
Click Phases to review and manage the different stages of your housing cycle.
Click Edit to review and add to your housing cycle phases.
Under Room Selection, click Add Phase to add a new phase to your room selection process.
Add the required details to your selection phase. Ensure you select All at once to create an open selection process. Click 📄 Configure a Housing Lottery Selectionfor managing housing lottery room selections.
Name: Enter the internal name for this phase. | Limit to tags: Only students who match every selected tag will be included in the phase. |
Begin and End Date: Define the period during which room selection appointments will occur. | Exclude from tag: Students matching the selected tags will be disqualified from this phase, even if they match the limit to tags. |
Room Selection Style: All at once allows students in this phase to access and select from the same time. |
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After adding your room selection phase details, click Save. Your phase is now added to your housing cycle and ready for your selection day.
Students can access their selection time by logging into their housing portal. Housing administrators can also send email notifications to remind students of their selection appointments, ensuring they stay informed and on track with the housing selection process.
Example All At Once Phase Set-up
To help understand a practical implementation, let’s set up a housing cycle that prioritizes honors students. In this scenario, you want to allow early access to housing for first-year through junior honors students while ensuring that fourth-year or higher honors students aren’t given priority. Additionally, you'll want to set up a phase for all other students who have paid their housing deposit to select their units.
Create a phase where students tagged as Honors-Student, excluding those tagged as Fourth-Years+, will gain access to the housing portal from 07/28/2024 at 12:00 AM to 07/31/2024 at 12:00 AM.
After the honors selection phase, the general selection phase can be set up for students tagged as HasPaid to select units from 08/01/2024 at 12:00 AM to 08/09/2024 at 12:00 AM. To manage student staff assignments, applicants tagged as Student Staff will be excluded and will receive manual housing assignments.
