When Matthew Armas joined Cal Poly as a graduate assistant back in 2016, his office had just made the switch from paper files to Symplicity Advocate. Nearly a decade later, he's the Director of the Campus Assessment, Response & Education (CARE) team at the San Luis Obispo university — and still building in the same system.
"I was really tasked with learning all things Symplicity and Advocate," he recalls. "I dived into learning the ins and outs, the back end, and really building the system over the course of this last decade."
Learning the System, Building a Foundation
Matthew came into Advocate fresh — no prior student affairs software experience to compare it to. What stood out immediately was how intuitive it felt. "It made sense to me," he says. "The prompt boxes that helped you work through a case made sense." When something didn't click, his client manager Jake was there. "He was always willing and happy to jump in and just work the system alongside me, and knowing that resource was available was empowering in my comfortability with doing the work."
That relationship with Jake has been a constant across Matthew's entire tenure. Having the same client manager from day one — someone who knows their campus, their vision, and what other institutions are doing — has been as valuable as the platform itself. "He's been with us literally since day one," Matthew says. "That's really helpful to have as a thought partner and a build partner."
A Bigger Operation Than You Might Expect
Today, Matthew's team isn't the only one in the system. Across the Dean of Students division, roughly 75 people use Advocate — including staff from CARE, conduct, housing, residential life, campus health, Title IX, and risk management. What keeps that from becoming chaotic is intentional governance. Each area has a designated back-end user, and any system-wide changes are discussed cross-functionally before they're made. "Using the user roles on the back end is a great tool to make sure... that we're all aligned in the changes and updates we want to make."
Why FLEX Has Been a Game-Changer
Cal Poly is now incorporating Advocate FLEX, and Matthew is direct about why it matters: it delivers features they've needed in the past. In fact, they did briefly try another platform — for about four months.
"We quickly learned that the grass is not at all greener on the other side," he says, "and we quickly jumped back."
In the meantime, Symplicity had been building and evolving with Advocate FLEX.
With FLEX, the team now has real-time dashboards, automated stage progression, scheduled reports broken down by the university's six colleges, and at-a-glance case views. "Those are the big tools that really improve our day-to-day and make our lives easier in keeping up with the case volume we see on our campus."
Looking ahead, Matthew's team is moving forward with integration of staff from the Cal Poly Maritime Academy — another California State University campus that is in the process of integrating with Cal Poly — into Advocate ahead of a July 1st go-live.
Advice for Anyone on the Fence
When asked what he'd tell a school hesitant to explore Symplicity, Matthew doesn't hedge:
"Don't think twice about going with Symplicity. Symplicity is more focused on the products and the customer service... really listen to the real users and learn from Cal Poly's quick mistake. Know that you are going to get a much better robust product holistically with Symplicity versus the other product."
As for his long-term commitment? "This is home."
