Portolapp Team Splits in Two

Portolapp+Team+Splits+in+Two

Kate Hayashi, Assistant Opinion Editor

Portolapp’s development team split earlier this month and created two separate apps: Integral and Status. The team made its last update to Portolapp at the start of the school year, so the app will still function but will not always be accurate.

“We wanted to make an app that would fit multiple schools, and with a name like Portolapp, we couldn’t really do that,” senior Nikhil Jha said. 

The Portolapp team had planned to develop Integral together, but a difference in vision led to one member of the team leaving to form Status. 

Integral includes seniors Patrick Cui, Brian Hawkins and Matthew Kwon, and it is currently available to Portola High. The team plans to expand to the rest of Irvine Unified School District (IUSD) throughout the year, starting with Irvine High, and eventually outside the district. 

“[Integral] is the successor to Portolapp, so it has all the features that it had,” Hawkins said. “We’ve added better scheduling logic, sports scores that automatically update for all sports, upcoming events… Portola Pilot articles, a clubs page which will launch on Club Kick-Off but will essentially show a list of clubs, and I guess it also looks nicer.”

Status includes Jha, senior William Hsieh and Henry M. Gunn High senior Audrey Xie. The app is available to Portola, Northwood, University and Henry M. Gunn high schools. The team plans to expand to the rest of IUSD this month and eventually reach outside the district.

“Status… primarily functions as a view for looking at the schedule of the high school,” Jha said. “It also aims to do other useful small tasks, like provide an ID card feature to use with the library and news, the Portola Pilot is going to be on it next week, sports scores, et cetera.”

Administrators are able to edit the bell schedule directly on Status and Integral. 

“It’s a little dilemma for me because I want to be able to promote both groups,” assistant principal Kris Linville said. “It’s kind of like how we have some teachers using Canvas and some using Google Classroom. They choose the product that works for them.”

Both apps are currently available for download on App Store and Google Play.