Kuali

What Kuali is

Kuali is a full-stack platform built for higher education, and its no-code product, Kuali Build, is the part that matters to anyone shopping for process automation or forms. The company describes Kuali Build as "no-code forms, workflows, and apps." It is aimed at campus IT teams and at the administrative offices that run approvals, applications, research paperwork and compliance on paper, email and homegrown systems.

The company says it began as a group of colleges and universities solving problems traditional vendors could not, and that "twenty years and a lot of change later" it is an AI-native platform serving institutions across the country. The About page describes a remote-first company. The home page says 350+ institutions run on the all-new Kuali Platform today, describes them as "hundreds of institutions across the US and Canada," and adds platform figures: 12M processes automated, 25M+ transactions, $118B in total grants managed and 20 years in higher education.

What you build and how

Kuali Build handles the workflow and forms side. The blog describes it as AI-native forms, workflows, approvals and operational applications for institutional processes. A December webinar listing explains the product as a no-code platform that helps institutions create digital forms, automate workflows, manage submissions and connect data across campus systems. Another webinar title states the promise plainly: replace manual campus processes with connected forms, automated workflows and integrated data, "without writing code."

A person on campus builds the form, defines who approves it and in what order, and the submission moves through the workflow with a record of what happened. The company lists a "shared Data Lakehouse, workflow engine, reporting, permissions, and audit trail" as parts of one system, not a bundle of separate tools. That matters for forms because the submitted data lands in the same place the reports read from, and the permissions that govern who can edit a form are the same ones that govern the rest of the platform.

AI is part of how you build. The home page says that if you ask in plain language, "Kuali AI can build forms, turn PDFs and spreadsheets into workflows, and keep work moving from request to completion," so an existing paper form or packet becomes a working application. Justin Carrell, Institutional Systems Architect at Tarleton State University, is quoted: "Using Kuali's AI Connector, it took about 10 minutes to turn a six-page packet into a working application." He adds that building it by hand would have taken him half a day. The company's framing is "We didn't add AI to Kuali. We rebuilt Kuali for AI," meaning the AI sees the same permissions and workflows that people do, rather than sitting in a separate chat window. A separate product, Kuali Connector, is described as giving your AI tools the right capabilities and permissions to interact with Kuali on your behalf, and Kuali Gateway sits under an AI Governance heading for governing AI models.

Data is the second major piece. The Unified Data Lakehouse is presented as the place institutional data comes together "for reporting, AI, and action," a governed, query-ready foundation that sits over an institution's existing SIS, ERP, CRM, LMS and HR data. On top of it the company describes an "Agentic Campus" layer: AI agents that coordinate work and surface issues "with humans always in the loop," working inside the platform's permissions and governance.

Integrations are built into the platform design. The company says every application on the platform is built on an API-first architecture, so data can move between Kuali and the systems an institution already runs. The integrations page names the usual campus landscape: student information systems, ERPs, identity providers, learning management systems, research platforms and departmental solutions. It offers three ways to connect. Standard integrations are pre-built connections "for commonly used services and AI providers," configured once and reused across applications. Custom API integrations connect Kuali "to virtually any application using REST APIs and GraphQL," pulling data in real time and triggering external systems from a workflow. The page also mentions support for industry-standard authentication methods. On the home page, Kuali Bridge is credited with "out-of-box, bidirectional connectors to Workday, Oracle, and Ellucian."

For multi-step integrations there is Kuali Bridge, a sibling product with its own page. It lets IT teams build integrations visually with drag-and-drop nodes: pull data from several campus systems, transform it, make a decision and return the result to Kuali or another application. Starting from a Kuali form and enriching it with data from another system is the page's own example. The company says Bridge is built only for the Kuali Platform, shares its authentication, permissions and role-based access, and manages integrations in one place "instead of disconnected scripts."

The wider platform is organized into Workflow and Apps, Academic Operations, Research Administration and AI Governance. Besides Kuali Build, the home page names Kuali Ready for business continuity and preparedness and Kuali Gateway for AI governance. Webinar listings add Kuali Research for proposal development, compliance, reporting and federal submission, and Kuali Reach, formerly Penji, for connecting students with support services.

What the pages say about customers, pricing and trust

The site publishes no prices or plans. The call to action throughout is "Schedule a demo," so expect a quoted contract rather than a self-serve plan. There is a support portal, a community and user resources area, webinars and a user conference, Kuali Days.

The company offers several customer details. The University of Connecticut went from 204 to 1,400 apps using Kuali Build, according to the home page, and John Whitehouse, Director of Data Systems at Gettysburg College, says "We launched 100+ Kuali applications in six months." Max Tsai of California State University, Fresno says "It has the easiness of Google Forms but the enterprise quality of our OnBase system." Davidson College is described as digitizing 90% of its forms with Kuali Build. Indiana University replaced a homegrown continuity system with Kuali Ready and now manages 800 active business continuity plans across every campus, according to the company's blog, and Point Park University moved 39 continuity plans from static binders to Kuali Ready. An article from June 2025 describes 3 institutions enabling regular business users to create research administration forms and workflow processes without relying on IT.

The company also says it has been named a Top Place to Work by the Salt Lake Tribune for 9 years running, and landed at number 99 on TIME's World's Top EdTech Companies list. Those speak to the employer, not the software. On security, the Trust Center menu says the company protects data "with encryption in transit and at rest, role-based access with full audit trails, and a tested backup and incident response plan." It lists SOC 2, HECVAT, TX-RAMP and ACR / VPAT under certifications and assessments, and says it supports compliance with FERPA, HIPAA, GLBA, GDPR and CCPA.

On cost, the company argues that every separate point tool needs its own contract, integration, security review and training program, and that consolidating onto one platform is where the savings start. That is a pitch for replacing several tools, not a price.

Who it suits and who it does not

Kuali suits a college or university that wants to retire paper forms and email approvals across several offices and keep the data in one place. Campus IT gets a governed platform, and non-technical staff get a no-code builder. An institution that already runs many separate systems will find the integration story relevant, especially Kuali Bridge.

It does not suit a business outside higher education. The company says it is "purpose-built for higher education," and the examples, webinars and product names all assume a campus. A small team that just needs a public form or a quick automation will not find a self-serve plan here. The main caveat is that the platform, from forms to Data Lakehouse to AI governance, is sold as one system, so a department that only wants forms still talks to sales about the whole.