CRESDA is a mobile-friendly online central repository, which is the first of its kind in a university setting in Hong Kong, designed, developed and administered by members of the CRESDA User Group and project teams to keep a record of student development activities. CRESDA also helps the University to review students' soft-skills development and ensure the Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) of student development activities are aligned with the CityU Ideal Graduate Outcomes (IGOs).

By recording students' participation in different activities and programmes, CRESDA captures data that helps to provide a complete picture of students' choices and preferences in personal development activities. From the University's perspective, the data collected is worth its weight in gold in terms of big data analytics and strategic planning. With the findings through CRESDA, activities and programmes can be better planned with designs and promotional campaigns aiming at students' interests and needs.

For students, CRESDA captures and categorises their soft-skills development activities and outcomes neatly and systematically under one cyber roof. With the summary of students' ongoing achievements generated by CRESDA, students can easily keep track of their out-of-class activities and the various skills they develop, hone and deploy. The system also helps students identify attributes and skills they need further development to assist them in finding the right kind of student development activities and programmes to register, with the directed outcomes that match their needs to fulfill the IGOs.

In addition, CRESDA allows efficient retrieval and presentation of students' personal development records using different search criteria, such as ILOs, dates, organising units, student groups, etc.