StudyStays Blog

Posting bulletins to students and providers

Bulletins are a new way to display important messages to students or providers after they've signed in.

As a StudyStays administrator, you can post Bulletins from Admin > Content > Bulletins. You can specify a target audience to display to (students or providers) and a title and message for the Bulletin.



How Bulletins work
Bulletins are only shown once to each person.

When you post a bulletin, you choose whether it will be seen by students or providers. After people sign in, they will see any Bulletins that have been posted for them since they last signed in. People can quickly continue on with what they were trying to do by clicking a "continue" button, or by clicking on any other links on the page.

Bulletins are designed for updating people with new information, so one detail to keep in mind is that Bulletins will only be shown to people who have already registered when you post the Bulletin.


Formatting your message
The message box for Bulletins only accepts plain text, unlike content pages where you can add links, bold text and other formatting using toolbar buttons. You can however do some formatting using a popular syntax known as Markdown. For example, in the image above I have made some text bold by adding double-asterisks (**) on either side.

Here are some examples of Markdown.

**This is bold** becomes: This is bold
*This will be italic* becomes: This will be italic
Here is a [link](http://studystays.com) becomes: Here is a link.

For more examples, please see the Markdown Syntax Examples.


When to use Bulletins
As mentioned above, Bulletins are intended to update people with important changes and information. Things like new requirements for landlords are perfect for bulletins.

In contrast to Mailouts, Bulletins are a good way to update people just as they're about to use your website. If you have information that you want people to see now, you might consider doing a Mailout instead.


Information overload
It's important to remember that Bulletins are interrupting people as they're about to perform a task like searching for a flat or listing their property. For this reason, it's a good idea to use them sparingly, and when you do, to keep them short and to the point.

Automatic Capitalisation

StudyStays now automatically adjusts letter case where it looks like people have entered all upper- or lower-case text, or haven't capitalised the first words in their sentences for listing details.

We hope this will give listings’ text more consistency, without admins needing to make as many manual adjustments.

Here's an example of some listing text and how it will be automatically adjusted:

Before:
Address: 30 almondbury rd, MT LAWLEY 6050

Details:
gardens and parks nearby. polished floors throughout, large and medium sized room available.fully furnished kitchen and laundry. shared bills and bond required. 

After:
Address:  30 Almondbury Rd, Mt Lawley 6050

Details:
Gardens and parks nearby. Polished floors throughout, large and medium sized room available. Fully furnished kitchen and laundry. Shared bills and bond required.

---

StudyStays will use Title Case (where the first letter of every word is capitalised) for things like names and addresses, and Sentence Case (where the first letter of the first word in every sentence is capitalised) for things like listing details.

This will mainly affect form entries submitted by non-Administrators, that is: student and provider registrations, and listings. If automatic capitalisation is applied, it will be done after a form is submitted.

This capitalisation will only be applied to new or edited listings—existing listings will remain as they are.

International student status

StudyStays has just started asking students whether they're international students when they register. 

Although it's been a goal to keep the student registration form as short and sweet as possible to encourage student registrations, a number of universities have said that international student status would be very useful for reporting purposes.

So there's now one extra field on the student registration page:


On the admin side, international status will be included when you export student data.

And there's a new report on students’ international status. It won't be too helpful right away, but hopefully it will become more useful as you collect more registrations!

New lease options and better relisting

Min-max lease
Up until now, accommodation providers have only been able to enter a single value for the lease duration. Now, there's a new option to advertise a min-max lease duration as well


This allows providers to show the full range of leases they offer, and to have their listings show up when students search for anything within that range.

The short-term accommodation option is also shown as a lease option rather than a separate tickbox.

Better relisting
Now when providers relist an expired listing, they get access to the full listing form from the start, rather than a limited sub-set of options.

Hi New Zealand!



I'm pleased to announce that StudyStays now supports sign-ups from New Zealand universities.

This means that NZ unis can use a studystays.co.nz sub-domain for their trial website, map searches will look for NZ addresses, and other smaller things like asking for NZBNs rather than ABNs.