With increased numbers of university students looking for accommodation, you might be interested in re-engaging accommodation providers who haven't been active for a while and inviting them to list again.

There are two new methods to do this. 

With mailouts

The first method is by sending an email campaign (if you have the Mailouts feature enabled on your plan) to providers who have been inactive for a certain amount of time. You can do this by choosing one of the "Inactive" filters when selecting the provider segment to send the email to.

This method allows you to contact a large cohort of inactive providers all at once, on demand.

You can learn more about how Mailouts work here.

With automated emails

The second method is to automatically email providers when they have been inactive for a certain duration. This lets you send a steady trickle of emails to re-engage providers as they reach a threshold of inactivity that you chose, such as six months.

This kind of email has to be enabled explicitly, and you can do this from Admin > Settings > Providers.

You can choose the duration to wait before trying to re-engage providers and the subject line to use when emailing them.

Once you have enabled this email, you will probably want to customise the email template as well. You can find this email template at Admin > Settings > Email templates under Providers > Re-engagement.

Until now, listing categories have commonly been used to indicate whether providers will lodge their bond with their state authority such as NSW Fair Trading or the Residential Tenancies Authority in Queensland.

We now have a more streamlined way to do this, with a new option under Admin > Settings > Listings to require bond lodgement for all listings where a bond is required.

This setting allows for customising the name of the authority (e.g. "The RTBA" for Victorian universities).

When this option is enabled, providers won't be able to enter a bond unless they commit to lodging it with the authority.

Trying to submit a listing for a vacant property without ticking this box will result in an error, e.g:

For rooms in shared houses, a similar validation error is used if any of the rooms listed require a bond.

Students can now leave accommodation reviews with a rating and comment.

To enable this feature, you will need to go to Admin > Settings > Listings and tick the "Enable reviews" box.

How it works

The administration process for new reviews

Accommodation providers sometimes neglect to close their listings once they've been rented out. This can lead to wasted time for students who enquire about listings that aren't available.

One way to avoid this is to remind providers to close their listings with a Listing Availability Check. A reminder email can be sent out part-way through the listing to ask providers if the listing is still available and prompt them to close it otherwise.

We try to make this as painless as possible, with a button in the email that lets the provider close their listing quickly without needing to login.

Configuring the Listing Availability Check

To enable the Listing Availability Check, go to Admin > Settings > Listings and tick the box to "Check availability via email".

You can configure when the email will be sent based on how long the listing is active. We recommend checking availability about half way through the listing.

Click "Save" to save these changes.

Once the availability check is enabled, you can adjust the email that will be sent out. You can find the email template under Admin > Settings > Email templates > Listings > Check availability.

All the variables in [brackets] will be automatically replaced with the relevant information when these emails are sent.

The emails are sent with the subject "Is your listing still available?", and you will be able to see what was sent when viewing the "Sent emails" for a provider.

Students can now see where properties are in relation to your institution and the surrounding area. We hope this will be helpful for students who might be moving to a new city to study.

Students can also see and do much more on the search page, in way that is easy and pleasant to use (we hope).

This update reflects our commitment to ensure you, our customers, have the best technology to support the amazing and valuable service you provide for students.

There have been many subtle improvements in this update, but I've outlined some of the biggest highlights below.

An interactive map
Students can see where listings are on the map without leaving the search page. Listing markers will highlight as you roll over the listing details, and students can click a map marker to bring up the listing details in place. Students can also pan and zoom the map and then redo the search in the new area.

More photo thumbnails
Students can quickly browse through every photo for each listing from the search page, without needing to open the listing. Photos are loaded dynamically — clicking to the next photo loads it just in time. This is especially beneficial for students using mobile data because we don't load photos they won't see, and it means the pages load more quickly, even on a desktop.

Quicker page loads
One of the more subtle improvements is that going to the next search page, or adjusting the search filters, or searching in a new map search location all happen quickly without reloading the entire page.

Matches your branding
We've taken the time to make sure the map search page includes colours and styling to match your institution's branding.

I hope you and your students enjoy using the new map search. Happy Easter!

Today we released two significant improvements to Messages.

If you're not familiar with Messages, it's a secure and private way for students and providers to communicate through StudyStays. It's an important tool for deterring and detecting scams, giving you greater ability to protect and assist students. You can read more about Messages here.

The improvements are

1. Support for email attachments
2. Admin alerts when messages contains words or phrases that may indicate a scam

Support for email attachments

Attachments sent via email are now collected by StudyStays and securely forwarded to the intended recipient. We had noticed sometimes students and landlords would exchange their real email addresses in order to send documents like lease agreements. That's still allowed, but it was an annoyance for users and it makes it harder for admins to investigate if issues arise later.

Admin alerts on message contents

StudyStays can now watch for problematic phrases used in messages and alert you when they occur. This can give you early warning of scams or abuse, without needing to look at every message that goes through the system.

You can configure the phrases through Admin > Settings > Messages (if you have Super Admin permissions).

When a phrase is detected, an alert will be added to the Admin overview page. You can review these alerts to see if any further investigation is needed, and dismiss the alert once the issue has been resolved.

In late 2018, StudyStays began running automatic scam detection on all messages, looking for common scam phrases and unusual activity. So even if you don't use this feature there is still a base layer of protection. You can however, get more control and insight by configuring custom alert phrases for your own StudyStays database.

Over the last month we've been working hard on tracking and measuring outcomes for students and listings. We're pleased to announce a new collection of tools that proactively seek feedback from students and providers about their outcomes from using StudyStays.

Student outcomes

Because students don't directly book accommodation through StudyStays (at least not yet), it's been hard to tell what kind of outcomes they've had using the website. To know whether a student had found accommodation, was still looking for a place, or had given up was not information that was readily available. So we decided to improve this situation.

One approach to collecting this information up until now has been to send out a follow-up email some time after the student has registered asking for feedback. Another approach is to have a survey form on the website to solicit feedback that way. And some universities were using a combination of these techniques.

The problem with sending a follow-up email a set duration after registration is that we don't really know when to send it. Send it too soon and the student may still be looking for accommodation, and send it too late and they might have lost interest.

The problem with posting a link to a feedback form on the website is that many students might not see it.

Both approaches suffer from the problem that the feedback forms weren't really integrated into the website, and so their experience didn't adapt depending on their answers. They just fill out the form and that's it.

The new approach is to wait until the student has stopped using the website for a while (they've "disengaged") and then send them a very quick email survey which can be filled out without even needing to log in.

If students have found accommodation or have given up, we won't ask them again. If they haven't found a place yet, we'll wait a while until they haven't actively used the website for a couple of weeks (yes there's a setting for that), and then prompt them again.This will continue until they either find a place, give up, or unsubscribe from these emails. There's an unsubscribe link on each follow-up email to make it easy to opt-out.

And for students that tell us they've given up, if they do log in again later, we'll treat them as having re-engaged in their search for accommodation and begin following up with them when it looks like they have disengaged again.

This allows us to track things like:

• Approximately how long it takes students to find accommodation
• What kind of accommodation they choose (shared, rental or commercial student accommodation)
• Where they end up (address, suburb and postcode)
• Price, move in date and length of stay
• If they found accommodation through your StudyStays site, which is the listing that best matches
  

As an administrator, you can see details about student outcomes directly on a student's record (when they have responded). You can also view a history of all student outcome responses by clicking Student outcomes on the right hand side of the "Students" tab in Admin.

The Student Outcomes page in admin lets you filter outcomes, and export the raw data as a spreadsheet if you need to do further analysis, send emails to certain segments etc.

You can edit the email template for the follow-up email that gets sent to student by going to Admin > Settings > Email templates and looking under "Students" for "Outcome follow-up".

You can adjust when the follow-up is sent (or disable it altogether) under Admin > Settings > Students: "Email students to ask about their accommodation outcomes".

Listing outcomes

Summary

Email templates for StudyStays now support more formatting options, like bold, italic, links, lists and buttons.

These templates now use the same editor used for content pages, which you may already be familiar with.

What do I need to do?

Nothing! All your emails have been converted for you, and any customisations you have already made will be retained. We may have replaced some default links with action buttons in places (as in the screenshot above).

You might like to check your templates (Admin > Settings > Email templates) to add some formatting flair (if you fancy).

And as always, if you run into any problems please get in touch at support@studystays.com.au.

One last thing

Here's a tip: when you're editing email templates, pressing Enter or Return will add a new paragraph with a blank line in between. If you don't want that extra blank line, you can hold Shift-Enter to end the line and keep typing on the next line.

We've added a new feature to allow accommodation providers to upload supporting documents, such as ID and rooming house registration papers.

This feature is similar to Supporting Documents for Students. But instead of requiring documents to be uploaded during registration, providers can optionally add their supporting documents at any time. This lets you request documents for certain accommodation (like Rooming/Boarding Houses) if you choose, possibly in response to a new listing approval.

You can enable supporting documents for providers from Admin > Settings > Providers:

When you have enabled Provider Documents, providers will see a new option to upload their documents from their dashboard (and there's also a link in the user menu at top-right).

You can customise the name of the documents and the "form hint" to make it clear which providers need to upload documents, and what sort of documents you require.

Provider documents can be seen in admin by clicking on the provider's record, so you can refer to their documents during listing approval if you need to.

You might also like to update "form hints" for the listing categories that identify the type of providers that need to upload documents, to let them know what your requirements are. If you're not familiar with category hints, they can be modified while editing a category (Admin > Settings > Categories, under Additional Categories). When editing a category, there is a link to "Edit form hint" on the right hand side.

StudyStays now lets you offer work placement accommodation as a service to students.

This feature could be especially useful for clinical placements, or in other cases where students need to find accommodation in remote regions. For these students, the standard option to search for accommodation near a campus might not be particularly helpful.

The Work Placement Accommodation feature gives your StudyStays website a new tab, where students can search by any town or city in Australia.

Using this feature is optional and available free to all universities on the "Big" plan. To enable the "Work Placements" tab on your website, you simply need to go to Admin > Settings > Work placement accommodation and tick the box. You can also customise a short amount of content (including links to useful resources) to be displayed above the location search box on the "Work Placements" tab. If you have lots of content related to placements you might like to break this out into separate pages (under Admin > Content > Pages) and just provide a few links from the Work Placements tab so as not to bury the search box too far down the page.

If you'd like to help students find placement accommodation, of course it will be necessary to promote the idea to accommodation providers in the areas placements might be made. We will leave it to you to decide the best ways to get the word out!

We hope you find this feature useful. And if you do make use of it, we'd be interested in hearing your ideas about how it could be improved or extended to offer even better service to your students.

Shared listings now provide space for advertisers to specify details about individual rooms for rent.

Previously, an advertiser could only list the room types available. Now, each room can be listed with different rent, bond, availability date, furnishings and bathroom.

This will allow us to give students more targeted search options when they are looking for a share house. It will also allow us to do student better matching for a new "Find a Flatmate" add-on which is currently under construction.

Rental (whole property) listings will not be affected by this change.

All existing shared listings have been automatically updated to support the new functionality. We have attempted to set furnishings based on your existing categories, but where this was not possible rooms will show unfurnished as the default. All rooms have been set to "Shared bathroom" as the default. Advertisers can manually make changes to their listings if they want to show furnishings or private bathrooms. All new shared listings will require advertisers to enter these details up front.

There are a couple of configuration changes you might like to make through admin.

Firstly, if you have room types (Admin > Settings > Room Types) that include a bathroom type, these can be removed. For example, "Single with Ensuite" could be removed, which will give you the option to replace it with just "Single".

Secondly, categories that contain information about furnishings for rooms, the entire category could be removed.

If you have any questions, please contact support@studystays.com.

There is now a quicker way for students to shortlist ads from search results. A star appears when hovering the mouse over a listing in search results, and clicking this will shortlist the listing.

This saves students having to click through to each listing that they want to shortlist. It also provides a reminder when they have already shortlisted a listing in an earlier search.

Note: This new functionality requires first upgrading to the New Look for StudyStays. Please contact support@studystays.com if you'd like to upgrade.

Listing maps now include a new way to quickly look up directions to a campus.

Hovering or clicking (or tapping on mobile) on a campus in the listing map will load a route and approximate driving time to the campus.

For listings that are within 1 kilometre of a campus, walking directions will be shown instead.

Does this keep addresses private?

As you're probably aware, some listings don't show the exact address; either because the admin settings require it, or the provider has chosen to keep their address private, or the user is not registered as a student.

In these cases, the blue line showing the route to campus begins just within the red circle showing the approximate location of the listing. The travel time shown is still the approximate travel time for the entire route.

More map tweaks

Initially with the New Look, maps would all display at the same zoom level. This zoom level would often not show a campus. Now maps are automatically zoomed to the level that will show the nearest campus, while still keeping the map centred on the listing.

Arrows for campus markers are now displayed at the top of the marker instead of the bottom. This allows the marker text to expand downwards to show directions without changing the location pointed to.

Content editing in StudyStays has been upgraded to use a newer, more powerful editor. Just in time for the new year!

The content editor is used by admins to format text in Pages, Frequently Asked Questions, Campuses, Mail-outs, Form hints, tag descriptions and in various other places.

The old editor was great for it's time, but the rapid pace of web browser improvement meant some features no longer worked well (or at all) in recent web browsers.

In contrast, the new editor enables many more editing features, including things like:

• Tables
• Image alignment and captions
• Embedding web page previews (great for Social Media like Facebook and Instagram)
• More reliable pasting from Word documents

... and many more useful features (as you can see from the extra toolbar buttons below).

We hope you enjoy the new editing experience in StudyStays, and have a Happy New Year!

After

I hope you find these improvements beneficial.

How to Enable Supporting Documents

If you decide to make use of this feature, you might like to review the "Student Approval Required" follow up page that is shown to after registration to students who require approval. You can edit this page from Admin > Content > Pages, or from the Admin > Settings > Student approvals page.

You should probably also review the "Pending approval" and "Remind students when they are in the approval queue" email templates (Admin > Settings > Email templates) to make sure they are suitable.

I'm pleased to announce the new look for StudyStays, which is available from today.

It's a cleaner and more modern design. It has better mobile support, and provides more consistency between the mobile and desktop experience. And there are some new customisation options for banners and branding.

There's a video below with a 3-minute overview of some of the changes.

The Messages feature for StudyStays provides a method of enhanced communication between students and providers.

Using the Messages add-on, the conversation between students and providers can be handled through your web site, rather than just showing contact info and leaving it up to your users from there.

This gives your users more privacy and security. It also gives administrators increased control and accountability measures to prevent and investigate scams and any other abuse that may occur.

As you will see below, messages work hand-in-hand with normal email. So users can reply directly from their email program, or from your website, or both.

Enhanced Scam Protection

Until now, registered students have been able to see providers' contact information on listings when they are signed in. Even with security measures like email verification and approvals, there have been times when scammers have passed these checkpoints and gone on to try to scam providers. When this happens, it is difficult to try to work out who the scammer is, since there is no requirement for them to use the same email address that they used to register for the site.

Most of these scam attempts appear to be detected by providers before any money changes hands. But it's still an annoyance for providers, and the only solution until now has been to try to educate them on the dangers of online scams.

With the Messages add-on, there is no way for scammers to email providers directly. All messages must be sent through your website, unless providers choose to reveal their email address explicitly to a student. This means when a scam attempt occurs, you can identify who it was, see the message they sent, and block them from using your website again.

With built-in features for reporting suspicious messages as you can see below, it's quicker and easier for your users to notify you of abuse.

Messages In Action

Here are some screenshots showing how Messages work.

The Homestays Add-On offers a few handy features to help automate email communication.

There are a number of steps that your guests and hosts need to complete. While the exact steps will be different for each Homestay program, some common steps are gaining admin approval, submitting payment, requesting a homestay, confirming a placement, and maybe going through an orientation or having an inspection.

Homestays can help your users get through each step of the process by sending emails whenever there's new information for the user, or some sort of action is required of them.

Some of these emails are sent automatically, such as reminders for upcoming placements. Others are sent as a result of admin actions you perform. In either case, you can customise your email templates to make sure your users get the information they need, when they need it.

There are just under 40 different email templates available to customise, including a "Signature" template which is inserted at the bottom of every email.

You can edit each template, using rich text formatting (e.g. bold text and links). Some emails have a button to help the user know what to do next.

This particular template goes out when a guest's homestay application is approved. Let's see how that works by approving an application. Here's one that requires approval.

Clicking the "approve" button brings up a window showing the email that will be sent, based on the template. You can make further changes here if you like, and then click "Approve this application" to complete this step of the process.

Now that the guest is approved, if you look on the right-hand side of the screen you can see that the guest has "1 email sent." Each email that is sent will be tracked on your system so that you can see a history of correspondence.

Emails are listed in reverse chronological order by subject. You can click any email subject to see exactly what was sent.

The Homestays admin functions sit under a "Homestays" tab, alongside your other Off Campus admin tabs.

Clicking into the Homestays tab gives you an e row of tabs that you can use to access the various functions required to manage Homestays.

Placements

The Placements tab shows you placements that have been assigned by administrators or chosen by guests.

The right-hand side of the placements screen allows you to filter placements by type and date. In this screen shot, I'm viewing all the confirmed placements in the last week:

Guests

The Guests tab, shows you some overview information about guests including some stats about things that might need your attention. As with placements, you can filter on the right hand side. There's also a search box to quickly look up the guest you're interested in. I'll use it to look up a guest named "Mariano":

Here's Mariano's record. All the data shown is just for demonstration purposes, including the cartoon avatar. On your actual Homestays website, guests and hosts can upload a profile photo which is handy for putting a face to a name.

Homes

The Homes tab, as you might expect, shows information about host families and their homes. Notice you can filter by campus here, as well as by the status of the home. Also shown is the Export button which you'll recognise from your existing StudyStays admin. As with Off Campus, you can export your Homestays data to a spreadsheet if you need to do extra calculations or work with the data directly.

Here's an example of a host record. Up the top you can see there is the same area for notes that you're used to. You can also tag hosts to keep them organised. Tags come in handy for group auto-assignment—but more on that in a later post.

That's all for today! In tomorrow's post I'll share some ways you can save time by automating common Homestays tasks.

Today I’m very happy to announce the new Homestays add-on for StudyStays.

The Homestays add-on gives you a website for managing Homestay accommodation for international students. It fits in nicely alongside your existing Off Campus Accommodation website, making use of the admin interface that you’re already familiar with.

Some key features are:

• Guests (students) can apply for a homestay matching their preferences and requirements
• Hosts can self-manage their homestay, including details about living arrangements, features, preferences and availability
• Guests are matched with the best homestays for them using a scoring system.
• Guests can either request a homestay themselves, or have one assigned by an administrator
• Agents can manage homestays on behalf of their students
• Group bookings help you easily manage study or tour groups.
• Auto Assignment automatically assigns the best matches for groups
• Automatic email notifications to help streamline the application and placement process
• Comprehensive admin tools for managing guests, hosts, homestay placements, applications, agents and groups.
• Customisable forms (e.g. for Guest and Host registration) and scoring rules for matching guests with homestays
• Customisable to suit your procedures for recording host orientation, inspections and payments.
• Off Campus students and providers can use the same login for the Homestay website

The Homestays add-on has had almost two years of development and testing in collaboration with QUT and Griffith University. Thanks to their innovation and patience, we’ve gotten to the point where we have a solid product for other universities to use “out of the box”.

The Homestays add-on is available now for everyone using StudyStays. For anyone signing up in 2017, we have a special rate of $9000 for the first year (ex GST). There is also a “Light” version available with some limitations for a lower rate.

I’ll be writing in more detail about Homestays over the coming weeks. If you’d like to be notified about new posts, you can subscribe to this blog by email below. I look forward to telling you about all the exciting features!