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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.

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.

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 Listings will show an average rating at the top of each listing and a link to the reviews section.

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*.

We're pleased to announce that we've redesigned the search page to feature a new interactive map alongside search results. 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.

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.

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.

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. There's a new option to use an *email signature*, which can (optionally) be applied to all outgoing emails.

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 <http://blog. studystays. com/supporting-documents-for-student-approvalhttp://>.

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.

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.

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.

*Note: This new functionality requires first upgrading to the **New Look* <http://blog. studystays. com/new-look-for-studystays>* 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.

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.

*Please note: the changes in this blog post will only be visible on sites that have been upgraded to the **New Look* <http://blog. studystays. com/new-look-for-studystays>*. If your site hasn't been upgraded yet and you'd like to upgrade, please email support@studystays. com.

To streamline the approval process for Future Students, it's now possible to allow "Supporting Documents" to be uploaded along with a student's registration.

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.

You can record feedback on listings received from students. To access feedback, go to the Providers tab in Admin, then click Feedback. Feedback is only visible to administrators. Providers won't be able to see feedback about themselves through the website. There are three types of feedback: recommendations, comments and complaints.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Recent updates give you more insight into automatic emails. Automatic emails are one-off emails — the emails that get sent when a user does something (like registering), or needs a reminder (such as when a listing is about to expire).

There is a new setting that lets your choose how to present your terms and conditions to students and providers when they register. We're calling the new option "Speedbump Terms and Conditions" because it slows people down a bit to focus their attention on the terms. *Option 1: The Tick Box* This is the default option if you don't change anything.

I just launched a refresh of the studystays. com. au <http://studystays. com. au/> promotional website, with a new look and a new logo. The design is by my friend Deena <http://deenamusic. com/>. Deena worked part-time at StudyStays last year on marketing, promotional material, and this website.