We are continually iterating here at Unibuddy to offer you the best possible experience, and ensure that Community continues to anticipate and exceed student's expectations.
As at October 2024, these are just some of the latest new features that have been released over the past year:
Meeting housemates/roommates in Community
Our research shows that a top-priority for students is to meet their future roommates before arriving on campus. Students can now display whether they're looking for private accommodation or living in university accommodation on their profile, and for those in university accommodation, they have the option to enter their accommodation name. Filters have been added into the Community People tab, so students can filter by their accommodation to meet others, or search for other students looking to find private housing!
Students able to change their name directly within their Community profile
Students are now able to change their own name on their Community profile, giving them even more control over the information they share, and allowing them to differentiate between identifying information they might have shared with their institution, and their preferred name. Both forename and surname can be changed when needed.
Community People directory
The new People tab in Community makes it even easier for students to find and connect with one another. Students can quickly explore members of their Community, and filter by area of study to either find people undertaking the same course, or meet people studying different programs! Additional filters will soon be added to this tab, enabling students to search for others by nationality, hobbies and interests, and also to find staff or ambassadors to direct questions to.
Conversation summaries:
An invaluable overview of what matters most to your students, our AI-powered conversation summaries will scan the conversations taking place within your Community, and send your admin a weekly summary of the themes and concerns that have been top of mind for your incoming cohort. Please note that you need to have had at least 20 messages within a group for conversation summaries to be generated.
Content:
If you are a Unibuddy Chat + Community user, any ambassador-generated blogs or short-form videos within your Content tab will pull directly through to your Community, housed in a Suggested content carousel under Explore. Students can view video clips and scroll through posts written by your ambassadors, to learn more about life on campus, foster a connection with your institution, and engage with information at their own pace.
Enrolment insights
You can now upload a list of your enrolled student email addresses, which we will cross reference with the email addresses of your Community members, so you can gauge the impact of your Community by showing the percentage of users that went on to enrol.
An overhauled invites tab in your dashboard
A simplified and increasingly user-friendly invites tab, where you can manage and monitor your student invites, opt to enter students into our reminder nurture campaign for our highest ever sign-up rates, copy your shareable Community invite link, and download a unique QR code for your marketing collateral or student comms.
Deactivating a Community
You can now deactivate your student communities, as opposed to deleting them. When you deactivate, your Community will no longer be live and students will no longer be able to access it, however, you will be able to view your previous student communities, review your data and analytics, and export user lists.
Polls
A favourite of the new releases - you can now create polls in Updates or any public group, to get feedback and gauge sentiment from your students in real time. Admins and ambassadors can create polls, and students will receive a push notification from the Unibuddy Community app when a new poll is posted.
Automated invite email reminders
If you use the email invite option to grant your students access to your Community (and send the invite through the Unibuddy dashboard), students that haven't yet joined will be sent a reminder 2 days, 4 days, and 8 days later - increasing their chances of joining, and reducing your workload. We are seeing the highest sign up rates for Community using this invite method.
Deleting users directly from the dashboard
You will likely have seen the option to delete users directly from your university dashboard. This means you can easily track deposits and enrolments, remove students that haven't matriculated, and even repurpose your Community for post-enrolment.
Student to-do lists
The Updates tab has been even further optimised, allowing your students to save items you post to Updates in their own private To-do list. Students can remove items once they have actioned them, and keep track of deadlines, events, and reminders by curating their own saved posts.
Sharing .pdf files
You can post .pdf files, as well as GIFs and images, in any group within Community, and also within your Updates tab. Students can download these .pdf files directly to their device - you can share campus maps, event flyers, registration or application forms, bursary or visa documents, orientation schedules, class timetables, reading lists....the list goes on!
Student interests on profiles
Students can choose from a curated selection of hobbies and add these to their profile, giving them more chances to find and connect with others with shared interests.
Pronouns on profiles
Students can now add their preferred pronouns to their profile. This is a free text field, which they are free to update as they please.
Student matching
Not so much a new feature, but just a reminder that students can match based on nationality and their intended or current program of study, and can choose to connect over direct message with their future classmates.
