With your Welcome and Orientation Weeks just around the corner, whatever it might look like this year, we've created some top tips to help you prepare. Check out some of our previous Top Tips posts to see our handy hints about running events, managing your student groups, and selling through your MSL System. Watch our Getting ready for Welcome Week web briefings for more guidance from the MSL team ahead of your new students arriving, 

1) Ask us to enable the free Welcome Week microsite on your website

Our fully mobile-friendly Welcome Week template is a one-stop-shop to help your new members discover your clubs, events (whether online or in-person) and get great deals and offers. Our Welcome Week microsite template has a refreshed look and great new features. As always, it's free to use - just let us know that you'd like to use it; we'll enable it on your site. 

2) Try our Web Till, and set up a Quick Add product catalogue to make selling your most popular tickets and products even easier

Web Till allows operators to carry out sales transactions and collections using any modern browser on any device, making your tills more mobile. Link the shop to a Quick Add product catalogue to save your staff time searching for your most popular tickets, memberships and merchandise - and reduce your members' time queuing during Welcome Week! Take a look at our Setting up and managing Web Till support page.

3) Create new student accounts via the Single Sign-On login (even if they're not in the data file)

Get in touch with us to hear more about our new version of Single Sign-On (SSO) setup and discuss getting this set up on your website. If your students know their SSO login details, they can log into your website and have an account created for them before they're in your University data file. No more Account not matched messages! 

4) Ask us to create a new students registration page

Not sure when your new students will get their SSO login details but want them to be able to log into your website? We can create a registration page your new students can use to create a temporary guest account. Add an (optional) University ID field to the registration page if your new students know their ID before arriving at University to make merging their accounts easier once they're in the data file.

5) Link a Welcome pass to multiple events

Once you've created your events (don't forget to use our bulk events importer!), as well as creating individual ticket(s) for each event, you can link one product (e.g. a pass) to multiple events if, for example, buying a pass gets me into every event during Welcome Week. If the pass comes with a unique number (e.g. printed on a wristband) you can link this number to the purchase when the purchaser collects the item. Use this reference to admit your members into events using our Identifiers functionality.

6) Find out your members' preferences before they arrive on campus

Once they're logged into your website, direct your new members to opt-into mailing lists and self-defined groups to help you give your new members a more personalised experience. Did you know your users can now set their pronouns? They pull through to their profile page and the organisation member lists. Let us know if you'd like us to enable this new setting. 

7) Capture medical and emergency contact information

Use the medical and emergency contact information widgets to collect this important information ahead of your new members attending events and activities. You can also request this information against purchases made through the system.

8) Check your colleagues have access to your system

Those with Site Admin permissions can view who has an Admin Website account and the permissions against each by logging into the Admin Website > Admin > Users. If you'd like any changes to who has access to the Admin Website or their permissions, let us know using the login request forms so you're all set for Welcome Week.

Thank you!

We hope you've found some of these tips useful - please share your tips with us or get in touch by emailing support@ukmsl.com for help using any of these features.

If there is a particular theme or topic you'd like us to cover, please send us your suggestions and we'll bear them in mind when planning our next post.