We spoke with Hannah, the communications and marketing manager at UCLan SU, so we could catch up on the past year, get updated on current focuses, and find out what the future holds for UCLan SU - along with some Top Tips to best support each and every student.
Making a digital impact through their website, clubs and societies resources, events and ticketing, student voice and integrated elections and volunteering/employability hub.
Harper Adams Students’ Union has taken advantage of the MSL System® for the past three years, broadening its service provision and digitising many of its processes to keep pace with the changing demands of members. The MSL System has helped the Union deliver impactful Student Voice campaigns, hugely popular digital engagement programmes and utilise the data it now has at its fingertips to shape the next five-year’s ambitious development strategy.
"MSL Student Group Finances has had a huge impact on the way we operate student opportunities. It has created an easy and consistent approach to managing student group budgets which students have really embraced and, for staff, it has eased processes and reduced the paperwork." - Keele SU Activities
London Met Students' Union shares how it has developed well-being information plus campaigns and events organised to support students' mental health and well-being.
"We were immediately impressed by the functionality of MSL websites and how everything is set up to maximize student engagement and amplify their voices."
"We’re excited about our journey with MSL as we continue to work towards creating a fully resourced online community through our website." - Nyasha Takawira, Communications and Marketing Manager
In 2020, the Heriot-Watt University Dubai Student Council chose to launch their brand new digital presence with MSL, the largest provider of digital student engagement solutions in the UK, Australia and Ireland.
The democratic process at University College Cork Student's Union has always been at the heart of the Union's activities; traditions have grown up around officer elections from nominations, on campus campaigning, voting and the all-important count. So when the Covid pandemic halted life as normal on campus, a planned future move to online elections became an urgent priority for the March 2021 elections.
"We’ll be able to maintain quality control of all material that goes onto the website through the approval process within the MSL content management area. We want to ensure that all content posted is relevant, useful, of a high quality and follows our branding guidelines so that students really benefit from their representatives’ work. Work is also now underway on a Student Voice Forum in collaboration with the University which will be hosted on the UCLan SU website."
March 2021 - From using a shared, university-owned ticketing system, to driving a digital communications strategy, managing a 250% increase in cases and growing the team during a pandemic, the Advice Centre at the Royal Holloway University London Students’ Union has come far in the two years since it implemented MSL’s Student Case Manager system.
Volunteering at University of Plymouth Students’ Union has always been a popular activity, with lots of opportunities from a wide variety of charity and community based organisations offering fantastic roles for students to learn new skills and discover their hidden talents. As the pandemic took hold in 2020, the UPSU web team accelerated their roll out of a revamp to the volunteering area to create a new Volunteering & Recognition showcase using MSL Volunteering & Employability.
March 2017 - Sam Medhurst, Web Developer & Digital Platform Coordinator at University of Brighton Students' Union shares a student engagement project which made use of core MSL functionality to great effect. After the whirlwind that is Freshers was over, the Brighton Students' Union Marketing and Communications department huddled together to decide on the content we wanted to create to maintain digital engagement over the Christmas period.
May 2019 - University College Birmingham Guild of Students will underpin its growing service provision for student members with the MSL System®. The new membership management system will provide the Guild with a new website, student groups resources, integrated online elections and the StudentLink® app.
6th April 2018 - Chester Students’ Union has implemented the MSL System which provides its website, online elections facility, advice and advocacy management system. The new membership management system supports over 17,000 students on the university’s Warrington and Chester campuses with digital engagement, clubs and societies tools, messaging, community and feedback resources.
The University of Chester’s volunteering service has chosen MSL’s Volunteering and Employability System to support its drive to encourage more students to develop their career skills, improve their CV and to give something back to their community through volunteering.
10th August 2015 - Aston Students’ Union has selected Membership Solutions Ltd (MSL) to design and implement its new website and complete membership management system, further strengthening their relationship established in 2014 with the Union’s use of the MSL online elections platform
KeeleSU Volunteering aims to provide diverse volunteering experiences to students during their time at Keele University, supporting their volunteers as they make a difference both on and off campus. But with more and more students registering to volunteer each year, their old system had become unsustainable. The Volunteering team chose to implement MSL Volunteering & Employability primarily to cut down on the amount of admin they had to carry out and, in doing so, now have a solution which has h
21st June 2016 - Coventry University Students’ Union has chosen Membership Solutions Ltd to supply their new membership management system together with Elections and Volunteering modules to enhance their student engagement activities.
25th July 2016 - MSL is delighted that Bishop Grosseteste Students’ Union has chosen to replace their membership management platform with the MSL System®. The new system will incorporate website, clubs and societies resources, messaging and online elections to support the Union’s primary objectives of promoting student welfare and providing social, cultural, sporting and recreational activities for those members.
UCLan Students' Union launches a new digital user experience with the MSL System
Encourage transferable skills, build social circles & support student leaders
This release includes the Bulk Refund and Message Centre Stats roadmap items.
13th January 2017 - The Australian National University Students’ Association and the Postgraduate and Research Students' Association have selected the MSL System to support their growing digital membership management requirements. The new system will provide new websites, clubs and societies tools, messaging, e-commerce and community resources for both associations as well as a shared online elections platform.
WATCH THE WEB TOUR! - transforming your Volunteering & Skills programme
In August 2016, the Australian National University Students’ Association ran their Student Representative Council and National Union of Students’ Delegates elections completely online for the first time. The Association utilised Membership Solutions Ltd’s elections module which enabled the elections process to be managed through the Association’s own elections website. The move to digital resulted in the highest number of votes placed and posts filled for some five years.
WATCH THE WEB TOUR! - Run engaging & secure online elections
This release contains improvements to AdminWeb, Events, Messaging, POS, Profile and Community, Volunteering, Voting, Website
See how Royal Holloway SU transformed their advice team into student champions!
Securely and safely maintain staff and visitor records to your premises
From our SU22 session: Starting with what you could be doing right now to make it easy for your new members to engage with your organisation and wrapping up with a look at many of our great employability features. In between, we'll delve into some fantastic events, elections, advice, and student group features, with plenty of examples of how your Students’ Union colleagues are using these tools.
Bringing together the MSL community at venues around the UK & Ireland in 2020
A summary of the changes in version 6.4.323
We’re updating all sites over the next couple of days. There’s plenty in this release, including lots of improvements to Memberships Admin, and additions to the Jobs and Voting modules.
A summary of the changes in version 6.4.329
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Check out our top tips highlighting fantastic features built into your Volunteering & Employability module you might want to implement! Some time-honoured favourites, some brand new, all designed to encourage engagement with your volunteering scheme.
A summary of the changes in version 6.5.346
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MSL is pleased to announce a new partnership with native to bring more options for events technology to students’ organisations using the MSL System. A free, optional plug-in for MSL clients provides a range of new features such as digital wristbands, ticket scanning and features to build a following. Used either in conjunction with MSL’s popular events tools or as the sole events platform, the native partnership gives MSL clients more choice and flexibility to promote and deliver great even
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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.
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Ahead of your upcoming elections, here are some of our tips to help you prepare for this exciting time of year, making the setup and running of your election through your MSL System as easy as possible!
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September 2021 - MSL's Chief Executive, Gary Bryant, relishes seeing the return of in-person Freshers Fayres and Welcome Weeks for our UK clients after what has been a tough year for the student experience.
A summary of the changes in version 6.6.393
With Welcome Week just around the corner, to accompany our "Getting ready for Welcome Week" online training sessions taking place w/c 16th August, we've created some top tips to help you prepare.
A summary of the changes in version 6.6.405
It's less than a month until results day and only a matter of weeks before we're in the middle of your welcome week preparations. MSL is on hand to provide guidance and support with any queries you might have; here are some of our top tips to help you prepare for your events.
A summary of the changes in version 6.6.414
We were proud to sponsor SU21 Digital - the digital learning event for Students’ Union staff and officers. You can watch back our session with UCLan Students' Union: Review, Reimagine and Revamp the student experience....
A summary of the changes in version 6.6.429
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Ahead of a hopeful return to more normal campus life, here are six ways you could improve your purchase process for your members - for both face-to-face and online sales to make buying from you a little easier.
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May 2021 - The MSL Big Day Out brought together awesome speakers, shared ideas and inspiring discussions all about student engagement and the student experience in this ever-changing environment.
A summary of the changes in Release 6.7.525
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Sending our best wishes to the fabulous MSL Community...
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BLOG: Tis the season to be jolly and we know how hard our MSL community is working to get students and staff into the festive spirit, even as students start to head for home. We’re especially delighted to see Christmas Fairs going ahead giving a welcome opportunity for talented students to sell their products over the festive period and beyond. Read how our creative clients are using resources in their MSL System to build attractive and engaging fairs...
A summary of the changes in Version 6.7.571
A summary of the changes in Version 6.7.576
Autumn 2020 release round-up: Our hard working development team was especially busy over the summer so we are pleased to bring you details of some of the newer features and improvements released over the last few months which you may have missed. Many of our developments are driven by the MSL community and so we're always excited to release new features that have been requested by our clients and their teams.
A summary of the changes in Version 6.7.584
Sept 2020 - MSL has recently completed an accessibility review with AbilityNet to ensure our website design components help clients to create accessible websites for all their users. Read about the review process, the insights we gained and how we're using the findings to inform our product roadmap.
A summary of the changes in Version 6.8.592
August 2020 - The MSL 2020: You've Got This! series of briefings, training, knowledge exchange and community events has been shaped by the MSL community. We were delighted to welcome colleagues from the wider SU community to join in the discussion with three fantastic guest speakers in August. Digital transformation, student societies and representation at this time of unprecedented challenges and uncertainty were all on the agenda and each session is now available to view.
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March 2020 - In light of the developing health crisis, we would like to share some important information with you. Our focus remains on “business as usual” and providing an uninterrupted service to you, our valued customers, whilst remaining diligent and responsive to government recommendations and guidance to protect the health and well-being of the MSL team.
A summary of the changes in Version 6.8.652
This is a summary of the changes in version 6.8.693, released on 18 March 2009.
This includes release notes for version 6.8.659, which was a limited release.
We're sorry to advise that MSL will no longer be attending the Secret Life of Students, WONKHE’s annual student experience. However, the conference sessions will still be going ahead with live streaming available and we are sure the WONKHE team will deliver fantastic content with great speakers at this difficult time. We look forward to working with WONKHE at future events.
This is a summary of changes in version 6.8.697, released on 2nd April 2009.
This release includes significant updates to the Jobs module and the Shop admin tools. Also the Election Count application can now export ballot data in OpenSTV's BLT format.
12th February 2020 - If you've been to one of the MSL Big Days Out (Birmingham and Glasgow so far...) you'll have already seen our fabulous new animation up on the big screen, telling all you need to know about what it is we do here at MSL Towers. Not seen it yet? Here's your chance.....
This is a minor update which fixes a few issues reported since last week's release.
November 2019 - We are very excited to bring you news of the MSL Big Day Out which will see us touring the UK and Ireland from January to April, bringing the MSL community together in regional user groups. We are in the planning stages now but more details of dates and locations are in this edition of the newsletter.
This is a summary of the changes in version 6.81.735, due for release on Wednesday 17 June.
This release contains the page loading code improvements as detailed in this article, as well as a number of other fixes.
20th November 2019 - Instant access to everything, at any time, no matter what it is – that’s the mantra by which your student members live; from travel information to fast food, gig tickets to current affairs. Your website is a hub of information and opportunities to participate that many students rely upon to support their university and social lives - and so they expect that same feeling of immediacy from your site as they get from ASOS and Amazon.
A few more items have been included with today's 6.81 release.
23rd October 2019 - MSL was delighted to see so many of our Australian clients and new contacts recently on a whistle-stop tour of Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. Here we share a few images of the great campuses we visited.
This is a summary of the changes in version 6.82.744, release date 15 July 2009.
This release features a number of improvements to the website, several bug fixes and some new customer-requested features.
9th October 2019 - Everyone is getting into the swing of the new year and we guess all those shy freshers have thrown away their inhibitions and are queuing up for every event and club night going. To help you manage the logistics of large numbers of 18 to 25 year olds turning up en masse to your venues, we’ve made a change to MSL Door Entry & Venues which reduces the time it takes to redeem tickets on the door.
This is a summary of the changes in version 6.82.748, release date 23 July 2009.
This update includes some new features in the Messaging and Forum areas.
1st October 2019 - A new academic year invariably means new staff members, new roles, new tasks and lots of things that need to be done right now to support your members as they settle into the new academic year. This post looks at development work we've done to help simplify the process of assigning permissions and get your team working as quickly as possible.
This is a summary of the changes in version 6.82.759, due for release on Wednesday 12th August.
This update includes a number of improvements to the widget editing system, an update to handle NUS Extra 2009, and some new properties on the News List widget - as well as a number of other minor fixes.
This is a summary of the changes in version 6.82.765, due for release on Thursday 17 September.
This release includes the ability for organisation admins to set up their own events, a Merge People feature for resolving incorrectly registered guest accounts, the inclusion of the transaction receipt text and collection information on the transaction confirmation page, and a number of fixes for reported problems.
6th September 2019 - We’re sure you appreciate the role data plays within the MSL System; you work with data every day and it drives every decision made in your organisation. But just in case you were in any doubt, data also underpins everything that the MSL System does for you. Read about one of the most important projects in MSL's history and the benefits it will bring...
Version 6.90.783 is released on Friday 9 October.
This update includes a new Page Comments widget, several performance enhancements, and the ability to integrate with Shibboleth identity providers - this allows your users to use their University login details to access your site. Contact us for further information.
This is a summary of the changes in version 6.91.786 released on Wednesday 21 October.
This release includes several updates to the Referendum admin screens. There are some changes to the Event list, event calendar and news list widgets - these now show members/admins only items even when child organisations' items are included.
There are also a number of bug fixes.
Summary of the changes in version 6.92.802, published on Wednesday 16 Dec 2009.
A summary of the changes in version 6.93.813, released on Thursday 28 Jan.
11th June 2019 - It is with great pleasure that MSL announces the appointment of Gary Bryant as our new Chief Executive.
This is a summary of the changes in version 6.94.827, released on Thursday 4 March 2010.
As well as a few enhancements and fixes, this release includes support for SMS messaging and enables international characters in email message subject and body.
Latest update ready for release.
We're rolling the latest update out over the next couple of days. Many improvements to elections & surveys!
This update went live back in November, and we're just filling in the blanks...
We'll be updating all sites over the next day or so. There are a couple of new features in this release but it is mainly to fix bugs that have cropped up since the last update.
December 2018 - We’ve been spending some time thinking about MSL's brand and identity: what does it mean to you, our MSL community; how do prospective users of the MSL System view the MSL 'brand'; and how do we demonstrate our commitment to providing easy-to-use products that support an inclusive, diverse, accessible and engaging member experience? It's an evolving process - but we've made a start with a new logo, corporate style and, coming soon, a new website.
We’ll be updating all sites during the course of this week.
The latest update includes improvements to the Seating Plan, new options for Product Customisations, and a number of additions to reports. There are also two new widgets – Voter Popup and Tag Cloud - and various other improvements and fixes to the site and the applications.
This is also the first official release of the touch screen enabled Polling Station application – thanks to those who’ve been trialling this.
24th August 2018 - Still got loads to do for Freshers' Week? Need some tips and advice? Look no further than our Freshers' Top Tips infographic. Your very own cut out and keep 10 step plan.
The University of Dundee and Dundee University Students’ Association (DUSA) have selected Membership Solutions Ltd’s online elections system to support their staff and Students’ Association elections. The new digital solution will ensure all staff and students at the university can stay informed about and take part in key elections.
16th March 2018 - This update links to the ICO's comprehensive information on the six available lawful bases for processing data (legal reason and legitimate interest being particularly relevant).
October 2017 - Keep up-to-date with MSL's news and updates on GDPR, helping you to stay informed and assist with your preparation for GDPR compliance.
April 2017 - "The integration, professionalism and advice from the MSL team has been outstanding and we’re looking forward to providing a great experience for our students.” Jon May, Communications Manager, University of Westminster Students’ Union
16th February 2017 - Looking for some fresh ideas to promote your MSL App? Still considering the benefits (there are so many!) of giving your students an App full of engagement opportunities? The MSL Top 10 countdown of promotional ideas for your MSL App will help you reach more of your members on the move.
13th January 2017 - The Australian National University Students’ Association and the Postgraduate and Research Students' Association have selected the MSL System to support their growing digital membership management requirements. The new system will provide new websites, clubs and societies tools, messaging, e-commerce and community resources for both associations as well as a shared online elections platform.
November 2016 - It's never too early to be prepared.... Our winter missive has lots to help you prepare including details of December's Refreshers web briefing and January's Elections training, featuring not one, but two ways to get your team up-to-speed on all things voting related. We also want you to share your knowledge and expertise via the hardware forum on MyMSL and we'd like to welcome UEA Students' Union who are already doing amazing things with their new MSL System.
Sept 2016 - "Looking towards the future, we are excited to see how we can leverage MSL to enhance our engagement with the student body, not only for elections but throughout the entire year.” Benjamin Gill, President, ANU Students’ Association
September 2016 - OK, so we know summer is officially over but the promise of a mini-heatwave this week means we're clinging onto the flip-flops and shorts for as long as possible. We've had so much good stuff to share with you over the summer months, we're pleased to bring you a final round-up of our news and want to ask you to share some of your successes from the last year.
Still got loads to do for Freshers' Week? Need some tips and advice? Look no further than our Freshers' Top Tips infographic. Your very own cut out and keep 10 step plan.
August 2016 - Summer may mean holidays to anyone who doesn't work in students' unions but to the MSL team and all of you out there getting ready for the new term and Freshers, we know the summer months are a time to put new ideas in place, refresh websites and get excited about bigger and better participation projects.
December 2015 - The end of Autumn term has crept up on us and we're looking forward to finishing off all those last minute jobs so we can enjoy the forthcoming festivities. With that in mind, we bring you our final round-up of news and events for 2015 along with our best wishes for an enjoyable festive break.
October 2015 - Wishing everyone a successful Freshers' Week! We know Freshers' is keeping everyone busy but we also know how keen you are to stay up to date with our news and developments so we've squeezed in this short but sweet late summer newsletter for you to enjoy before the new year starts.
June 2015 - As promised, we're pleased to present the second edition of our Summer 2015 newsletter....
June 2015 - We're pleased to bring you the first installment of our early Summer 2015 newsletter; look out for the next one in a couple of weeks when we have even more news to bring you.
3rd June 1015 - MSL has been chosen to provide the elections platform for Central Students’ Union (Central SU) which represents students at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, part of the University of London.
This article explains how to run your election in line with this guidance using your MSL system