The Month in Review: January 2022 Feature Releases

Derek Nichols

It’s the start of a new month which means it’s time to review everything we added to the Education management products this past January.Just like that, January is now in the rear-view mirror. While February may be the shortest month of the year, we need to take a moment to go back in time to January.

That’s right, it’s time once again for the Month In Review (and yes, I even remembered to switch the year to 2022)! This time, we’re back in January 2022 to see all of the latest updates, features, and changes that arrived for the Education Management products. Let’s get to it!

Academics
There was another date picker update in January from the Academics team. A Go to button with a date picker has been added to the Student Attendance and Class Attendance pages. Now, in addition to toggling between dates with the left and right arrows, you can jump to a date by choosing it on a calendar.

Also, faculty members can now create seating charts for Advisory groups and use them to take attendance. The seating charts function the same way as they do for class attendance. Keep in mind that only the assigned group advisor can edit or use the seating chart. Advisory Group Managers can view any advisory seating chart, but they cannot edit a seating chart unless they are that group’s advisor.

In addition:

• Activity Group Managers can now create seating charts and use them to take attendance in Activity Groups.
• When creating a seating chart for a new term, a teacher can copy a seating chart from the previous term if one existed.
• When an Assignment Type already has numeric grades associated, teachers can no longer add a letter grade scale.
• If a student has a Preferred Name, that name will appear on seating charts for classes and advisory groups. If a student does not have a Preferred Name on file, then their first name will display.
• When creating or editing an assignment, assessment, or discussion, an error appears listing out any fields that have been left incomplete. This includes fields like Title, Assignment type, Abbreviation, Max Points, Factor, Assigned date, Due date, Skill weight, Section, and prompts for Discussions. Until the fields are filled in, the work can't be saved.
• Teachers can now use the return key for the entirety of the assignment column when entering grades in gradebook.
• In Gradebook, filters are now saved and applied even after the gradebook is closed and reopened.
• When creating or editing a seating chart, you can customize where the FRONT label appears. Under the Front label menu, select Top, Bottom, Left, or Right. This feature is available for classes and advisory groups.
• An Overview tab has been added to the Grades management area. It is currently only available to users with the Award Manager role.

Billing management
This month for Billing management, Auto-Pay became available to schools participating in the early adopter program (EAP), enabling payers to automatically make payments against charges included in their payment plans.

Also this month:

• Current balance is now a default column on the Holds list.
• Not due yet, Total overdue (formerly known as Balance), Current payment plans, Upcoming payment plan, and Total have been added to the Aged accounts receivables when exporting to a PDF.
• A new filter removes payers with no past due balance ($0) from appearing in the Aged accounts receivables list.
• The Pays for column now lists each charge targeted by a payment. A new row is added for each student when payments are applied to multiple students.

Core
In January, the Core team made a few security related updates. Specifically, users who have not logged in for a long time are considered inactive and their accounts are disabled. A platform manager can re-enable the accounts so the user can log in again.

In addition, if an account was automatically deactivated due to inactivity, and a platform manager manually re-enabled the user’s account, but the user failed to login that same day, the night’s activity check would automatically mark the account inactive again due to continued inactivity. Now, when an inactive account is manually re-enabled, the account remains active for 30 days. If the user fails to login during the 30-day grace period, the account is automatically deactivated due to continued inactivity.

Also released this month:

• Users who previously allowed third party cookies can now reject third party cookies. Some users previously enabled cookies to prevent an error from appearing.
• The URLs for Analyze have changed. Review any bookmarks for favorites from your internet browser that referenced these. Update your bookmarks to use the latest URLs.
• We've added the ability to insert new Financial Aid records even when one already exists. When the import type for Admissions is Financial Aid, schools will see new available options for saving: update existing/insert new or insert only.
• Advanced list managers can now filter correctly based on Resides with without the users being listed twice.

Enrollment management
This month for EMS, candidates were a big focus for the team. Specifically, parents should receive candidate checklist notifications even if the step has not been published. In addition, when candidates reapply or are reactivated by admissions managers, they'll now automatically regain login access.

Also this month:

• When printing contracts in bulk, re-enrollment managers will now see an updated Contract Bulk Print Download screen.

School Website
In January, the School Website team updated lists. Specifically, user lists from the Notification list can no longer be opened for users who do not have the appropriate permissions.

Tuition and Financial Aid Management
The Tuition and Financial Aid teams made a number of updates in the month of January. The default enrollment year was updated to 2022-2023, to hopefully make it easier for schools to quickly enroll students into the upcoming academic year.

For Financial Aid management, enterprise users can now filter an Enterprise Award Summary to show only specific budgets. The list of budgets that appears in this dialog will depend on whether you select the Include school budgets option. If you do not select it, then only enterprise budgets will appear. If you do select it, then school budgets will also appear.
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If you want the full and complete details of everything we’ve added to the Education management products in December, make sure to visit our What’s New letter. Use the Recent option at the top of the page to view past and archived releases. Want to stay updated whenever we have a new release? Get notified via email by signing up for our mailing list here.

And that will do it for this week! Stay vigilant readers as we have some important news to share regarding Tuition management coming up. In fact, there’s so much of it that we have two blogs coming out starting in a couple days on Thursday. Don’t miss it! See you then!