January 23 to January 27, 2023 Release Notes

Features & Improvements

Above is pictured Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats, a barren stretch of earth just west of the Great Salt Lake where gearheads and gasoline junkies go to set land-speed records in ground rockets and other preposterous machines. It's also a metaphor for this week's Features & Improvements: a wasteland of nothingness. Yet, lo, in the distance, mountains. Mountains... of new features, rising up above the horizon line, the promise that the salt has an edge and if you only keep walking you will come to the end of it.

Or something. I dunno. We do have some big stuff coming soon, though.

Bugfixes

Above is Hiroshi Sugimoto's 1993 photograph Ligurian Sea, a sublime and subtle image that is used in these release notes to represent this week's bugfixes. At a glance, there is little to see—nothing, you might be tempted to say, just as there are no bugfixes to speak of right now. But contemplate what's beneath that serene flatness: the unforgiving depths, the inscrutable currents, the finned and toothed and tentacled creatures. These things represent the bugfixes of future weeks, the things we'll encounter as we plunge forward in time.

This metaphor is going to collapse very soon—I might have to start depicting Populi as some kind of submersible that will protect you from the sea's dangers—so why don't we call it good for now, mmkay?

Videos and Focus Sessions

Here's what's in store for next week's Focus Sessions:

• Introduction to Student Billing takes your hand and guides you through pending charges, invoices, transactions, payments/credits, tuition schedules, fees and so on. This will be most useful to Financial Admin and Student Billing users. It's scheduled for January 31st, 2023, 11:00 AM Pacific time.
• Introduction to Degree Audit gondoliers you through the Venice-like canals of Populi's programs, degree requirements, course groups, course mapping, exceptions, transcripts and so on. This will be most useful to Academic Admin and Registrar users. It's scheduled for February 2nd, 2023, 11:00 AM Pacific time.

For those times when you get your Degree Audits set up perfectly but then they get stuck in the mire of a particular student's unique journey through your degree requirements, Josh recommends muck boots—which are a metaphor for the Degree Audit's exceptions, substituions, waivers, and exclusions.