New stuff under the tree
The perfect gift for schools that use Populi to handle Federal Student Aid: new SAP Policies and Payment Periods. Read about them here.
This year's plush stuffed animal is a new "soft" due date option for tests. You can give a test's associated assignment a due date that differs from the test's end time. This way, students can take a test after it is officially due without faculty having to add any sort of exception for them. It also lets faculty be a little meaner if they want—it's now simpler to dock points for late tests. Merry Christmas, students!
Kids love walkie-talkies (they really seem to love to lose them at the park). We added a start date to communication plans. When you add a plan to someone, you get the option of starting the plan on a particular date—you're no longer limited to just today.
Some nice little stocking-stuffers: a new
RECIPIENT_PREFERREDNAME
variable to use on mailing labels and suchlike; an Advisor filter for the Enrollments report; and multiple small tweaks to the language on student financial summaries.
Wind-up toys are back! Added a couple automations to let folks know when someone's been given a new user role or tag (and when they've been removed).
Lasers are cool, so we added a progress bar to the top of the Populi screen that shoots across the screen like a laser beam when you click to go to another page.
Older toys dad fixed in the garage
Updated Populi to use the most latest and greatest Stripe API.
Optimized the way we handle saving student test answers during in-progress tests to make them even more optimal.
Made sure to exclude N/A answers from course evaluation "average"-flavored statistics. So now all those stats taste like peppermint eggnog (no idea if that's good).
Tweaked a few things that may or may not prevent blank online references from being submitted. We sure do hope that whatever we did to fix this impossible-to-replicate problem worked.
Made sure that expelled (and other inactive) students don't show up on the SAP report and stay in the coal mines where they belong.
Tuned up some aid settings so that they can be reported in Box 5 of the 1098-T but not Box 1.
Made sure to give Race/Ethnicity and Country names a space in Localizations.
Stopped removing email addresses from custom initial application form emails.
Dotted some i's to make sure you couldn't delete fees associated with payment plans.
When you delete a discussion, we now make sure to delete any associated materials from any lessons in which you've shoved that discussion.
If you go to email a mailing list at 4:59 PM but don't send the email and then log back in at 9:01 AM the next morning and then send the email, we now warn you about the fact that your mailing list from the day before has expired.
We used to consult the database for prerequisites that were attached to deleted courses, which is singularly idiotic. We knocked that off and now spend our time in more fruitful pursuits (most of us took up hang-gliding).
Added changes made to global minimum attendance to the Change Log.
The blank assignment grades warning when you finalize a course now excludes grades not entered for Incomplete students. Also made sure not to count assignments that are not Published.
If you included tags in the Billing > Term > Summary export, for some reason that inflated the numbers in the Term Amount Due column.
Fixed something that wouldn't let you apply unapplied payments to unpaid invoices.
Finalized students were missing their alert for course evaluations. We found it in the couch cushions.
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