September 1 to September 5, 2025 Release Notes

Features & Improvements

Somebody here asked the developers this week, and I quote: Allowing embeds in form text blocks: good idea? Bad? (End quote.) The devs answered him, not with words, but with some freshly-composed code: you can embed things like PDFs in form text blocks now. Should be pretty handy for the considerable number of forms used to collect student assent to the school handbook (among lots of other things).

Application and inquiry forms now have the handy link/embed brick that regular forms have. They used to have a click here to see the thing link at the bottom of their settings. Nobody liked that.

Added some periodic timezone-checking so that if you change timezones, Populi will notice it and suggest an update. Apparently this is a real issue: people cross timezones whilst using Populi. Some of them are jet-setter power users, while others are more old school, leisurely reviewing form responses while sipping a martini in the observation car of the 20th Century Limited.

Tweaked some things with private contact info to make absolutely sure that advisors can email their advisees whenever they need to.

Bugfixes

Multi-checkbox type custom fields weren't including all selected values in API calls and automation webhooks. We put an end to this intolerable situation.

Made sure that non-ASCII characters are not included in ID numbers. Three-letter abbreviations of Irish names with apostrophes, to use one example, looked really dumb before we fixed this.

The Evaluations report was sometimes claiming that there were fewer student answers to required questions than to non-required questions, which seemed logically impossible, but, you know, the world is a funny and enchanted place... anyway, we determined that something was broken and we fixed it.

A school requested that we no longer allow applicants to select birthdates that are in the future—it was messing up reporting and other stuff. We reluctantly complied, but we still think that the old way helped you flush out Terminators and other potentially-dangerous time traveling assassins (who are all too good at getting around CAPTCHAs).

A bug with hidden conditional fields was messing up all the forms, making them torpid and unresponsive. A bugfix restored them to their natural lithe and nimble condition.

Customer payments that had been "marked as aid" were considered unrefundable if schools only allowed aid refunds via batch. Now you can freely give all that money back when you need to.

Videos and Focus Sessions

Next week will be here before you know it!

• Introduction to Financial Aid: Grab some popcorn and watch Jordan Nelson tell you about financial aid settings, awards, packaging aid, disbursements, aid applications and so on. This will be most useful to Financial Aid and Financial Admin users. It's scheduled for September 9th, 2025, 11:00 AM Pacific time.
• Introduction to Populi: Stick some chicken wings in the air fryer and nosh on them while Mr. Nelson gives you the basics on setting up your Populi account, logging in, adding new users, login approvals, roles, search, basic reporting, Populi's global settings and so on. This will be most useful to Populi Account Administrator and Academic Admin users. It's scheduled for September 11th, 2025, 11:00 AM Pacific time.

Here's Josh on how to manage what students can see of their own financial aid information on their profiles. He reportedly had a great time making this video, so you have a great time watching it!