Overview You can now use your own email address when sending mass communications! Instead of having to set up and validate separate email addresses, you can simply choose to send from your personal email.

Perfect for teachers and staff Many teachers and staff members want to send mass communications from their own email address so recipients recognize who the message is coming from. Previously, this required administrators to validate each person's email address separately. Now you can just select your own name and email from the FROM address options.

Simple setup for administrators Administrators can make this even easier by setting "Sender User" as the default FROM address in Mass Comms settings. This way, when anyone creates a mass communication, their own email will be pre-selected automatically.

Works everywhere you send Whether you're creating mass communications from your Dashboard or using the mobile app, you'll see your own name and email as an option in the FROM field. This gives you the flexibility to send personal communications while using the powerful mass communication tools.

Streamlined for common scenarios This is especially helpful when:

• Teachers want to send class updates from their own email
• Staff need to communicate using their recognized email address
• Personal touch matters and you want recipients to see a familiar sender name

This makes mass communications more personal and eliminates the administrative overhead of managing multiple validated email addresses for individual users.

Overview You can now choose how your link buttons are aligned on your pages! When using the "Buttons" layout for links, you can position them left, center, or right to fit your page design perfectly.

Perfect for flexible page layouts Sometimes you want link buttons centered for maximum impact, other times you might want them aligned left to flow with your text or right for alternating layouts. Now you can choose the alignment that works best for each page.

Simple alignment controls In your Links block settings, when you select the "Buttons" layout, you'll find new alignment options under Menu Style. Just select left, center, or right alignment and your link buttons will position exactly where you want them. The default stays center so your existing links won't change unless you want them to.

Great for modern page designs This is especially helpful when you're creating pages that mix text, images, and link buttons in creative layouts, or when you want your buttons to complement other elements on the page rather than always being centered.

Your link button alignment will look the same whether you're editing or your visitors are viewing the published page, so you can design with confidence.

Overview You can now find parents by searching for their child's name when starting conversations! This makes it much easier for teachers to contact parents without having to remember parent names or deal with different last names.

Perfect for teacher-parent communication Teachers often know students well but may not remember parent names, especially when families have different last names or multiple guardians. Now you can simply search for the student's name and see all related parents in the results.

Clear relationship identification When parents appear in your search results because of their child's name, you'll see the student's name listed next to the parent's role. This makes it crystal clear which student each parent is connected to, so you always contact the right family.

Works for all conversation types This enhanced search works whether you're:

• Starting individual conversations with specific parents
• Creating bulk messages to multiple families
• Using the Dashboard or mobile app for communication

Common scenarios this helps This feature is especially useful for:

• Parent-teacher conferences when you need to follow up with specific families
• Student-specific issues that require parent communication
• Class updates where you want to message parents of particular students
• Behavioral or academic discussions that involve specific students

This makes parent communication much more intuitive and efficient, especially for teachers managing large classes or multiple grade levels.

Overview You can now allow parents and students to message each other directly through the app! This new option helps families stay connected while respecting classroom cell phone policies and keeping communication within your school's platform.

Perfect for schools with device restrictions Many schools restrict cell phone use during class time but still want families to be able to communicate when needed. This feature lets parents message their own children (and vice versa) through your school app instead of requiring personal devices or text messaging.

Administrator control over family messaging In your Conversations Settings, you'll find a new "Can Message Relatives" permission for both Student and Parent roles. This option is turned off by default, so you have complete control over whether to enable parent-child messaging based on your school's communication policies.

How it works for families When enabled:

• Parents can message their own children when starting conversations or sending messages
• Students can message their own parents through the same conversation features
• Only related family members appear as options - parents can't message other students, and students can't message other parents

Flexible for different needs You can enable this feature for:

• Parents only if you want only parents to initiate conversations with their students
• Students only if you want to let students reach out to their parents
• Both parents and students for either parents or students to start conversations with each other

Great for common situations This feature is especially helpful for:

• Emergency communication when parents need to reach their children during school hours
• Schedule changes that parents need to communicate directly to their child
• After-school arrangements and pickup coordination
• Keeping families connected while maintaining classroom device policies

The feature gives you the flexibility to support family communication needs while maintaining control over who can message whom within your school community.

Overview Your website includes comprehensive accessibility reporting to help ensure your content meets ADA compliance standards. These reports help you identify and address accessibility issues to keep your website accessible to everyone in your community.

Essential for ADA compliance Maintaining an accessible website is crucial for reaching all community members and meeting legal requirements. Our accessibility reports provide complete visibility into your website's compliance status with detailed guidance for addressing any issues.

Complete site monitoring There's now a dedicated Accessibility section in your main sidebar that provides comprehensive oversight of your website's accessibility. You'll see detailed reports for all your pages and news items, including issue counts, recommendations, resolution tracking, and scan timestamps.

Two accessibility areas Your accessibility tools are organized in two places:

• Settings > Accessibility: Configure publishing requirements (like requiring all issues be resolved before publishing)
• Accessibility sidebar section: View comprehensive reports showing all pages and news items with their accessibility status

Actionable guidance right where you work When editing pages or news items, accessibility issues appear directly in your editor with specific suggestions for fixing each problem. This helps you understand not just what needs attention, but exactly how to address it.

Proactive accessibility management Stay ahead of accessibility concerns by identifying and addressing potential issues before they become problems. This helps you maintain an inclusive website that effectively serves your entire community.

Optional publishing safeguards You can choose to require all accessibility issues be resolved before publishing new content, ensuring your website maintains high accessibility standards from the start.

Take it to the next level with Edlio AI For even easier accessibility management, Edlio AI can automatically fix accessibility issues for you with one-click solutions. Instead of manually addressing each issue, Edlio AI handles the technical fixes so you can focus on creating great content while maintaining full ADA compliance effortlessly.

The accessibility reports are part of your website management tools, giving you comprehensive accessibility oversight capabilities.

Overview You can now see when people have read your messages in conversations! This feature helps you track whether your important communications are being seen, with smart privacy controls based on user roles.

Perfect for tracking important communications When you send messages about school events, updates, or time-sensitive information, you can now see whether recipients have actually read them. This is especially helpful for administrators and staff who need to ensure critical information reaches its intended audience.

Smart role-based privacy Your school administrators can control who sees read receipts through the Conversations Settings. By default, administrators, staff, and teachers can see read receipts, while the feature can be configured differently for other roles like parents or students based on your school's communication policies.

How read receipts work Just like popular messaging apps, you'll see:

• One check mark when your message is successfully sent
• Two check marks when at least one person has read your message
• Message details showing exactly who has read your message and when

Easy to access read information

• In the Dashboard: Click on any message you've sent to see detailed read receipt information
• In the mobile app: Long-press on messages you've sent to view who has read them
• Read counts: See how many people out of the total conversation participants have read each message

Better message organization Messages now show clearer timestamps and the check mark indicators stay visible, so you can easily track the status of all your communications at a glance.

This feature gives you the confidence that your important messages are being seen while respecting privacy boundaries set by your school's communication policies.

Overview When filtering people by grade in the Manage People section, you now see a dropdown list of all available grades instead of having to type them in manually!
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Simpler grade selection The advanced filter in Manage People now shows you all the grade levels that exist in your system. Just click the dropdown and select the grades you want to filter by - no more guessing at grade formats or trying to remember exact grade names.
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Consistent with target lists This works the same way as the grade filter we recently improved in target lists, giving you a consistent experience when working with grade-based filtering throughout the platform.
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Reduces filtering mistakes By showing you exactly which grades are available, you can be confident you're selecting the right criteria and won't miss people due to typing errors or incorrect grade formats.

This small improvement makes it much easier to find and manage people by grade level in your system.

Overview When you use templates in Mass Communications and make changes to one channel, those changes now automatically apply to all other channels! Plus, you can now create templates using an "All Channels" option to write your content once for every channel.

Perfect for consistent messaging Templates are great for maintaining consistent communication across email, text, voice, and social channels. Now when you use a template and decide to adjust the message in one channel, those changes automatically copy to all the other channels, just like when you create messages from scratch.

Easier template creation When creating new templates, you can now choose "All Channels" to write your content once and have it configured for every communication channel automatically. No more copying the same message across email, text, and social tabs.

Smart content syncing Here's how it works when using templates in Mass Communications:

• Start with your template: Choose any template to populate your campaign
• Edit one channel: Make changes to the content in one channel
• Automatic copying: Your changes instantly appear in all other channels
• Saves time: No need to manually update each channel when you want to make the same change everywhere

Consistent with existing behavior This enhancement makes templates work just like creating blank messages, where editing one channel automatically updates the others. Now you get that same time-saving behavior whether you start from scratch or use a template.

Great for campaign management This is especially helpful when you're fine-tuning campaign messaging after selecting a template, or when you want to make last-minute adjustments that should apply across all your communication channels.

Your Mass Communications workflow is now more efficient and consistent, regardless of how you start creating your campaigns.

Overview You can now import student exclusion groups from a spreadsheet instead of creating them one by one! This is perfect for schools that have extensive exclusion lists or are migrating from another system.

Perfect for large-scale setup If you have many student exclusion groups to create - whether you're setting up Hall Pass for the first time or importing existing exclusion data from another system - you can now upload them all at once using a spreadsheet.

Simple import process The import works just like other spreadsheet imports in the system. You'll see a helpful modal that guides you through the process, shows you exactly what format your file needs to be in, and even lets you download a sample spreadsheet to get started.

What you can import Your spreadsheet can include:

• Students: List student IDs (separated by commas) for each exclusion group
• Note: Add explanations for why the exclusion group exists
• Expiration date: Set when exclusion groups should automatically be removed (works with the new auto-expiration feature)

Smart duplicate handling The system automatically prevents duplicate exclusion groups, so if you accidentally include the same group of students with the same expiration date multiple times, it will only create one exclusion group.

Easy to get started Download the sample spreadsheet to see exactly how to format your data, fill it out with your exclusion groups, and upload it. The system handles all the heavy lifting of creating individual exclusion groups based on your spreadsheet data.

This saves significant time when setting up Hall Pass exclusions, especially for larger schools or districts with complex behavioral management needs.

Overview You can now update access restrictions for multiple target lists simultaneously instead of editing them one by one! This is a huge time-saver for schools and districts with many target lists to manage.

Perfect for large-scale management If you have dozens or hundreds of target lists that need the same access restrictions - like limiting visibility to administrators only - you can now select them all and update their restrictions in one action instead of editing each list individually.

Simple bulk editing process From your Target Lists management page, select the target lists you want to update and choose "Edit Restrictions" from the bulk actions. You'll see a modal that shows exactly how many lists you've selected and lets you set the new access restrictions for all of them at once.

Overwrites existing settings When you apply new restrictions, they'll replace whatever access settings those target lists had before. This gives you a clean slate to ensure all your selected lists have consistent access controls.

Smart about different list types The bulk restriction editor only works with standard target lists (the ones you create manually or import), and automatically ignores classroom synced lists since those have different management rules. This means you can select a mix of different list types and the system will only apply your changes where appropriate.

This saves hours of repetitive work when managing target list access restrictions, especially for larger organizations with complex communication needs.
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