Latest News from the Edlio team
Update

[App] Take Control of Your SIS Sync Settings

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Shared by Product • July 25, 2025

OverviewYou can now configure and manage many of your SIS sync settings directly from your dashboard! No more waiting for support tickets or back-and-forth emails to adjust common sync configurations.

Perfect for ongoing SIS management Every district has unique needs when it comes to syncing student information systems. Previously, most configuration changes required reaching out to our support team. Now you have direct access to the most commonly needed settings, so you can make adjustments on your own schedule.

New Sync Configuration page You'll find a dedicated "Sync Configuration" section under People in your dashboard. This page automatically shows the tabs relevant to your district's setup:

  • FTP tab: Appears if your district uses FTP-based sync
  • Schema Mapping tab: Custom field mapping for FTP-based sync
  • API tab: Shows up for districts with API sync configurations

Manual sync controls when you need them Sometimes you need to sync data right away instead of waiting for the scheduled sync:

  • FTP users: Upload new files directly through the interface or retry your most recent sync
  • API users: Trigger an immediate sync with the click of a button
  • Flexible timing: Perfect for when you've made important changes that need to be reflected immediately

Faster setup and ongoing management This self-service approach means you can:

  • Make routine adjustments without waiting for support responses
  • Test sync configurations and see results immediately
  • Troubleshoot sync issues using real-time status information
  • Manage syncs on your timeline rather than coordinating with support schedules
Update

[App] Parents Can Now View Their Students' Conversations

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Shared by Product • July 23, 2025

Overview You can now allow parents to view their students' conversations directly in the app! This new feature gives parents read-only access to communications involving their children, helping meet transparency requirements while maintaining appropriate boundaries.

Perfect for compliance and transparency This feature is designed for districts that need traceable communication systems where parents can access and review communications sent to their students. With new state laws like Kentucky's Senate Bill 181 and Oklahoma's HB3958 requiring traceable communications and parent oversight, this feature helps districts meet these regulatory requirements while keeping parents informed about their children's school communications.

Easy setup for administrators School and district administrators can enable this feature through the Parent/Guardian role settings. You have full control over whether parents in your district can view student conversations - it's completely optional and configurable per your school's communication policies.

How it works for parents When enabled, parents will see an expanded conversation feature in the app that includes both their own conversations and their students' conversations. Everything is clearly organized so parents can easily see their own conversations, and their student conversations.

Smart organization for multiple students If parents have multiple children, each child's conversations are separated and labeled by the child’s name in alphabetical order. This makes it easy for parents to find and review communications for each of their children.

Great for building trust This feature helps build trust between schools and families by providing transparency into student communications while still maintaining the appropriate roles and boundaries for different types of conversations.

Update

[App] Set Expiration Dates for Hall Pass Student Exclusion Groups Overview

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Shared by Product • July 22, 2025

You can now set student exclusion groups to automatically delete themselves on a specific date! No more manually tracking which temporary behavioral groups need to be removed - the system handles it for you.

Perfect for temporary situations Many exclusion groups are created for short-term disciplinary situations or behavioral interventions that have natural end dates. Instead of having to remember to manually clean up these groups later, you can now set them to expire automatically when they're no longer needed.

Simple setup process When creating or editing a student exclusion group, you'll see a new option:

  • Checkbox setting: "This group should be deleted automatically"
  • Date selection: Choose when the group should be removed

Automatic cleanup happens behind the scenes Once you set an expiration date, you can forget about it. The system will automatically delete the exclusion group at the specified time, removing all restrictions between those students without any action needed from your team.

Great for common scenarios This feature is especially helpful for situations like:

  • Short-term disciplinary separations with specific end dates set by administration
  • Behavioral intervention periods that conclude after a set number of weeks
  • Temporary conflicts between students that resolve naturally over time

Keeps your exclusions current By automatically removing expired groups, your Hall Pass exclusion lists stay clean and relevant. You won't have old, unnecessary restrictions cluttering your system or accidentally preventing students from getting passes when situations have been resolved.

Easy to manage The expiration setting appears in the same place where you add notes about exclusion groups, making it a natural part of your workflow when setting up behavioral management protocols.

Improvement

[App] Pin Your Most Important Target Lists to the Top

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Shared by Product • July 22, 2025

Overview You can now pin your most frequently used target lists so they always appear at the top when you're selecting audiences! No more scrolling or searching for "All Teachers" or "All Parents" every time you send a message.

Perfect for your go-to target lists Every school has those essential target lists they use constantly - like soccer team, chess club, or PTA. Now you can pin these important lists so they're always right at the top when you need them.

Pin from multiple places: You can pin or unpin target lists from two places:

  • Target list table: Use the new action menu (the "…" button) to quickly pin or unpin lists
  • Edit target list view: Set the pin status when you're editing a target list

Works everywhere you select target lists Once you pin a target list, it stays at the top no matter where you're working:

  • Mass Communications: Your pinned lists appear first when selecting who gets your emails, texts, voice calls, or social posts
  • News distribution: Quick access to your key audiences when sharing news stories
  • Conversations: Pinned lists are right at the top when starting new conversations

Saves time on every communication Instead of typing "Soccer Team" into the search box or scrolling through dozens of target lists every time you want to send a message, your most important lists are always waiting for you at the top. This makes sending communications much faster and more efficient.

Customize for your school's needs Every school is different, so you can pin the target lists that matter most to your communication workflow. Whether that's grade-specific parent groups, department lists, or community organizations, you're in control of what appears at the top.

Feature update

[App] Parent Identity Renamed to Family Identity

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Shared by Product • July 22, 2025

Overview We've renamed the "Parent" identity to "Family" identity to make it clearer and less confusing when you're working with different types of family relationships in your system.

Why this change helps you Previously, having both a "Parent" identity and a "Parent" identity type with the same name was creating confusion, especially when setting up target lists and filters. Now it's much clearer!

What's changed The main identity category that was called "Parent" is now called "Family." This better represents all the different types of family relationships you can assign to people in your system.

Family identity now includes all these relationship types:

  • Parent
  • Guardian
  • Aide
  • Relative
  • Parent (Other)

Where you'll notice the changes When you're editing a person's profile or setting up target lists, you'll now see "Family" as the main identity category. This makes it much easier to understand that you're working with family-related identities, and then you can choose the specific type of family relationship that applies.

Better filtering and targeting This change makes it much simpler to create target lists and filters for family members. Instead of wondering whether you should select "Parent" (the identity) or "Parent" (the type), you'll now clearly see "Family" as the category and can choose the specific relationship type you need.

Update

[Mass Comms] New Attendance Status Merge Field for SIS Attendance Auto Notices

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Shared by Product • July 08, 2025

Overview You can now include specific attendance status information directly in your Auto Notice messages! If your school uses SIS Attendance for Auto Notices, you now have access to a new merge field that makes your attendance notifications more informative and personalized.


What's new: attendance_status merge field When setting up Auto Notices with SIS Attendance as your data source, you can now use the attendance_status merge field in your message templates. This will automatically populate with the specific attendance status from your SIS system.


Create more meaningful attendance messages Instead of sending generic attendance notifications, you can now craft messages that tell parents exactly what happened. For example, you can write: "Your student was attendance_status from school today" and parents will receive specific information like "Your student was absent from school today" or "Your student was tardy from school today."


Handles multiple attendance statuses If your school has configured multiple attendance statuses for a single Auto Notice, or if a student happens to have multiple statuses assigned, the merge field will display all relevant statuses separated by commas.


Perfect for schools with detailed attendance tracking This feature is especially useful if your school tracks various types of attendance (excused absence, unexcused absence, tardy, early dismissal, etc.) and wants to communicate these distinctions clearly to parents and guardians.

Update

[CMS] SSO Configuration Self-Service Improvements

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Shared by Product • July 03, 2025

Overview

You can now adjust login behaviors when users login to the website using Google or Microsoft SSO! Here are the new settings that are available if your site uses Google or Microsoft SSO.

Enable users on SSO user creation

You can choose if a user should be enabled immediately when they login with SSO for the first time or require an approval before the account is created. This setting is enabled by default.

Enable "Sign in as Super Administrator"

This setting shows or hides the “Sign in as Super Administrator” option in the CMS admin login page and allows you to use a standard Edlio administrator login instead of your Google / Microsoft login.. This setting is disabled by default.

Auto-permission on regex match during SSO user creation

This setting can be used to automatically assign a site-wide access to users that login using SSO for the first time and their user name matches a specified regex pattern. This is a power user setting and can only be configured by super administrators.

Sign in options for Password Protected Areas on the Public Site

Configure if users on the public site can login to password protected areas using standard Edlio authentication, Google/Microsoft SSO, or both. If you have parent accounts that are set up with standard Edlio authentication, you can use this setting to ensure that parents do not get confused with a Google/Microsoft SSO login button.

Mobile
Product update
iOS
Android

[APP] Hall Pass Improvements

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Shared by Product • June 30, 2025

Overview

Enhanced Hall Pass system with new tabs for better organization, safety controls, customizable settings, mobile app improvements, and auto-refresh functionality for real-time monitoring.

Enhancement 1: Issued Hall Passes Tab

What's New Issued hall passes now have their own dedicated tab to view past hall passes with advanced filtering options.

Available Filters

  • Status (Active, All, Checked In, Expired, Upcoming)
  • Issued by
  • Issued to
  • Reason

This separate tab provides better organization and allows users to filter and review historical hall pass data more effectively.


Enhancement 2: Student Exclusion List Tab

Overview Schools need the ability to prevent certain students from being out of class simultaneously due to:

  • Disciplinary incidents between students
  • Behavioral management requirements
  • Safety concerns
  • Administrative policies

Student Exclusions Rules Management New view under Hall Pass called Student Exclusions where administrators can view groups of students who cannot be issued hall passes simultaneously. Groups can be searched by student name.

Two or more students can be added to a group. Notes text can optionally be included.

Student Exclusions Behavior This setting is respected in both the app dashboard and the mobile app. When the user attempts to issue hall pass to a student and they are a member of a student exclusion group, the system checks if another member currently has an active hall pass.

If another member has an active hall pass, then a warning message displays. The user can decide to "Cancel" or "Create anyway".


Enhancement 3: Hall Pass Reasons Settings

Default Expiry Time (minutes) Set the default time for a hall pass on the Hall Pass Reasons page. This is the default time that will populate when issuing hall passes for each specific reason.

Maximum Capacity Set the maximum number of students who can have hall passes for a specific reason simultaneously (such as bathroom passes). This setting is also configured on the Hall Pass Reasons page.


Enhancement 4: Mobile App UI Improvements

Multiple Tabs for Hall Passes

Current Passes Tab

  • "There are no active hall passes" message if no passes
  • Shows multiple list items with their individual countdowns if there are multiple active passes
  • Shows the single pass if there's only one

Past Hall Passes Tab

  • Read-only list, opens the pass in full screen when clicked
  • Allows student to check in if still in the allowance timeframe

Upcoming Hall Passes Tab

  • Read-only list

Additional Features

  • Show the total number of passes as well (X of Y passes remaining of Z reason)
  • Show meaningful message if issuing a hall pass don't match the rules configured
  • "For Teachers" tab - a place where teachers can look up one or multiple students at the same time and issue hall passes for them directly through the app. Must be restricted by Account Type - i.e. the same people would see this as who has access to the feature through the Dashboard.

Enhancement 5: Auto Refresh

Automatic Updates The screen that shows who is out with passes (Issued Hall Passes) now updates automatically without requiring manual refresh. This allows for example the Security office to have a screen up at all times to show who is out on a pass while they are watching the halls on the cameras.

These enhancements provide better organization, safety controls, and real-time monitoring capabilities for the Hall Pass system across both dashboard and mobile app interfaces.

Product update

[APP] Community Identity

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Shared by Product • June 25, 2025

For self-registered mobile app users, there were a few roles that did not map to an appropriate identity. This caused some parents and other app users to end up under the "No Identity" section of the app people management page.

We have now introduced a "Community" identity to capture these app roles and ensure that all mobile app roles are associated to an equivalent identity in the system.

The app roles that have been mapped to the "Community" identity are:

  • Alumni
  • Community (Other)
  • Member
  • Volunteer
Product update

[CMS] Edlio AI Alt Text Approval Required

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Shared by Product • June 25, 2025

Edlio AI will now automatically generate alt text for images uploaded to the Shuffles feature, making it easier to improve site accessibility.


Administrators can also control the alt text approval process by enabling Edlio AI Alt Text Approval Required in the accessibility settings.


Leave the setting unchecked (default) to automatically publish AI-generated alt text without review.


Check the setting to enable the approval workflow.

When enabled:

  • Images with pending alt text approval will show a purple "Needs review" border
  • These images won't appear on your public site until reviewed
  • Users can approve AI suggestions as-is or manually edit the alt text before publishing
  • A banner will notify users when images require review

This feature helps ensure your AI-generated alt text meets your quality standards while streamlining accessibility compliance for your school website.