Release Notes

Approve an application and the family is enrolled, no separate step.

Building and sharing an enrollment application already worked on every plan. Now approving one finishes the job: reviewing a submission and clicking Approve creates the child's enrollment and the guardian's account in the same moment, and an email goes out inviting the family to set up their own login. Declining works just as simply, and it never contacts the family on NavEd's behalf. Your school decides what to tell them and when.

Downloads catch up too. A roster or response export from an application now shows the children who applied, instead of a blank sheet.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Approving an application enrolls the child and creates the guardian's account together
• A newly enrolled family gets an email to set up their own password
• Declining an application never contacts the family. Your school does that, if and when you choose
• Roster and response downloads for an application form now include the applicants
• The public application link disables its Submit button after one click, so a slow connection or a repeat tap can't send it twice

Staff can have a photo instead of initials.

Students and parents have been able to have a picture for a long time. Teachers and school administrators could not, so a staff page always showed initials with no way to change it. A school administrator can now add a photo from a staff member's page, where it appears in place of their initials, and in the school directory.

Two things this does not do yet. Teachers cannot set their own photo, only an administrator can. And the photo does not replace the initials in the sidebar or the top bar. Both are coming.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• A school administrator can add a photo to any staff member from their edit page, including administrators who also teach
• Staff photos appear in the school directory, where your directory settings allow it
• Photos saved on Windows, including the .jfif files Edge produces, now upload correctly
• A file that is not really an image is refused with an explanation, and photos over 5 MB are refused with a clear message
• Saving a staff member after an error, such as an email already in use, now returns you to their page instead of a page-not-found

Announcement emails now reach the school that sent them, and you can give different grade levels different work in the same class.

If you published an announcement with email turned on, the announcement appeared in the portal but the email could silently fail to go out. That is fixed. Nothing about how you write or publish an announcement changes.

If your class holds more than one grade level, you can now say which grades a piece of work is for. Open a lesson step in the builder and it reads "This step is for everyone" by default, exactly as before. Choose one or more grade levels and only those students see that step, open it, or turn it in.

Students in the other grades are not shown the step at all, and your progress view marks them "Not assigned" rather than "Not submitted", so nobody looks behind on work that was never theirs. Everything you have already built is unchanged and stays for everyone until you say otherwise.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• A lesson step can be limited to one or more grade levels, chosen per step
• Students only see, open, and turn in the steps meant for their grade
• The teacher progress view tells apart work not handed in from work never assigned
• Shared work still goes to the whole class with nothing to set up
• Announcement emails now send reliably for the school that published them
• Grade level choices carry forward when you roll a unit into a new school year

Class banner images upload properly, and grade levels can now be marked as elementary, middle, or upper school.

Uploading a banner to a class page could fail with an error page instead of saving, most often when the picture came straight off a phone or camera. Those images now upload normally, and a picture NavEd genuinely cannot use gets a short explanation of which formats to try instead.

Grade levels also have a school level again. The Academic Grades page has always shown an Elementary, Middle School, or Upper School label on each grade, but there was no way to set it, so every grade a school created read "Unassigned" forever. You can now choose it when you create a grade level or any time afterward.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Class banner uploads accept pictures saved from a phone, camera, or Windows, which previously failed
• A banner NavEd cannot use now says which formats work rather than showing an error page
• Grade levels can be set to Elementary, Middle School, or Upper School when you add or edit them
• Saving a grade level now returns you to that grade instead of a page-not-found
• Leaving a grade level unassigned is fine and is explained on the form, for ungraded and mixed-age groups
• The form now spells out what each school level changes, including how Upper School affects transcripts

Files you open from NavEd now always open as the kind of file they really are.

When a student turns in work, or anyone uploads a logo or an attachment, NavEd now decides how that file should open based on the file itself rather than on what the uploading computer said about it. Photos, videos and school branding still preview right on the page exactly as they did before.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Uploaded files now open and download as their real file type

Turn in work your way, with the file types your teacher expects.

You can now turn on "students turn in work" for any lesson step right in the unit builder, choose what kind of work it is, and set exactly which file types you'll accept: no more guessing whether a paper has to be a .docx or a slideshow a .pptx. We also widened the list of accepted files to include PowerPoint, spreadsheets, and more photo formats. If a student's file doesn't match, they get a friendly nudge telling them exactly what to try instead, and their work is never lost.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Feedback a teacher leaves when approving a student's work is now visible to the student, not just when work is sent back for revision.

Added a way to record photo and media consent, right on a student's profile.

When you add or edit a student, you can now check a box confirming your school has permission to use that student's photos and other files. Some schools require this before a student can turn in files, so if a student can't submit their work, this is the first place to check.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Added a media and photo consent checkbox to the add and edit student pages
• Clarified the message a student sees when a file can't be turned in yet

Write a class description without hunting for it.

The Add Class and Edit Class pages now have a spot to describe what a class covers. Staff can read it on the class's Settings tab, and for electives, it also shows to families choosing their classes.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Added a description field to the Add Class and Edit Class pages
• Clarified who can see a class description

Mark work on mastery instead of a score, straight from the class page.

In any class gradebook you can now type MA, PR or NI into a grade box instead of a number, for Mastered, Progressing and Needs Improvement. Parents see the mark on their child's profile. Typing a number still works exactly as before, and typing one over a mark replaces it.

Classes you have marked as elementary in your grade level settings get a little more: the three marks are listed across the top of the gradebook so nobody has to remember them, every empty box shows them as a reminder, and the weighted average column is hidden, since a class marked on mastery has no percentages to average.