Why We Love Innovation

Hello, here at Applicaa we love innovation and are continually driving new ideas to enhance our products because we want all our users to get the best experiences. That includes all the staff in schools plus the families and students.

To this end, we fully encourage feedback from the schools that use our products and our platforms even have ‘Idea’ buttons built into them so that any user can make a suggestion.

Submission of an idea means our development team will review it. We want to enhance the user experience of our products as much as possible and enjoy looking into new ideas for schools.

Users of our cloud-based software products are also able to view currently listed Feature Requests and System Updates at any time by clicking a ‘Bell’ icon when logged in.

Because we encourage this, we receive a significant number of suggestions from the 600+ schools we work with and many of those ideas have now been baked into our products. Here is a snapshot of some of the updates our busy and innovative development team has made in the last few months bringing to life suggestions from schools.

1. Digital Signatures

Schools sometimes need to collect legally binding parental signatures. This change enables schools to collect digital signatures online via Admissions+.

You are now able to add Digital Signatures as a question type for reliable collection of consent to any permission form.

2. Import Area Updates

This update is going to improve the import area making it easier to select the correct options.

The updated process will be:

1. Step 1: Choose what you are importing or updating (e.g. Users, Predicted/Achieved Grades, Students Course Choices)
2. Step 2: The system will then show you the available import types available (CSV, Bromcom, Cloud School, Arbor, SIMS ESS)
3. Step 3: Where a CSV import is being used, you will be provided with a clear sample file that you can use to create or check your import file
4. Step 4: You will then see an import summary with any errors listed and the associated rows/users identified clearly.

3. Managing Duplicates

Sometimes parents and students create more than one profile. This update will help by detecting potential duplicate profiles. You will then be able to merge the two profiles, keeping all data and the progress activity of the most up-to-date profile. This will be particularly useful when dealing with internal students who self-register despite already having a student profile that you have imported from your School MIS.

4. Manual Addition of Users 

Whether it’s receiving an enquiry via a phone call or a late applicant turning up at the school; sometimes you need to be able to quickly add a new user into the system. Rather than having to always import new parents and students using an Excel CSV file, this update will make it possible to add parents, students, and staff quickly from your dashboard. Once added, you will then also be able to send a welcome invitation to the user.

5. Managing Unsubscribed Users

This update includes the following enhancements:

1. Adding a search bar to the page listing unsubscribed users 
2. Adding a clear call to action for removing a user from the list so they receive emails again
3. A banner flagging students and contacts that have unsubscribed from receiving emails with a link to manage the list
4. An email notification to notify you when a user unsubscribes from receiving emails.

6. Two-factor Authentication

To make your system more secure, we are releasing two-factor authentication. When logging in to Admissions+, you will need to enter a code that has been sent to your email address, phone number, or authenticator application. You will be able to choose whether this process should happen every time you log in or when you log on using a different computer or browser.

If you are a school using our products, don’t forget to let us know your next innovative idea! If you don’t use Applicaa products yet, maybe you will explore more and become a customer of ours, then you too can feed into the continual evolution of our cloud-based products for schools.

To learn more about Applicaa, please visit www.applicaa.com.