FOCUS-42736- Student refund - allow choosing a parent contact as check recipient

System improvement adding a setting 'Focus check refunds can be written to contact(s)' that will allow refund checks to be issued to Parent contact.

See Setup > Settings > Accounts Receivable tab > Point of Sale section, Point of Sale, and Student Billing for more information.

FOCUS-42149- HR_EAF - Change a Position add Step/Slot and Current Wage information

System improvement adding employee's current step/slot and wage in the From section of the Employee Action Form > Change a Position.

FOCUS-42798- Add holiday hours column for T&A

System improvement adding system setting to Time and Attendance to add holiday hours column in Request tab.

See Settings > Miscellaneous tab > Misc. section and Time & Attendance Approval for details.

FOCUS-42772- Create Approve Application Preference

System enhancement adding system setting to require approved application and allow recommendations without approved applications.

See Job Posting Setup for more details.

FOCUS-43180- Student Info: New Student Phone Number Label in Address & Contacts

In the latest update, the labeling of the phone number field in the address card has been refined. For primary addresses, the field will now display as 'Student Phone Number' on both the Address and Contacts tabs. For non-primary addresses, the label will remain as 'Phone Number'. Note that this change does not affect the address group on applications, where it will continue to show as 'Phone Number'. Additionally, in advanced reports, this field will be listed as either 'Home Phone' or 'Primary Address Phone'.

See Student Info > Adding an Address for more information.

FOCUS-43149- Imports: Resolve Student Match Files Error

This update resolves an SQL error encountered when accessing the Student Match Files tab under Setup > Imports. Previously, schemas of completed imports were dropped, but the query did not exclude these imports, leading to errors. With this fix, completed imports are now properly excluded from the query, ensuring error-free loading of the tab.

FOCUS-43147- Third Party Systems: Improve Mass Syncing Events for PUT /assignments and /grades

This update optimizes the API's handling of concurrent operations to improve performance during mass-syncs by vendors. Previously, advisory locks were global, causing all incoming API calls to wait on each other, which created bottlenecks. Now, the locks are more granular: for PUT /assignments requests, locks are specific to each assignment category, and for PUT /grades, locks are specific to each student's UUID. This change reduces unnecessary waiting and speeds up the processing of API calls.

FOCUS-43146- Scheduling: Ensure Consistency Between Preview and Print in Print Teacher Schedule

This update ensures that the Teacher Schedule download matches the preview displayed on the screen. Previously, inconsistencies arose because the PDF identifier was not being passed correctly in the URL to the iframe preview. The solution implemented involves setting a specific ID to rectify this issue, guaranteeing that the downloaded results are consistent with the previewed content.

FOCUS-43142- Communication Platform: Improve SMS Character System Preference

This update addresses an issue in the Communication Platform, Call Out System. Previously, when the system preference for SMS character limits was set between 200 and 300, the actual limit imposed during message composition was only 200 characters. With this enhancement, the system now properly respects the specified preference, allowing for SMS character limits as defined by the user settings.

FOCUS-43125- Course Catalog: Add Default Maximum Seats to Export Options

This update enhances the Course Catalog by adding the default maximum seats to the dropdown options for pushdown settings. This improvement ensures that users can easily select and apply the default seating capacity when configuring courses.

FOCUS-43110- Communication Platform: Improve Printing from Form Records

This update enhances the printing functionality for Form Records in the Student Info section, specifically for templates derived from the Communication Platform. This improvement ensures a more reliable and efficient printing process from these specific templates.

FOCUS-43105- Student Portal: Resolve Printing Grade Report with Individual Final Grade Permissions

This update resolves a printing issue in the Student Portal, specifically when generating the Grades Summary with the system preference "Use Individual Final Grades Field Permissions" enabled. Previously, if a student profile lacked access to the teacher field, the summary could not be printed. This fix ensures that the Grades Summary can be printed regardless of these specific field permissions.

FOCUS-43103- Calculate GPA: Improve Enrollment Logic in Calculate Class Rank

This update corrects an issue with the Calculate Class Rank job, specifically when handling students who are advanced mid-year from 11th to 12th grade. Previously, if the GPA calculation was run only for grades 9, 10, and 11, such students were incorrectly included, and their class rank was displayed as N/A. With this fix, students who have advanced to the 12th grade will only be included in class rank calculations when the 12th grade is selected. This ensures accurate representation of class ranks.

FOCUS-43061- Form Builder: New Export Feature

This update introduces an export feature to the Form Builder within the Focus & District Forms tabs. Users can now easily export data, enhancing functionality and providing greater flexibility in managing form information.

See Form Builder > Using the Export, Filter, and Toggle Columns Options for more information.

FOCUS-43054- Communication Platform: Improve Mobile Site Display for Students & Parents

This update improves the mobile browsing experience for parents and students accessing Focus via a mobile phone browser, rather than the app. A phone-specific view with a hamburger menu has been introduced. In this mode, the Communication section will display one of the three screen panels at a time for easier navigation. Additionally, a Back button has been added to allow users to jump back a level seamlessly.

FOCUS-43043- School Report: Include All Expected Fields

This update ensures that all relevant school fields are now visible on the new School Report, enhancing the completeness and usability of the report for users needing detailed school information.

FOCUS-43040- Invalid Address Report: New State Column

This update adds a new State column to the Invalid Address Report, enhancing the report's detail and making it easier to sort and manage addresses by state.

See Invalid Address Report for more information.

FOCUS-43032- Enrollment: Exclude Super Users in Enrollment System Preference Related Validations

This update modifies validations to grant Super Users the ability to override specific enrollment restriction system preferences. These include the ability to backdate and future date withdrawal and enrollment dates. This enhancement ensures that end-users with a Super User profile can perform necessary adjustments to accommodate special cases. Specific System Preferences include: Allow Users to Back Date W/D Dates, Allow Users to Future Date W/D Dates, Allow Users to Back Date Enrollment Dates, and Allow Users to Future Date Enrollment Dates.

FOCUS-43025- Discipline: New Priority Feature in Referral Codes & Actions

This update introduces a Priority column for Referral Codes to streamline the referral process. When priorities are configured within Referral Codes, an edit rule warning will now display if there is an attempt to complete a referral with conflicting priorities. Specifically, this warning triggers when referral fields with an alias called 'additional_codes' exist. During such instances, the system checks the priority numbers by comparing 'additional_codes' and 'discipline_code' selections. For optimal use of this feature, ensure that 'referral.additional_codes' has a higher priority number (e.g., 100) compared to the Discipline Code priority number (e.g., 1). Note that the 'additional_codes' field is not added by default; customers who wish to utilize this functionality must manually add this new numeric field with the alias 'additional_codes'.

See Referral Codes & Actions > Adding a Code for more information.

FOCUS-43017- Mobile App: Improve Display of In-Progress Optional Forms

This update resolves an issue in the Community Mobile App, where in-progress optional forms were not previously visible to students and parents in the Forms Summary section. With this fix, all forms, including those that are optional and in-progress, will now be displayed correctly in the mobile app, ensuring users have full visibility of their form statuses.

FOCUS-43011- Advanced Reports: Allow District Field Logging Field Inclusion in Advanced Reports

This update resolves a database error that occurred in Advanced Reports when a logging field associated with District Information was included. The issue has been fixed to ensure smooth generation and viewing of reports containing these specific logging fields.

FOCUS-42977- Scheduling: Exclude Inactive Schools in Course Catalog

This update resolves an issue where inactive schools were erroneously displayed as selectable options in the Course Catalog. With this fix, only active schools will appear, ensuring the accuracy and relevance of the selections available to users.

FOCUS-42965- Take Attendance: Logic Improvement to Check Enrollment

This update refines the Take Attendance by adding a clause to the logic which ensures that only students with enrollments for the day in question are included in the results. This prevents the creation of attendance records for students without valid enrollments on that day, enhancing the accuracy of attendance tracking.

FOCUS-42931- Scheduling: Migration to Correct courses.mp Data Misalignment

This update includes a data migration to correct inconsistencies in the courses.mp data, specifically addressing discrepancies where a course was set up as a full-year course but its sections were set up as semesters. This correction ensures that the number of requests and unit calculations are accurate across various scheduling reports.

FOCUS-42929- Assessment Module: Remove Withdrawn Students from District Assessment Report

This update corrects an issue where inactive or withdrawn students were still being displayed on the District Assessment Report within the Focus Assessment module. With this fix, the report will now only include active students, ensuring the accuracy and relevance of the assessment data presented.

FOCUS-42927- Mass Requests: Allow Select Multiple on Requests to Add

This update enhances the functionality on the new Scheduling, Mass Request page by allowing users to select multiple options from the 'Requests to Add' dropdown. Additionally, users can now add alternate requests to primary requests, increasing flexibility and efficiency in scheduling management.

See New Mass Requests for more information.

FOCUS-42892- Communication Platform: Improve Logic of Communication Queue Scheduled Job (Duplicate Prevention)

This update refines the logic of the Communication Queue scheduled job to prevent duplicate message processing. Previously, if a new job instance started while another was already running, there could be a brief overlap where both processed the same message. To address this, Advisory Locks have been introduced at various steps of the job, ensuring that each job instance will wait for the other to finish before proceeding. This enhancement guarantees that messages are processed uniquely, eliminating the risk of duplicates.

FOCUS-42886- Find-My-School: PreK Zone Compatibility

This update adds compatibility for the newly introduced PreK Zoning feature in the Address Catalog to the Find-My-School utility. Users can now accurately determine the appropriate PreK zones for addresses using this enhanced utility, ensuring that school zoning information is up-to-date and accessible.

See Address Catalog > Find My School for more information.

FOCUS-42761- Communication Platform: New Attendance Communication Report Feature

This update enhances Communication Reports by introducing a new Attendance tab, which consolidates all notifications sent through the Attendance Module. As part of this change, the 'Include Attendance' checkbox and associated columns have been removed from the Communication History section. The enhanced report now includes links to messages, recipients, and students, and both report totals and page totals dynamically update based on the applied filters. This improvement ensures a more organized and accessible view of attendance-related communications.

See Communication Reports for more information.

FOCUS-42741- New Search: Improve Scheduled into Inclusion Courses More Search Option

This update resolves an issue in the new Student Search feature where no results were returned when using the "Scheduled into Inclusion Courses" option under More Search Options. With this correction, the search function now properly retrieves and displays results for students scheduled into inclusion courses, ensuring the feature operates as expected.

FOCUS-42732- Rollover: Introduce Planning Periods as Rollover Option

This update introduces support for the new Planning Periods feature in the Rollover procedures. This enhancement ensures that Planning Periods are seamlessly integrated and maintained during the rollover process, facilitating smoother transitions and continuity across academic years.

See Rollover > Rolling Over Non-Student Data and Planning Periods for more information.

FOCUS-42504- Student Search: Improve Student Search Results, All Schools & Include Inactive

This update ensures that when the 'Search All Schools,' 'Include Inactive,' and 'Previous Years Inactive' options are activated, all students with a student_enrollment record at the schools the user has permission to access are displayed. This change addresses the previous limitation where students were not shown if they were not enrolled in the currently selected school but had enrollments in other schools the user had access to. Now, the displayed student list is consistent across all schools selected, providing a comprehensive view of all students ever enrolled at the accessible schools.

FOCUS-42253- Communication Platform: Polls & Signup Feature Enhancements

This update introduces two new features to the Communication Platform Expansion (Call-Out System): Polls and Signups. The Polls feature allows users to create and distribute polls to students, parents, and staff for quick and effective data collection on a variety of topics, such as Prom themes or entertainment preferences. Users can set descriptions, deadlines, questions, and choose from diverse response types including multiple choice, true/false, reactions, and free response. The Sign Ups feature enables users to create sign-up forms for events like Prom chaperones, available to students, parents, and staff. Similar to Polls, this feature allows for the setting of maximum responses to limit the number of participants. Teachers can use this feature to request classroom supplies at the beginning of the school year or to organize contributions for end-of-year parties. Unlike Polls, results are shown as sign-up numbers, not visual representations.

See Communication > Polls & Sign Ups Video Overview, Polls, Sign Ups for details.

FOCUS-41535- Report Cards: Resolve Multiple Report Cards in PDF Download

This update resolves an error encountered when exporting multiple report cards as a PDF from the "Published Report Cards & Transcripts" section on a student profile. Previously, selecting multiple report cards for export triggered a redeclaration of functions in ReportCards.php, leading to an error message. The fix implemented ensures that each function is checked for prior existence before declaration. If a function already exists, it will not be redeclared, thus preventing the error and allowing for successful PDF exports.

FOCUS-39663- Discipline | Integrating ChatGPT API into Referrals for Dynamic Referral Code Suggestions

This update enhances the Referrals system by introducing an optional feature that utilizes the ChatGPT API to automate the referral code selection process. Administrators can input a reason or description for the referral, and the system will suggest relevant referral codes based on this text. To activate this AI-driven functionality, administrators can enable the "AI Accessible" toggle under referral fields, streamlining the process of matching descriptions to the correct referral codes.

See Dynamic Discipline Code Suggestions using AI for more information.

FOCUS-43092- SSS: Resolve Options Missing on the BMP

This update resolves an issue in the Behavior PMP Event where the Student Response to Intervention dropdown options were previously missing. With this fix, these options are now correctly displayed in the Graph step of the Behavior PMP Event, ensuring that users have access to the necessary selections for accurate data entry and analysis.

FOCUS-42921- SSS: Improve School Displayed to Current Enrolled in Event Reporting

Before this update, the 'Campus Initiated At' displayed in the top right corner did not match the user's access rights, resulting in a "You do not have permission to view this event" message if the user lacked access to SSS in the 'Campus Initiated At'. This update ensures that the links to student info/SSS events now correctly display the student's currently enrolled school in the top right 'school' column on Event Reporting. The event should now load as expected, aligning access with the user's permissions.

FOCUS-42870- SSS: Improve Display of Progress Codes when Printing

Before this update, the printed progress codes in the IEP Goals Progress Report Event were not comma-separated, which could lead to confusion and readability issues. With this update, progress codes are now appropriately comma-separated, enhancing the clarity and professionalism of the printed reports.

FOCUS-42785- SSS: Add Support for Reading Success Plan (MO) & Gifted (OH) Program

This update introduces support for the Reading Success Plan (Missouri) and Gifted (Ohio) programs within the Site Administration>Focus Settings in the SSS module. This enhancement allows for better management and customization of these specific state programs, ensuring compliance and functionality within the system.