We are pleased to announce another update for the PlusPortals. While this is a minor update, a number of important enhancements and feature fixes are included:
- The E-Mail screen now loads more quickly.
- The list of recipients will now be saved in e-mail drafts.
- The Messages screen will now sort properly, with messages in descending order by date.
The PlusPortals were updated during the early morning (EDT) on December 20, 2016. Please review the full details of this update below.
Features and Enhancements
The E-Mail Inbox, Drafts, and Sent Items Screens Will Now Load Faster for Users with a Large Number of E-Mails
Users rarely need to see e-mails from earlier than the past 30 days. Therefore, a default filter has been applied to these screens, showing only e-mails from within the last 30 days each time the screen loads.
This default filter can be seen and edited by clicking the Filter icon in the Created Date column. In order to see e-mails from before the past 30 days, edit or clear the filter, or click the Clear Search button to clear the default filter.
The Recipient Lists for the To:, Cc:, and Bcc: Fields Will Now Be Saved with E-Mail Drafts
When creating an e-mail and saving the e-mail as a draft to be sent at a later time, recipients added to the e-mail will be saved with the draft (as illustrated in the image below). The e-mail can be edited and sent later from the Drafts folder by clicking the Pencil on Paper icon.
Feature Fixes
- The sorting of the Messages screen has been returned to descending order by date, showing the most recent messages first. In the recent November 7th update, sorting and filtering functionality was added to this screen. Unfortunately, this caused messages to be sorted in ascending order by date, showing the oldest messages first.
- Admin users can now reply to messages they receive in the Messages feature. A Reply button has been added on the Messages grid for any messages with a “Received” status, allowing the user to reply directly to the message.
- Admin users can now send messages to all user-types using the Messages feature. Prior to this update, instead of a Send button, Admin users had a Save button on the Create Message screen. If an Admin user created a message and clicked the Save button, the message would be sent to recipients, but in rare instances some individual recipients did not receive the message. This has been addressed with the new Send button.
The times when e-mails were sent and received will now be shown using the same time zone on the Inbox and Sent Items screens and the E-Mail Details screen. Previously, the time shown on the Inbox and Sent Items screens reflected the time zone of the school, while the time shown on the E-Mail Details screen reflected Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
- Teachers will now be able to view details for all students’ contacts on the Students tab (if enabled in the Permissions → Teachers area). Prior to this update, if a student’s name contained characters with accents, such as é, ö, à, etc., the Contacts screen would appear with an error message.
- Teachers will no longer be unable to add a Calendar category with the name “Homework.” Previously, when a teacher attempted to add this category, an error would occur stating that the category already exists.
- The PlusPortalAdmin account will no longer be able to be deleted from the PlusPortals. In the November 7th update, the Trash Can icon appeared on the PlusPortalAdmin account user line in the Manage Accounts > Admin area. If clicked, the user was deleted and needed to be restored. This icon has been removed from the screen.
Upcoming Speed Enhancements
Rediker Software strives to bring you programs with the best feature sets and user experience on the market. To this effect, we are pleased to announce an upcoming update to the PlusPortals, scheduled for early January. This update will be focused on significant improvements to the loading speeds of several areas and processes of the PlusPortals. The PlusPortals team has been hard at work on this effort since October, and we are nearly finished with enhancements for the following areas and processes:
- PlusPortals Home Page (this refers to the enhanced login page that many of our schools use)
- Authentication of users’ login credentials
- Initial landing page that teachers, parents, and students see when they log in
- Inbox, Drafts, and Sent Items folders of the E-Mail feature
- Students’ details in the Groups feature
While the above improvements should have a significant positive impact on your users’ day-to-day experiences, this is only the initial phase of our work to enhance loading speeds in the PlusPortals. From this point forward, additional loading speed enhancements to other areas and processes will be included in most updates to the PlusPortals.
If you have any questions related to this update, please e-mail [email protected] or call Tech Support at 800-882-2994