Roadmap

We have updated the Drop-in Kiosk- the label "Preferred Pronouns" has been simplified to "Pronouns" to reflect current inclusive language practices better. Additionally, administrators now have the option to disable the display of pronouns, providing more flexibility in how information is presented. These changes aim to enhance user comfort and ensure our platform remains adaptable to diverse needs.

The Drop-In Kiosk feature enables students to easily view their enrolled courses when they check in. This functionality enhances the efficiency of drop-in sessions by allowing students to quickly access their course information, ensuring a smooth and personalized experience.

You can now see the email and student SSO ID on the student's account, sourced from the student metadata, or the information registered to the account.

Help Center FAQ: Automated Penji Account Deletion

You can now create segments based on course or student metadata for Penji Pathways.

Help Center Article: Managing IT Integrations

Once your IT team and Penji have completed the integrations, you can manage these integrations within your community settings.

We've upgraded our system to support Canvas LTI 1.3 integrations, please email support@penjiapp.com if you would like to work through this. 

We've released a fix so that iOS users who have cross-fade accessibility options enabled do not see a blank screen when loading the app

Tutors can pick times when they're open for drop-in sessions, but they can choose which courses they're available for during those times. This means they can focus on helping with specific subjects at different times. For example, a tutor might help with math on Mondays and Wednesdays, but switch to English on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

We've recently updated our Data Dashboard with four (4) new tabs:

• Utilization - a comprehensive view of student engagement, including metrics such as total visits, hours per student, average visits, and absences.
• Provider Availability - insights on provider schedules and appointment booking metrics
• Heat Map - insights on appointment distribution across various dimensions
• Students - insights on student engagement and participation within your educational community.

When students are in the drop-in queue, they will be shown their position in line. For example, instead of displaying a wait time of 10 minutes, students will see "You are #3 in line," providing them with a clear understanding of their place in the queue.

We've identified and updated parts of the platform to better interact with screen readers, voice-over commands, and different zooms (ex: 150% vs. 100%).

Now, IT can connect to the SFTP server and test their files all through one unique set up link. This should limit the amount of emails needed to set up the integration as well as speed up the process of completing the integrations. All schools will use this new process for any updates to SFTP or any new SFTP connections.

Tutors can set aside certain times for tutoring sessions related to particular subjects or courses. This means tutors have the flexibility to specialize in particular subjects and offer their expertise during designated time slots. For example, a tutor might allocate Monday afternoons for math tutoring and Wednesday mornings for English tutoring.For example, a tutor might allocate Monday afternoons for math tutoring and Wednesday mornings for English tutoring.

For retroactive sessions, an admin can now leave feedback. These feedback questions are the same questions that are asked of providers after a session. Students and providers will not be prompted or given the option to leave feedback on retroactively added sessions, and the feedback can only be added when the retroactive session is logged. Additionally, adding a retroactive session on behalf of a student will not trigger the student email receipts.

This feature is conditional on the feature and will only appear if, "Allow students to join multiple events with the same topic" is set to "Not Allowed". The options here are "Allowed" or "Not Allowed". If you set this to, "Allowed" students will be able to join a waitlist for all events, regardless if they are already registered for an event with the same topic/course. For example, if a student signs up for Event A and they want to join Event B, which is for the same topic/course and already has a waitlist, they will be able to join the waitlist.

Providers will see the kiosk link (and QR code) in the confirmation emails, calendar invites, and reminder emails. Additionally, they can access the kiosk link (and QR code) when they are logged into Penji and go to record attendance for the event.

If this is set to "Not Allowed", students will not be able to sign up and join more than one event with the same topic/course. For example, if a student signs up for Event A and they want to join Event B, which has open capacity and is for the same course, they will not be able to. There will be a yellow banner across the top of their screen that says, "Sorry! You must leave the event “[EVENT NAME]” before you can join this event because it is for the same topic/course.". To join Event B, the student will need to leave Event A and then sign up for Event B.

If this is set to, "Allowed" there are no restrictions imposed on students when they try to join multiple events with the same topic/couse.

This removes the need for providers to log into Penji and claim/activate their account. To use this feature, you will want to download the new provider.csv template and upload that file with your provider information. The new file has a column for first and last names. Once the file is uploaded into your community you can:

• Add appointment hours, drop-in hours, and create events for the provider
• Start booking appointments on behalf of the student with the provider in the create-a-session flow
• See the provider's name on the eligibility tab next to their email

From the admin panel > school access > you will see a visits table. This is a single export with all modes of support for all communities (campus-wide). You can either manually download the file or set this up as an automatic export via SFTP. You must have school-level admin access to view this file in Penji.

If enabled, this feature allows providers to specify what type of appointment they would like to be available for and when. For example, your provider can set it so that they are available for 1:1 single occurrence appointments on Monday, weekly recurring 1:1 appointments on Tuesday, and both appointment types the rest of the week. This setting can be enabled or disabled.

Note that if you disable this setting, neither admin nor providers will be able to specify appointment type preferences when adjusting provider hours. The provider will automatically be available for all appointment types during all hours.

Chat is on by default. You have the option to hide and disable chat from users when they are on the mobile app or website (web.penjiapp.com).

When reviewing Penji data (either from an automated SFTP IT export or from the admin panel exports) there is a new column titled, "Unique ID". No Penji interaction within your school will have the same ID, across modes and communities.

On the admin and web platform, whenever there is a date or time listed, the community timezone is shown. Everything will be shown within the community timezone, regardless of where your students, providers, or admin, are using Penji.

The session placeholder card will be removed from the student screen, based on the number of days feedback is allowed for, regardless of when/if the provider submits feedback

If a student was logging in for the first time, they were told "No Account Found", and would have to know to press "Continue" to move through the onboarding flow. We've updated this warning to make it clearer to students how to proceed through the onboarding flow.

Shown if Students log in through Email

Shown if Students log in through the Share Link, Canvas, or SSO

From the admin panel (settings > general > “Calendar invite forwarding email”), you can designate an email to receive all of the calendar invites for appointments and events. Note that the calendar invites will be sent in the form of an email that you can accept, decline, or respond to as a maybe. This will allow you to see in one calendar view, everything that is going on in your community in real time. Additionally, within the calendar invite, you will be able to see location details including the online link (ex the Zoom meeting link) and the student's responses to the agenda questions.

Verbiage like "Tutor Submitted Length" now changes based on what providers (Advisor, Coach, etc). are labeled in the community.

Within settings, you now have the option to hide your community from users on the web and mobile app platform. Regardless of if the user is on the provider or student list, they will not have access to see the community. If using the share link to access this community, and the community is hidden, the user will see a pop-up that states, "You are not eligible to view the community".

There are 5 new charts within the Data Dashboard that we hope help to streamline your reporting and provide valuable analytics. Those charts are listed below. By December 2024, our goal is to have these charts available for all modes of support (Drop-In, Events, and Sessions. If you have any feedback on the reports or have any ideas for future reports, please email support@penjiapp.com.

1. Session Composition
   
2. Provider Availability (Sessions)
3. Topic Details (Sessions)
4. Usage Patterns (Sessions)
5. Student Duration (Sessions)

From the admin panel (settings > general > ”Teach screen buttons”) you can add additional buttons that link out to other websites specifically for your providers. These buttons will not be visible to students. A few use cases for this feature are below:

- If your providers also have limited admin access, you could add a button labeled “Penji Admin” that links to admin.penjiapp.com

- If your tutors fill out other forms for Payroll, you could link that here

- Training materials or specific articles from the help center that would help your providers

- If your tutors check in students for drop-in, you could include the drop-in Kiosk Link

Within the Events Tab > Manage, you can export the “Export Events CSV” which contains a list of all the events in your community (past, current, and upcoming). Each event is its own row in the export and contains basic event details.

Now, three options are listed in the create a session flow, “Standard”, “Retroactive” and “Override”. The Retroactive and Override options are the same as before. With standard, you can now see what the student sees for availability and are able to see when providers for a specific topic are available. This flow takes into consideration lead times, community/provider unavailable times, calendar connections, booked appointments, and the weeks ahead limit. We hope this improves the ability of you all to make appointments on behalf of students. During this flow, you’ll input a student’s name and the topic you want to book the appointment for and will only be shown providers who are available to teach that topic. Once you select a time, you will then choose a provider and a location based on the provider’s availability. If you filter to a provider or location in the availability screen, you do not have to do this step.

Helper video: 

Your tutors will be able to adjust events. This updates any current limited admin user’s access. This is explained in the help center article linked here.

Your tutors will be able to adjust their own check-ins. This updates any current limited admin user’s access. This is explained in the help center article linked here.

Change "Student View" to "Student/Provider View" to better indicate that this is for the student and provider view (link to web.penjiapp.com).

You can allow your students to filter to a specific provider's availability in the booking flow. This is similar to how filter by location works. You can enable this setting by navigating to Admin Panel > Settings > Sessions > change “Provider Filter in the booking flow” to enabled.

We have a brand new, long-awaited Events Mode! This mode is an update to our old group model, Sections. We will no longer be updating the Sections mode, but you can continue using sections if you would like. We took all the feedback we received about Sections (positives and negatives) and used it to create Events. To enable this, navigate to settings > events > enable events.

Here is our Help Center Article, Setting up Events.

The default Date Range on the Student History View is now 1-year, vs. all of the data. You can still adjust the date range that you would like to

We've made large imports more stable so that admin can import them successfully. 

Regardless of mode (Log or Queue), you can now edit the start time of the check-in. If you are using Queue Mode, you will not be able to edit the check-in while the status is "Waiting" or "In-Progress". Editing the start time will adjust the end time, as the duration of the check-in will stay the same. You'll want to adjust the duration of the visit to adjust the end time.

Regardless of mode (Log or Queue), you can now "delete" a check-in, which will record the status as "canceled". If you are using Queue Mode, you will not be able to edit the check-in while the status is "Waiting" or "In-Progress". When you export the check_in.csv, the "Cancel Reason" will automatically include, "Retroactively cancelled".

In the past, when an online location was enabled for your community (Zoom, Webex, Teams, etc.) providers had to set those online locations up before they could navigate elsewhere in the community. Now, there is an option to skip this setup and explore the app (navigate away from the page). However, Providers will continue to be asked to set up these locations each time they log in until they are set up.

You can set how many minutes in advance a student can cancel or skip a session without incurring a penalty/triggering the no-show rules. A value of 0 allows cancellations without any penalty. If a student tries to cancel or skip a session within the cancellation lead time, a popup will appear letting them know that this will count as a "Late Cancel". If the student chooses to cancel the session anyway, they will automatically be marked as absent. More information on how this affects your data and student communication can be found within the help center article Appointment Settings, under the header, "Student Cancellation Lead Time Rules (Admin Panel)".

This can be set under settings > sessions > Cancellation Lead Time

Previously students received an email saying “you have a requested a session” and providers received a “you have been invited” email, regardless of if auto-confirm was enabled. Now, when auto-confirm sessions are enabled for your community, both the student and provider "extra" emails will not be sent out.

As an admin, you can decide whether or not you want students to complete feedback after a session (for both appointments and sections). From the admin panel, you will either Enable or Disable this feature. Moreover, you can decide how long after the session the student is allowed to submit their feedback. For example, if this setting was set for 2 days after, the student would have two days to complete the feedback before it is hidden from their learn screen.

Note that adjusting these settings will apply to sessions that have already happened and future sessions. So, if you disable student feedback, or make the feedback submission date length shorter, past "feedback needed" sessions will be hidden from the student's learn screen.

Visually, we have updated the availability calendar so that it is clearer that you are setting weekly availability. We have removed the dates at the top of the screen and Sunday will always be listed as the first day.

Previously, for a user to be eligible to access your community (when it is set to "Use List") their email needed to be included on either the student.csv (from IT or manually imported) or the tutor.csv/provider.csv. 

Now, the system will check community eligibility by looking at a user's email and SSO ID, not just the email. One of those fields on the CSV needs to match the user's account for the user to access your community. This should help in situations where users could have multiple emails, but only one SSO ID.

When student details on the student.csv are updated by IT, these changes will also be updated within the Penji system as well. For this feature, we have added a Penji Controlled setting to "Allow Users to edit their first/last name". If you would like the student file from IT to be the single source for a user's name, we will want to disable this. If you would like students to be able to edit their own names, regardless of what is on the IT file, this setting will be enabled. The default for all current/new communities is to keep this enabled. Please email support@penjiapp.com if you do not want students to be able to edit their preferred names.

During the Request Session flow, if a student were to arrive at the "No Times Available" screen, they will now see a "Back to home" button. One of our partners during a usability study found that students were getting stuck when they reached the "No Times Available" screen. We hope this improves the student journey and helps to encourage them to look into other modes of support and courses.

We have added a school-level admin role. Now, when you log in to your community you will see the headers "Schools" and "Communities" and dependent on your access level, you will be able to click into your school. The school view merges all of the data from all of your communities into one student tab. So, you will be able to see a student's interactions within all of the communities in one place. For right now, the only function here is to view the student history. Once you have access as a school-level admin, you can add other admin through settings > admin, like in each individual community. If you would like to be given school-level admin access, email support@penjiapp.com.

We now have a link in the admin panel that will directly take you to the Student View for your community! It is on the upper right-hand corner of the admin panel.

If you are using the asterisk method (*) to certify providers for many courses/topics, you must re-upload your provider eligibility file to capture ANY changes to your courses/topics list, including updates from IT-imported courses/topics.

When a student goes to book a weekly appointment, if a session (1:1, group, or weekly) is already scheduled within the weekly series, that time will not be shown to students. 

The time will only be shown for single instances that do not already conflict with what is scheduled. 

During the Admin Create Session flow, you can now enter a user's email that is not a school email (ex: @gmail.edu). Users will receive a confirmation email that contains the session details and calendar invite. These users will not be able to access Penji through the mobile app or website.

Upgrade to input form to allow for rich text in the email content

We have fixed the automatic import order so that the Course.csv will always import before the Course_Enrollment.csv, reducing incorrect error emails sent to program coordinators 

The source for student metadata is a collection of "custom student metadata", uploaded through the CSV file on the admin panel, and the data received from your IT team. Editing the student_metadata.csv file on the admin panel will only affect the custom student metadata that was previously imported through the student_metadata.csv, not the information within the Student Metadata SFTP Import. To manually upload custom student metadata, please review the article, Optional (Admins): Manual Upload of Student Metadata.

IT article: Optional Admins IT Integrations

The source for course enrollment is a collection of "custom course enrollment", uploaded through the CSV file on the admin panel, and the data received from your IT team. Editing the course_enrollment.csv file on the admin panel will only affect the custom course enrollment that was previously imported through the course_enrollment.csv, not the information within the Course Enrollment SFTP Import. To manually upload custom course enrollment, please review the article, Optional (Admins): Manual Upload for Course Enrollment.

IT article: Optional Admins IT Integrations

The source for students is a collection of "custom students", uploaded through the CSV file on the admin panel, and the data received from your IT team. Editing the student.csv file on the admin panel will only affect the custom students that were previously imported through the student.csv, not the information within the Student SFTP Import. To manually upload custom students, please review the article, Optional (Admins): Manual Upload for Students.

IT article: Optional Admins IT Integrations

When you go to export your session or check-in data, you can select a specific date range. If you still want to export all of your data, you can export the data without a date range.

The student responses to the Agenda Screen will be included in the calendar event details 

When students go to book an appointment, you have the option to set custom agenda questions for them to fill out. Previously, this was known as the "Topic Screen" and it only allowed for one Long Answer and one Checkbox question. Now, the "Agenda Screen" can include Short Answer, Long Answer, Drop-Down, Checkboxes, and File Upload. You will set these questions within each appointment format and you can add, edit, make required, or rearrange the questions.

Other key details: 

• Providers will see the responses within the session placeholder card on their teach screen.
• Admins can see the Agenda Screen responses on the sessions tab by clicking into a session or by downloading the session.csv export.
• These questions can be answered when an admin goes through the "Create a Session" flow.

We have created a script that will output all provider payroll data into a single spreadsheet. For some programs, this is much easier come payroll time. We can give you access upon request - please let me know if you'd like this!

For communities that have the student metadata integration turned on, or who have manually uploaded a CSV, the details from the Student Metadata file will be shown on the session and check-in export. We hope this helps programs with their data analysis.

Check out https://www.penjiapp.com/ - we've updated our website to better showcase how Penji can streamline the student experience through communications, scheduling, and as a student CRM.

Now when you click on a session, the session details are organized similarly to the student metadata, in a list format.

The column "Source" will now appear on your session exports and under the session tab on the admin panel. The source indicates who booked the appointment (by their email) and through which channel. "Student" would be through the student flow (either on web.penjiapp.com or the mobile app) and "Admin" would be through the create a session flow on the admin website.

There is a new provider feedback question, "Email Session Receipt". With this, providers can enter an email address that will be sent the session receipt. This applies to 1:1, groups, and sections. Also, you can add as many of these questions as you would like for the provider to fill in. The session receipt includes:

• Student Name
• Date & Time of the session
• Course (Subject)
• Location
• Attendance
  • For 1:1 sessions, attendance will be listed as present or absent
  • For sections and group sessions, only those who were present will be listed in the email receipt. Absent students will not be shown.
• Duration (based on provider-submitted feedback)
• Topic Screen Details (1:1 and group appointments only, not sections)
• If "Share provider feedback in session email receipts" is enabled, Penji will also include the provider feedback in the email receipt. This setting is explained within, "Student & Provider Email Receipts - Sessions (Admin Panel)" below.

When a session is skipped, that time is added back to the provider's availability, allowing other students to book the provider during the "skipped" session.

The title of the calendar invite will now read, "[student fname] and [tutor fname] - [community short name]". This affects all calendar invites across all modes of Penji.

Within the event description and email, the course and location will be included. This affects all calendar invites across all modes of Penji.

We've added a "What's New" tab to the admin panel. Clicking this will take you directly to our feature changelog, to review all updates. We hope this makes it easier to keep up to date with Penji Releases!

When students go to book an appointment, once they are on the Calendar of Availability screen (Pick a Time), they are able to filter down to a specific location. When filtered, they will only see available hours for that specific location. If the student filters to a specific location and then selects an appointment time, they will skip the typical location screen altogether in the booking flow.

For recurring sessions, sections, and provider-managed sections, we've added a feature where different users have the option to cancel one of the scheduled sessions in the series. Previously, if you wanted to cancel one of the sessions, your only option was to cancel the entire series. 

Some highlights

• Depending on the mode, students, providers, and admin are able to skip one in the series
• Students and Providers will get notified when a session is skipped (no matter who skips it)
• This is available for 1:1 appointments, group appointments, provider-managed sections, and sections (this feature works the same for all modes of Penji)

Help Center articles: 

• Admin Perspective
• Student Perspective
• Provider Perspective

In October, we began rolling out color contrast adjustments to our button and text colors on web.penjiapp.com and our mobile app to improve our accessibility standards and have now completed the updates. 

When the Student Imports are enabled, searching for a student in the "Create a Session" flow in the Admin Panel used to take a long time or not show all results due to the large number of students from the import. We have improved this feature so that searching a student's name when creating a session is faster. This fix relates to searching for a student by name and email.

The Providers Eligibility tab has been fixed so that a provider will not show up in the Eligibility tab if they are not currently on the Tutors CSV. 

The first screen when students go to book an appointment or search for drop-in hours used to read "Which [course] do you want help with?". The word [course] is specific to your community and could be "topic", "coach", "class", "subject", etc. We have now updated this text to read "Select your [course]". This update should help programs that are not only using Penji for tutoring, but also for advising, coaching, etc. If you would like to update your verbiage for [course], please email support@penjiapp.com.

These community-specific share links will bring a user directly into your Penji community. 

If the user isn't signed in yet upon clicking the link, they'll be asked to log in through SSO. Once they submit their SSO login credentials, they will then go straight to your community. If the user is already signed in upon clicking the link, they will go directly to your community. 

Overall, these new share links are to help reduce the number of clicks it takes for a student to find and access your community. SSO must be set up in order to use share links.

Either uploaded manually or through an IT integration, Student Metadata is now visible in the Students tab under each student's profile. This is our first release to incorporate Student Metadata within Penji, and we plan on incorporating it elsewhere for easy reporting. How to manually upload Student Metadata, and examples of where it is shown, can be found in our Help Center article, Student Metadata.

Providers can now connect their Google Calendar to Penji. 

This works similarly to the Outlook integration. With the Google Calendar integration, Penji will check Providers' available times shown to students against their connected Google Calendar. Any events from their Google Calendar that conflict with their Penji Calendar's availability will be removed from the available time slots shown to students. We hope this will limit the need for Providers to frequently change their availability within Penji. 

Providers can integrate their Google Calendar by reading our Help Center article, Connecting Your Google Calendar.

The lead time of a session/appointment can now be edited from the Admin Panel (Settings > Sessions > Student Session Booking Lead Time Rules).

This is a Section Waitlist feature for admin-managed Sections. 

Admins can add a waitlist to each individual Section. Once a Section's waitlist has been enabled, students who want to join a Section that is at full capacity have the option to join its waitlist instead. This feature allows students to see all offered Sections within a community, regardless of their current capacity. 

The full feature is described in our Help Center article, Sections Waitlist.

Providers can connect their Outlook Calendar to Penji. 

With this integration, Penji will check Providers' available times shown to students against their Outlook Calendar. Any events from their Outlook Calendar that conflict with their Penji Calendar availability will be removed from the available time slots shown to students. We hope this will limit the need for Providers to frequently change their availability within Penji. 

How Providers can integrate their Outlook Calendar is explained in the Help Center article, Connecting Your Outlook Calendar.

We have updated our cancellation and confirmation emails for Sections. The Help Center article "Setting up Sections" walks through the different situations when these emails appear under the header "Editing the CSV".

This is the first version of different Penji "Roles." The next version will allow for more customization in what different types of admin users can see and do.

With this first version, Limited Admins will be able to log in to the admin website and access to the Students and Sessions Tabs. More information on what Limited Admins can see and do can be found in the Help Center article, Admins: Limited Admin Access. To enable the Limited Admin Role, please email support@penjiapp.com.

This allows you to edit, add, rearrange or make required both student and provider feedback questions from the Admin Panel. These feedback questions appear after a session. Examples of this update can be found in the Help Center article "Admins: Appointment Settings" under the features "Provider Session Feedback (Admin Panel)" and "Student Session Feedback (Admin Panel) ".

This feature allows you to change the date and time of scheduled sessions. 

Please note that you cannot reschedule a session with any other status (canceled, pending, or completed), and cannot reschedule weekly recurring sessions at this time. However, rescheduling weekly recurring session is on our Penji Roadmap -- we hope to release this feature soon!

For group sessions, rescheduling the date and time will reschedule the session for all other group members. Providers and students will get notified when the date and/or time are changed by an admin through an email containing the updated calendar event. Examples of this update can be found in our Help Center article, Editing Session Details.

With Provider Unavailable Times, you can block off a certain range of unavailable dates/times for a specific provider.

For more information on how this affects Sections, weekly recurring appointments, and so on, please review the bottom of this Help Center article, How to Set-Up Providers.

You can control whether or not drop-in email receipts are sent to students and Providers from the Admin Panel's Settings. 

The default for this setting is Student Drop-In email receipts: Enabled, Provider Drop-In email receipts: Disabled, and Share Provider feedback in Drop-In email receipts: Disabled. These are the same default settings as with session receipts. 

More information on this feature is available in the Help Center article, Drop-In Settings.

The Visits table in the Admin Panel's Data Dashboard now includes student SSO and Email.

During onboarding, there is a screen that asks if the user is there to "Learn" or "Teach". These words are not customizable. We have the option to remove this screen entirely, and each user will be directed to the student view (your "Learn Screen") for that community.

We now have a link in the admin panel that will directly take you to the Student View for your community! It is on the upper right-hand corner of the admin panel.

Within settings, you now have the option to hide your community from users on the web and mobile app platform. Regardless of if the user is on the provider or student list, they will not have access to see the community. If using the share link to access this community, and the community is hidden, the user will see a pop-up that states, "You are not eligible to view the community".