Early in the morning of December 17, 2013, we released the all-new Populi Admissions. No corner of Admissions went untouched—we refreshed everything from the functionality to the workflows to the technical framework that makes it all go. Additionally, we released a number of new features in Academics and—as you likely noticed—updated lots of visual elements throughout Populi.

Here's what's new since December 17...

Admissions

Applications are better in every way. The new design tool lets you build applications field-by-field and preview how it will look to applicants. Leads no longer need a user role or login to fill it out—they just go to their application's unique URL. Application Questions let you communicate with your Leads about any questions they have along the way. If you have multiple applications, you can charge a unique fee for each one, and tie each one to a different academic program. And that's just some of the big stuff with applications. Read all about them in our Knowledge Base.

We replaced the Prospects role with Leads. Leads are people for whom you can track Admissions-related information. You might find out about Leads any number of ways—including when they fill out the new Inquiry form or submit one of your new applications. The Lead Routing setting lets you set up a rotation among your Admissions staff to receive new Inquiries and Applications.

Admissions reporting is much improved: the standard reports come with a new filter that lets you get at your Admissions data from almost any angle. We also added a Funnel Report to help you analyze the factors that propel or dissuade your Leads in the admissions process.

Lead Sources give you specific insight into how your Leads learn about your school. You can include a bit of Lead Source data in the embed code for your Inquiry or Application form—so if you send out an email newsletter with an Apply Now link, you can get hard data on how effective that newsletter form proved to be.

A few other things:

• The Admissions Dashboard shows all admissions-related activity (Leads, Inquiries, application activity, etc.) and lets you jump right to what you need to work on next.
• The new Admissions Admin role creates an Admissions "super-user" with access to settings, application forms, and so on.
• The Scheduled Events tab in Communications lets you see every upcoming communication plan event (to-do, letter, email), complete with tools to change due dates, cancel events, and even cancel plans.

Academics

The new Transfer Credits report in Academics > Reporting lets you look over all the transfer courses at your school. Run reports on what you've rejected or approved, or find all the pending transfer credits and change their status to approved.

Term Student Fields let you track term-based custom information fields for your students. Say you have periodic "benchmarking" exams that your students take once a term—you now have an easy way to track that information over time.

You can now add greater detail to your P/F marks with the Pass/Fail grade scale in Academics > Settings.

Students can now see a detailed list of their attendance record for any of their courses.

Customizations

The new Customizations tab lets Account Admins control a wide range of Populi settings. Check out this blog post for more details.

New Look

Maybe you noticed? From the login screen to various buttons and icons, Adam Sentz has refreshed Populi's look in ways obvious and subtle.

Behind-the-scenes

We're always working to improve Populi's speed, reliability, and resilience. A little before the big Admissions update, we upgrades Populi's infrastructure with some amazing new servers and other back end improvements. Consequently, Populi is routinely handling twice as many logged-in users as this time last year—without even breaking a sweat.