Latest News from the Riipen team

What's new in November 2024

Emily avatar
Shared by Emily • December 03, 2024

New features & Improvements

  • The team page has an updated look, separating tasks into completed, upcoming and overdue sections for clarity.
  • As an educator, I can now set a maximum size for a team under Experience Settings > Participants.
  • Setting teams to be “Individual” now changes the UI for creating teams, starting projects, applying to projects and the team page itself in some minor ways to reflect that no other team members exist.
  • Maximum pending applications per learner: As an educator, I can limit the number of pending applications a learner can be part of at a time. This is primarily a PPD use case, allowing programs to prevent learners from "over-applying" to projects and inundating employers with applications that can't all be accepted.
  • A company profile now has a representation field to capture tags mostly related to diversity and inclusion, including Women-Owned, Black-Owned, Public Benefit Corporation, and many others. We can add tags as needed. This is also an optional field in the project wizard's company step.
  • Scale improvement for multiple choice questions: a user creating a survey can now copy-paste a list from another source into the option field of a multiple choice question and it will automatically create up to 200 options from that list.
  • First step of sign up wizard shortened and visually improved for all users. (No changes to required fields.)
  • Emails about project closure in the marketplace have been updated to further clarify there is no impact on applications or teams.
  • In the match request wizard, when selecting a project or experience from the dropdown you can now see a date related to the content (close date, for experiences; updated date, for projects) to help you distinguish between similarly-named items,
  • When an existing user has a membership created via an import, they now receive a distinct notification email alerting them of this.
  • As an educator, when I allow teams or projects to set the dates in my experience, I can now set date ranges that teams or projects must conform to. This extends on the existing “maximum start date” and “maximum end date” feature to allow educators to provide minimum dates as well.
  • As an educator with admin access, I need to be able to differentiate between my pending match requests and the portals pending match requests. A user by default sees only their experiences' match requests and can filter to view all portal match requests if they choose.
  • As a learner, I shouldn't have the worklog sidebar component until kickoff is complete for the current team
  • Add matches count column to Portal > Companies table.
  • Tasks on the team page that are for employers are now labelled to make it clear.
  • Work log entries should be sorted by Date of work by default
  • "User" filter on work log should be inline on the page, not in the advanced filters modal.
  • As a learner, if the experience assignment type is self-assign, the button on the match page should say 'Join project' rather than 'Start'.

What's new in October 2024

Emily avatar
Shared by Emily • December 03, 2024

New features & Improvements

  • As an educator, I can now choose to generate my experience content with AI.
  • As a learner, you can now see and log work from the team page's details tab. If your team's experience has work logs enabled, you will see a list of your recent work logs in the sidebar.
  • As an educator, you can now identify your experience as a repeat. This helps our internal team track metrics more accurately and better understand educator engagement on the platform.
  • Milestone and submission emails to learners now clearly explain the importance of making submissions before deadlines. The emails include the message: “Failure to submit on Riipen by the due date may prevent you from continuing with the project.”
  • As an employer I can flag a team or learner; as a learner I can flag an employer or all project admins. Flags are automatically reported to the experience administrator(s).
  • As the creator of an agreement, I can now choose to require either a digital signature or a manual one.
  • A survey creator can add restrictions on answers in surveys. A text answer can be required to contain or not contain certain text, have a minimum or maximum length, and follow a specific format. Number answers can be required to have a minimum or maximum value.
  • Employers can set a maximum number of requests or matches for their project, causing it to automatically close when that max is reached.
  • Copy changes in feedback wizard to clarify for employers that feedback is visible to learners only after they provide return feedback or 10 days elapse
  • As an educator, I should only be able to request to join an experience if I am a member of the experience's portal
  • As an employer, I should only be able to request to join a project if I am a member of the project's company
  • When creating a new import, a template link is now available from the import page.
  • An educator can now choose to import invitations to an experience, instead of importing members directly.
  • Add match compatibility percentage pill to match created emails
  • Tasks and events view in user dashboard are condensed to two columns to save vertical space
  • Visual improvement to team page “benefits” component

What's new in September 2024

Emily avatar
Shared by Emily • December 03, 2024

New features & Improvements

  • As an educator or employer, I can now cancel a match directly from the match page if no teams are assigned.
  • Experience page meta data sections have been updated for clarity to surface the most important properties of the experience to any viewer.
  • As an experience administrator, I can no longer change the start date of my experience if it has already passed and teams have started projects. However, I can still update the start date if no teams have initiated projects.
  • As a portal admin, the Project Template form now includes additional fields to better align with the information employers need to provide.
  • As a learner, I can now see the main project admin during the introduction step of the kickoff/application wizard.
  • The project name now updates automatically on the Matches and Requests tabs if a project name has changed after match request updates.
  • As an experience admin, I can now see suggested sample questions in the matchmaking wizard. These sample questions help guide educators and encourage the use of optional questions in the experience wizard.
  • When I create a new project template as an experience admin, it now automatically links to the corresponding experience.
  • Survey reminder notifications are no longer sent for cancelled teams.
  • As an educator, you can now attach files to experience updates.
  • The following details have been added to the survey export CSV file: project name, project ID, company name, company ID, experience name, and experience ID.
  • As a learner, you now have easier access to the Agreement signing button on all devices, so you can complete the process without confusion or unnecessary scrolling.
  • Employers can now see the status of their teams with their start and end dates on every project page. The information is displayed on the sidebar under "Your recent match" and "Teams."
  • As a portal administrator, you can now invite educators to a department and add them to multiple departments. Portal members can filter educators by department.
  • Portal administrators can now invite companies to a department. Portal members can filter companies by department.
  • As an employer, unresponsive matches are now automatically closed to applications.
  • Learners and employers are now redirected to a new tab when clicking the "Share on LinkedIn" button.
  • Users now receive both an email and a platform task notification when they receive feedback from a user they haven’t yet provided feedback to.
  • Experience administrators can now set instructions for payments.
  • The survey creation button text and confirmation messages have been updated for a clearer user experience: "Save & exit" now saves a draft of your survey; "Publish survey" confirms that your survey is published.
  • Experience administrators can now set instructions for learner work logs in the following location: Experience > Settings > Features > Enabled work logs > Instructions for learner work logs text field.
  • Experience administrators can now customize the text shown after final submission in the following location: Experience > Settings > Project Management: Participants > The final input.
  • As an educator, I now have the option to add learners via magic link

What's new in August 2024

Emily avatar
Shared by Emily • September 09, 2024

New features & Improvements

  • As an employer, I now receive a “Create Project” button in my sign-up email.
  • As an employer, I am now prompted to create new projects with an initial prompt as opposed to wholly from scratch.
  • As an employer, when creating a project, an automatic quality evaluation is conducted based on the content of my project. If the quality is high, the project creation can continue. If the quality is low, changes will need to be made before moving forward.
  • Improved wording in both the project wizard to improve understanding of what is required and Experience Wizard to:
  • Improved wording in both the experience wizard to improve understanding of what is required
  • As an employer or educators, I now see colored visual cues for compatibility scores on a match request page.
  • Team properties are now included in the CSV export for payments
  • As a portal administrator, I can now add custom email footers per user type.
  • As a portal administrator, I can also add custom footer content to my portal.
  • Dynamic automatic numbering has been added to survey questions.
  • Portal webpage links now open in new tabs

What's new in July 2024

Emily avatar
Shared by Emily • August 08, 2024

New features & Improvements

  • As a portal admin, I can now add resources that will be applied to all experiences within my portal.
  • As an experience administrator, you can now add notes to teams.
  • As an experience administrator, you can now set surveys to be required for each individual learner in a team to complete.
  • As an experience administrator, I can now add resources to my experience.
  • As an educator, I can now select the experience level of my learners in the experience wizard.
  • As an educator, I can now see more project meta information in the match request email notification.
  • As an educator, I now see a success screen after I accept a match request.
  • As a project administrator, I can now add resources to my project.
  • As an employer, I can now set the difficulty level of the project.
  • As an employer, I can now set the hours of my project.
  • As an employer, as soon as I create a portal pass application I’m redirected to the portal pass application’s page now instead of the portal’s profile page.
  • As an employer, I will no longer see the number of projects wanted in the match request email notification.
  • As an employer, I am redirected back to the match request wizard after creating a new project.
  • As an employer, under the “My Projects” tab > projects table, I can now search by experience name.
  • As an employer, any new project will now have a main category pre-selected.
  • As an employer, any new project will now have sub-categories pre-selected.
  • As an employer, I now see a success screen after I accept a match request.
  • As an employer, I now see a success screen after I accept an application.
  • As a learner, I can now receive a task for completing a milestone.
  • As a learner, I am redirected to the team page after completing a survey.
  • As a learner, if I have signed all agreements on the team page, I am redirected back to the team overview page.
  • As a learner, I now see a success screen after I create a application.
  • As a learner, I now see a success screen after I accept an application.
  • As a learner, I now see a success screen after I start a project.
  • As a learner, I now see a success screen after I make a final submission.
  • As any user, I can now locate all my snoozed and completed tasks.
  • As any user, I can no longer accept mismatched invites to my user type.
  • As any user, I can now search projects and experiences by categories, skills, and industry types.

Bug fixes

  • Learners no longer receive milestone completion notifications for cancelled projects under the "Tasks" section.
  • The "Teams" section on the experience page now correctly shows the number of active and cancelled teams, avoiding any visual confusion.
  • As an employer, I no longer receive an error message when trying to view all recent matches.

What's new in June 2024

Emily avatar
Shared by Emily • August 06, 2024

New features & Improvements

  • Educators can import projects via single or multiple uploads (CSV) under the 'Matches' tab on the Experience page.
  • Portal surveys have been moved from portal settings to the main portal navigation menu
  • Employers now see a ‘My teams’ tab in the main navigation menu
  • As an employer, after completing a survey, I am now redirected back to the projects’ team page instead of staying on survey responses, so I can continue completing other surveys or sign agreements.
  • As an employer signing agreements during a match request, I am now redirected to the agreements page if there are remaining agreements to sign. I will be redirected to the match page if there are no agreements to sign.
  • Users can now book recurring meetings
  • Learners can now book meetings directly from a team page
  • The meeting page has updated designs aim to enhance user experience
  • Enhanced email notifications are now in place for booked meetings
  • Users can now receive SMS based notifications and manage them view their notification settings
  • SMS terms have been added to our Terms of Service and privacy policy
  • Users are prompted to add and manage phone numbers during sign-up
  • Educators can customize SMS notifications within their experiences
  • Learners can now view and access the benefits of completing a project from various areas including their team pages.
  • The benefits are: Feedback, Skills acquired, Endorsement and certificate
  • After completing a project, learners will have the skills associated with the project automatically added to their profiles
  • After receiving an endorsement, learners will have the skills associated with the endorsement automatically added to their profiles
  • After completing a project, learners can download a PDF certificate of their accomplishments
  • Learners can share certificates they receive on their LinkedIn via a post and/or add them to their LinkedIn profiles
  • Learners can share feedback they receive on their LinkedIn
  • Learners can share feedback they receive on their resume
  • Learners now have clearer options to join portals, experience, and start projects.
  • Teams are now blocked from setting their dates past the experience's maximum start and end dates.
  • Reminder notifications to provide feedback are blocked for incomplete and cancelled teams.
  • Users can now see the application due date in the timeline component on the right sidebar of both the match page and the experience page.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed an issue where the educators exiting the experience wizard would not save the experience as a draft
  • The 'created by' field now correctly uses any customized custom term where appropriate
  • When setting up an achievement to be awarded upon completing the a survey, you can now see the correct survey names instead of just 'yes' and 'no' options.

What's new in May 2024

Emily avatar
Shared by Emily • June 14, 2024

Highlight features

Tasks & Activity

All users will now be shown a list of tasks that need completing by them as well as a list of activity of all actions taken that they need to be aware of including their own and other's actions.

Tasks are generated for a user based on prior actions taken and can come in the form of required tasks they need to complete, recommended tasks to make their experience better, or optional tasks that may help them in the long run. These tasks can be complete by taking the appropriate actions, but can also be marked as complete or snoozed for action later.

You can use tasks as your own personal TO-DO list, easily seeing what actions you need to take, and by when. Log in to your account to get started.

Verified skills

All experiences and projects on Riipen will now be automatically tagged with a list of applicable skills when they are being created, which can then be further customized by the administrators. These skills are then used all over the Riipen platform including:

  • Helping match making, search, and recommendations
  • Being added to a learner's profile upon project completion
  • Being showcased in feedback to learners
  • Being used as part of employer created endorsements for learners

New features & Improvements

  • As an employer, I am now able to see recent applications from my project page sidebar
  • As an authorized user, I am now able to see and track all activity for a payment
  • Added URL links to all "Sign Agreements" notification bars reminding learners and employers of the “agreements to be signed”
  • As a learner, if I am not a member of any experiences, I can now see available experiences on my dashboard.
  • As an employer, I can now see all my recent matches on my dashboard.
  • As an experience administrator, when creating teams I am now required to provide dates as needed
  • A "Request Access to Portal" button on the "Portal Access Required" page has been added.
  • As an employer, I can now see milestones for my teams in my calendar.
  • As an educator, I can now see all historical company applications in my portal.
  • As an educator, I can now 'Skip' creating an experience in the onboarding wizard.
  • Educators can now see their experiences in a table format instead of cards
  • Users can now add their X (formerly Twitter) accounts to their profiles.

Bug fixes

  • Categories are now displayed in the user's language preference
  • Fixed an issue where users were unable to add 'other' option to one of the match request multiple-choice questions
  • Resolved the problem where users couldn't activate work logs for experiences
  • Resolved an issue where some users were unable to delete experience drafts

What's new in April 2024

Emily avatar
Shared by Emily • June 14, 2024

New features & Improvements

  • As an educator, I am able to limit the number of matched projects per experience per company.
  • As an educator, I can duplicate an experience to copy its surveys.

  • As a portal administrator, I am now able to browse all companies on Riipen via a link from the companies tab from my portal.

  • As an educator, I can leave a note on a match request.
  • As an educator, I can view match request notes on the portal company record.
  • As an educator, I can see the source of a company note.
  • As an educator, I can view company portal activity when reviewing a pending match request.
  • As an educator, I can leave company notes on any company in the Portal > Companies tab, regardless of whether they have a portal pass or not.

  • As a survey creator, I can choose to display multiple-choice questions randomly to respondents.
  • Matrix-style questions have been added as a survey question type
  • Survey editors can now choose "Per experience" as a timing option, extending this functionality to both employers and learners.

  • As a experience administrator, I can now manually change team states from incomplete to active.
  • As a learner, when viewing “My projects” page, if I am not a member of any experience yet, I am prompted to join an experience.
  • As an employer, I can now select closed projects while submitting a match request from a dropdown list.
  • Navigation of feedback across the platform has been updated
  • Removed 'similar' content from marketplace preview pages
  • Endorsements are now visible on feedback pages.
  • Employers can now view all teams working on their project directly from the project page.
  • Employers can now see all applications to their project directly from the project page.
  • The project page sidebar now shows recent teams for employers.
  • The project page sidebar now shows recent matches for employers.
  • Experience administrators can now set maximum start dates for all teams or matches under their experience.
  • As a guest visiting the portal page, I will now see a a “Get Started” button which will guide me through the onboarding process
  • As any user, I now see milestone completion metrics in team progress bar.
  • As the recipient of a meeting invitation that I have not accepted, I see ‘accept’ and ‘decline’ buttons on the meeting standalone page.
  • As an employer, when deleting a member from my company or a project, I receive a confirmation modal that displays the member's name. This way, I can confirm the deletion with confidence, knowing exactly who I'm removing.
  • As an employer, I can reply to a kickoff-created notification email, and my reply is added as a message to the ‘kickoff’ conversation.

Bug fixes

  • As a user, when viewing a document agreement, a blank panel appears instead of a preview.
  • Fixed an issue where Safari users were limited to giving a maximum rating of 4.5 stars instead of 5 stars for feedback.
  • Resolved an issue where the title field in a survey was not saved when the survey was invalid.
  • Addressed a problem where, after the approval of a Portal pass, users were redirected to an Unauthorized screen instead of their dashboard.
  • Resolved an issue where users could proceed in the match request wizard despite entering an incorrect date value..
  • Educator updates are now only visible to the intended audience on the experience page.
  • Addressed a situation where teams were incorrectly marked as incomplete due to missing kickoffs, even when kickoffs were present.
  • Team state can no longer be changed after a team is completed.
  • Previously, when a user made an error answering the portal's custom questions, all other questions without errors also reset, causing users to re-enter/select their answers.
  • Experience settings survey filters were not working properly. When trying to filter experience surveys by status, phase, or user type, it would attempt to filter the surveys of the portal instead, leading to redirection to the wrong place.

What’s new in March 2024

Emily avatar
Shared by Emily • April 11, 2024

Highlight features

AI based match compatibility scores

When submitting match requests for projects and experiences, educators and employers will now be able to check the compatibility of their projects and experiences with our new AI drive compatibility scores.

  • Know if the match is a good fit before even submitting the request
  • Quickly determine compatibility and use it as guiding criteria when evaluating incoming match requests

Date change requests

Teams and employers who have set dates for their projects are now able to submit a date change request to the other party if they need to move keys dates in their timeline such as changing the end date.

Team states

Explicit team states have been added and are displayed throughout the platform. These states more easily show if a team is currently active and completing a project, inactive, incomplete from missing deadlines and more.

Observers

Experience administrators can now add observers to their experience and assign them to particular teams which will grant them read-only access to those teams and their data.

  • Easily keep tabs on a large number of teams by assigning observers to each one

Improvements

  • As an educator, when I view the 'My Experiences' tab, I now see the default sort order as 'Recently updated'.
  • As an educator, I can filter my experiences by 'Open/Closed'.
  • As an educator, the 'Open/Closed' filter on the Portal > Experiences page has been updated to an on-page filter.
  • As an experience administrator, I can turn match quality evaluations on or off from my settings page
  • As an experience administrator, I can use a default role of “Guest” on any experience I create, that is uneditable.
  • As an experience administrator, I can view a member page for each other experience member.
  • As an experience administrator, I can add properties to teams within my experiences
  • As an experience administrator, I am able to limit the number of matched projects per experience per company.
  • As a portal administrator, I can grant a portal pass from any portal company page.
  • As an employer, when I view My Projects > Projects tab, the default sort order is now 'Recently updated'.
  • As an employer, the 'State' and 'Open/Closed' filters on the 'My Projects' page have been updated to on-page filters.
  • As an employer, the 'State' and 'Open/Closed' filters on the Company > Projects tab have been updated to on-page filters.
  • As an employer, I can select closed projects while submitting a match request.
  • As a learner, matches are sorted by default on an experience page to promote open matches first.
  • As a educator or employer, I can now use persistent filters on all match request tables, meaning any filters I set will be applied the next time I view that table.
  • As a educator or employer, I can now see the Status filter displayed on the match request page the same way it's shown on the project and experience requests tab.
  • As an educator, employer, or learner, I now receive notifications when dates are changed on an experience, match or team both in-app and via email.
  • As a user, when I view any user requests, the default sort order is now from most recent to least recent requests.
  • As a user, when I view the bookmarks tab, the default sort order is now 'Created at'.
  • As a user, if I have read only access to a conversation, I can now join it.
  • As a user, I can now earn achievements from a parent portal.
  • As a user, I can filter a portal's profile experiences to open or closed.
  • As any user, I can now see a full list of the recipients of the feedback I am issuing in the feedback wizard
  • As a guest, I will now see a “Get Started” button on a portal's profile
  • The experience matches table has been updated for learners.
  • Categories are now optional for experiences
  • The Portal > Experiences default sort order has been updated
  • The Company > Projects default sort has been updated
  • Learners now receive an updated ‘Application Pending’ notification email when they apply to join a project based on whether the two-sided acceptance requirement is in effect or not.
  • When an employer is removed from a company, they will also be removed from any projects within that company.
  • When an educator is removed from a portal, they will also be removed from any experiences within that portal.
  • When experience team creation is not learner-assign, learners will not be able to delete themselves from teams.
  • The emails to companies for portal passes has been updated.

Bug fixes

  • As a user, when viewing a document agreement, a blank panel appears instead of a preview.

Whats new in March 2024

Emily avatar
Shared by Emily • March 13, 2024

Highlight features

Date change requests

Dates for project timelines can be set be an experience, project, or team depending on an experience's setting. Previously, once dates were set they were immutable, which caused issues when teams or projects wanted to alter their timelines in any way. With date change requests you can now submit a request to change a start or end date for a specific project or team and have the other party accept it to confirm the change to keep your timelines on Riipen reflecting the ongoing needs of projects.

Improvements

  • As an employer, I now see any linked project templates for an experience under 'Project Examples' on an experience page
  • As a portal admin, I can decide whether to display subportal experiences on my portal profile
  • As an educator, I now have the ability to download survey responses per survey
  • As en employer, when I receive a portal pass invitation to a company I am not a member of, I am directed to request to join that company
  • As a learner, I can see on an experience page how many teams I am in relative to “Teams per student maximum” when this limit exists.
  • As a learner, I can see on a match page how many teams I am in relative to “Teams per student maximum” when this limit exists
  • As a learner, I can see on a match page when “Unique students per matched project” is enabled and I am already a member of a team on that match.
  • As an educator, when duplicating an experience it also duplicates its surveys
  • As an educator or employer, when duplicating an experience or project it duplicates the agreements
  • As an educator, I can create teams from my experience learners teams tab
  • As any user, I can see who sets the dates and how learners are assigned to projects on the experience page.
  • As an employer, I can filter experiences by ‘Dates set by’ & ‘Learner project assignment’.
  • Updated terminology from "team" to "project" for learners in certain cases
  • As an employer, I can see on the experience page how many teams and learners I can accept per matched project.
  • As an employer or educator, I can see on the match page how many teams and learners I can have for that match, and how many I already have.
  • An educator can no longer modify dates set by experience after end date+10 days has passed
  • As a user invited to a portal/company as a guest, I no longer see the "Create experience/project" button in the welcome email
  • Organizer and attendee information added to meeting ICS files
  • UI update to portal pass application page
  • As a learner, I now see an informational notice after I submit an application

Bug fixes

  • Buttons above tables sometimes had words wrapped when there was space to not wrap
  • Educators and employers cannot always cancel an accepted match request which they should be able to cancel
  • Learners show as having no agreements signed when they were signed in certain circumstances
  • Employers should only see applications in the current portal on their dashboard
  • Some matches had negative team counts in some situations
  • User were promoted to sign agreements when already completed
  • Users unable to duplicate experience in some situations