New features, improvements and bug fixes released on Riipen from Oct 5-25.
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Feature

• Basic navigation has been updated for all users to make it easier to find your profile, the option to switch portals or companies, and the marketplace. Overview here.

• As an educator, I can now limit the number of teams a learner can join under one experience. Learn more

Story

• As any user, I should see the link to sync my calendar to an external one from the calendar page. On your calendar page (accessed via calendar icon in top navigation bar) you will now see the "Sync calendar" link above the calendar which provides the option to add your Riipen calendar to iCal, Outlook calendar, Google calendar or other tools.

• As a survey creator, I can add introductory text for respondents to explain the purpose of the survey or provide instruction.

• As the recipient of a meeting invitation, I should have the meeting automatically added to my calendar. When a meeting is created on Riipen, all participants receive a confirmation email which has an ICS file attached with the meeting details. In Gmail, this lets the user add the meeting to the calendar in a single click from their email. The handling of these files vary by email client, but all have a way to make these easily turned into calendar events.

• As an educator, I should have access to a survey summary page for each survey. For every survey on a portal or experience, you can now view "Replies" (individual responses) and "Summary" as additional tabs on the survey page. Summary provides an overview of the responses received to easily see what the trends are in your survey.

• As a meeting participant (pending or accepted), I should receive a reminder email before the meeting starts

• As a user viewing content in the marketplace, I should see existing matches and requests. You may notice now when viewing experiences and projects in the marketplace, you'll see if you have pending or accepted requests with that particular content.

Improvement

• A team member cannot complete milestones or the final submission without having started the project first.

• Everywhere teams are listed, it is possible to filter them by "Status" (not started, in progress or complete).

• Reorganization of experience settings items to better group the most commonly accessed items at the top and move functionality used by a minority of users to the "Advanced" section. Updated help article

• "Enable learner member requests" is now un-checked by default on new experiences.

• Employers can see whether or not they've provided feedback to a team directly from the team table in their dashboard or match page.

• Reorganization of portal settings for more logical grouping of related settings.

• Learner worklogs (time tracking) are disabled by default on new experiences but can be turned on via experience settings.

• Events in chat conversations related to milestone and final submissions should link to the submission page.

• Conversation details pane update: Each conversation in your Riipen message inbox has a conversation details pane; this has been improved to work across different screen sizes and show relevant context based on the conversation type. On large screens, the details pane is always visible. On smaller screens, access it by clicking the 3-dot menu at the top of the conversation and clicking "Content details"

• Request table modification: Based on user feedback that the 'View' icon on request tables was too small/subtle, this has been removed and the first column of information in the match request table is now clickable instead. This brings the user to the match request page.

• As a member of a company without Portal passes permission, the UI should prevent me from attempting to apply for a portal pass

• In the team creation wizard dropdown of matches, show "{Company name} - {Match name}" rather than "Project name" to make it easier to identify the correct project.

• Add program code to experience cards and experience pages.

Fixed bugs

• As an educator, I should not see "Request match" on a project that is promoted to a marketplace outside my workspace.

• Events should not appear on a learner's Riipen calendar for teams they were not accepted for

• Reports menu item not visible to some users with reports access

• Time zone not being set on user account at sign up

New features, improvements and bug fixes released on Riipen from Sept 27-Oct 4.
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Story

• As a portal admin or experience admin, I should be able to see responses to surveys when viewing any learner member of my portal or experience.

• As any user, I should be able to add rich text to messages (hyperlinking, bulleted and numbered lists, etc)

Improvement

• Update style of rich text editor in messages

• Replace terminology project/experience with employer/educator in request table activity column for greater clarity

• Add program code to experience page

Fixed bugs

• Message input was not always fixed at the bottom of the conversation pane

• Error viewing post notification when post doesn't exist anymore

• As a learner, I should see the notice "Sign agreements to unlock the matches" only if I am a member of the experience

New features, improvements and bug fixes released on Riipen from Sept 14-27.

Feature

• Binding deadlines - As the administrator of an experience, you can now opt for deadlines to be binding for participants. If this setting is enabled, you can set an optional grace period as well. Once the deadline plus the grace period has passed, student teams can no longer proceed with the project. For experiences with strict requirements on timing, this allows you to enforce those deadlines automatically, with built-in reminders.

• Two-sided application acceptance - If you are using the "applications" feature, as an educator, you can now choose to enable two-sided application acceptance. If active, this feature will require the team to confirm or cancel following the employer acceptance of their application.

Improvements

• Messages layout update: the message "sidebar" with context on the conversation is now available on a wider range of screen sizes, and opens up in a modal for smaller screens. The message header is more descriptive and now lists the members in a conversation. Stay tuned for more messages updates next week, with improvements coming to the content of that messages sidebar.

• Update to applications table to show whether team has confirmed or not following employer acceptance.

• Update icon used to represent achievements from "trophy" to "award" for better consistency of iconography.

• As an experience admin, I should be able to add default application screening questions for learners on matches where applications are required.

• As an employer, I should see a notice on the match request page when a match request has expired that prompts me to close my project.

• Category colours have been updated to provide better contrast between categories.

• Show completed variant of the survey panel for completed surveys

• As an educator, I should be able to invite learners to my experience via a modal: from the Learners tab of the experience, click "Invite" and you'll now see a dropdown of options to create teams, invite to experience, or copy instructions. This makes the process for "invite to experience" shorter for educators.

Bug fixes

• Clear all doesn't reset checkbox filters

• Employer is not able to sign agreements

With Riipen 2.0 having now been up and running for 5 months, we've collected a huge amount of user feedback on the new platform experience, with positive feedback on usability and new features.

We found a few opportunities to improve ease of use based on user feedback.

These include:

• Making the option to switch your active workspace (portal or company) more prominent
• Better separation of your own content versus your portal or company's content in the main navigation menu
• More intuitive navigation to profile links
• Make the marketplace link more prominent.

We're happy to let you know these changes will be in place in October 2023.

• All users will now be able to switch their currently active portal from the portal logo in the navigation bar:

• Employers will now see their active company and be able to switch this from their main navigation menu:
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• All users will see a better visual separation between their own content and their portal or company's content:

• All users will find their profile link in the user menu located in the top-right of the screen:

• Employers and educators will now find the marketplace option as a button in the top nav bar:

• Learners who have not yet joined an experience will find all experiences for their portal under the "Find experiences" button in the top nav bar:

• Learners who have already joined an experience will see the option to find others under their "My Experiences" page

New features, improvements and bug fixes released on Riipen from Aug 24 - Sept 13..

Today's update spans the last three weeks and includes a long-awaited new feature (custom surveys) and many quality of life improvements for all users.

Feature

• Custom surveys - As a portal admin, I can add custom surveys to be administered across all experiences in my portal. These can be sent pre-experience, mid-experience, or post-experience at configurable times. They can be required or optional, and include all common survey question types. The same functionality exists for educators to add surveys to their own experience. Surveys can be sent to both learners and employers. Learn more

Improvements

• Users, companies and portals now have more granular control over privacy settings for their profiles and their content. Learn more
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• The match request table now includes an activity column to indicate the status of both the project and experience's acceptance of the request.
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• The project marketplace can now be filtered by the Cause a project supports.
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• The experience "matches" table can now be filtered by the Cause a project supports.
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• A user who is invited to the platform via email now has their email address pre-filled in the sign up form.

• The feedback standalone page now includes the year feedback was given.
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• Users can now filter their conversations by the conversation type, and by the associated portal, company, experience, project or team.
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• The portal Learners table can now be filtered by location, average rating, and profile categories.
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• When an archived conversation receives a new message, the conversation becomes un-archived.
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• The project marketplace can now be filtered by company size.

Bug fixes

• On mobile, dropdown menus would remain open after the user made a selection. This is now fixed.
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• If the user does not have permission to view the conversation associated with a match request, the message icon is now hidden from from the match request table.
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New features, improvements and bug fixes released on Riipen from Aug 2-23.

Today's update spans the last three weeks and includes two exciting new features and several small improvements.

Feature

• Agreements - an educator can add custom agreements to their experience, which must be accepted by employers and/or learners who participate. This can be used for program terms and conditions, intellectual property agreements, and other instances where participants must agree to terms beyond Riipen's standard terms and conditions. Learn more
  The same functionality exists for employers to add agreements to projects; these are accepted only by learners who work on the project. Employers may use this feature for (for example) non-disclosure agreements. Learn more.

• Posts - As an educator, I can now post an update to my experience to notify all matched employers and/or all learner members about important info related to the experience. See help article

Improvements

• As an educator, I should see a notice on the match request page when a match request has expired that prompts me to close my experience.
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• As an educator, I should see a notice on the match request page when a match request is accepted that prompts me to close my experience.
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• Preserve capitalization in custom portal language
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• Update to timeline and criteria for automatically closing projects: projects are now closed after 50 days of inactivity; project admins are warned at 40 days

• As any user, I should be able to see a 'Supported causes' section on the project page if a cause was added via the project wizard "tags" step

Bug fixes

• The cancel button when saving a search becomes white on hover (not visible)
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• Location not mandatory on /companies/new
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• “Projects from open marketplace percentage can't be blank” error in experience wizard
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• Password changing bad request
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• Match Request page content overflows

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New features, improvements and bug fixes released on Riipen from July 19 - Aug 2.

Today's update spans the last two weeks and includes some major new features requested by our users: the ability to save searches, link to an external calendar, and track hours spent on projects.

Feature

• Saved searches - a user can save any search criteria in the project or experience marketplace to quickly apply it again in future and be notified of new content matching your search. Learn more

• Calendar integration - all users now have a calendar showing the times of key events related to their account. Sync your Riipen calendar to an external calendar with your unique calendar link.
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• Work logs - learners can now log their time spent on projects, via the team page. These logs can be reviewed by the employer they work with, and their educator. Learn more

Improvements

• As an employer, when you duplicate a project, you can now duplicate both its content and its meta-information, if you are an administrator of the project. Previously only content could be duplicated.

• As an educator or employer, if you have recommendations enabled you'll receive recommendations based on your saved searches and recent searches.

• The chatbot message "Still interested in this possible match?" which sends in match request conversations has been updated to prompt more specific action, suggesting the users book a meeting.

• As an educator, I can indicate in the experience wizard "Projects wanted" section what percentage of projects I intend to source from open marketplace versus my portal's private marketplace.
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• Substantial load time improvements for all portal reports
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• As a user, I should receive a chatbot reminder in a match request conversation 5 days before match request expiry
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• The project review email received by employers after project publication now has a section explaining the content is generated with AI, with a link to a help article.

Bug fixes

• In the message preview component on match, match request and team page, the last message sent should be shown instead of first message sent.
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• Validation error when submitting match request with milestones

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New features, improvements and bug fixes released on Riipen from July 5 - 19.

Feature

• All projects published on Riipen are automatically reviewed using a custom implementation of OpenAI. Employers receive an email after project publication letting them know how their project scores on three main factors, and prompting edits as needed.

• A project can now be tagged with a "Cause" from the list of UN Sustainable Development Goals. Once we have a critical mass of tagged projects, this will come a filter users can access in the project marketplace.

Improvements

• Where currency is selected in the experience wizard or match request wizard, a user can now select from AUD, GBP and EUR in addition to the existing options of CAD and USD.

• 'View all' button on experience recommendations now links to the user's preferred marketplace

• Error messages on form submissions are now listed in a section at the top of the form, to allow us to list even errors that don't appear directly on the page.

• As an educator or employer, I should be able to filter projects/experiences in the marketplace by ones that don't accept my location

• As a user, by default I should only see projects/experiences accepting my portal/company’s location in the marketplace

• Conversations in the inbox can now be filtered by request state

• Project resources are now editable directly in the project resources tab, not in the project wizard.

• Industries and Number of Employees are now required fields in the project wizard, to improve our ability to match projects with experiences.

• Paid experiences can now indicate if payment is provided by the employer, an external funder, or both.

• A portal can now set its platform language and its preferred marketplace content language filter independently.

New features, improvements and bug fixes released on Riipen from June 28 - July 5

Feature

• The new Achievements feature launched on June 30. This feature gamifies the Riipen platform for users, allowing you to earn recognition in the form of achievements for different types of actions on the platform - not only for feedback. Users with past activity got a head start and had achievements issued to them at launch, and will continue to earn new ones from here on out.

• Portals can also create their own achievements unique to their learners, educators, and employers. Learn more.

Improvements

• Update to the automated reminders and event activity that is shown within a conversation, to make these very distinct from user-initiated messages.

• Add "What to expect" section to project draft reminder email to help new employers understand their first steps.

• Add marketplace language setting to Portal Settings > General. This allows a portal to set a main language for their platform (English or French) and select one or more languages by which to filter the marketplace.

• Application due date field should be optional in match request wizard and match revision page

Bug fixes

• Match Request preview titles can overflow page on some screen sizes

• Experience > Matches table showing incorrect teams count

• Department tag in experience wizard will not allow to you remove the tag

New features, improvements and bug fixes released on Riipen from June 21-28

Improvements

• The main category selection dropdown in the project wizard and experience wizard is now searchable.

• As an educator, I can now edit experience dates and the date controller via the experience settings, rather than going via the wizard.

• As an employer who's not yet a member of a company, I now get a warning at the beginning of the project wizard that I will not be able to publish my project until I create or join a company. The user can still create a draft.

• As an educator, I should see a Teams tab on the experience showing the progress of all teams. Under the Learners tab of an experience, the educator has a "Teams" tab where they can see the progress of all teams.

• A draft project or experience should have a clear call to action for the viewer to edit & publish their content.

• Project wizard fields now have minimum lengths

• Department name capitalization should be preserved in portal nametag

Bug fixes

• Project template owner type filter resets back to All when selecting an option