Feature + Improvement Release Log – Penji

Below you will find the feature and improvements, listed in our Monthly Partner Newsletter, over the last 6 months. Please reach out with any questions, and visit our feature changelog to review all updates.

If you want to sign up for our newsletter, please email support@penjiapp.com.

March 2025

Double Booking Bug Fix: Availability Update Resolved: A bug occurred when a student’s recurring session is switched to another, causing availability to not be updated. This allowed other students to book the same time slot, leading to double bookings. The issue has now been fixed, ensuring availability is correctly updated and preventing further conflicts.

February 2025

Updates to Profile Fields: Users will now have a new 'Headline' field for displaying key information, while outdated fields such as graduation year, major, and minor have been removed.
Updates to Drop-In Check-Out Mechanism: Student cannot check out by swiping ID card if they checked in by typing student ID (instead of swiping ID card).

January 2025

Group Chat Support
Tutor Availability – Availability Date Overrides: Admins and Tutors have the ability to add one-time availability for drop-in and appointment sessions, allowing for more flexible scheduling.
SFTP Import Failure Instructions: We have updated the error message for failed SFTP imports to provide clearer instructions on how to resolve issues.
Drop-In Kiosk – Enrolled Courses Display: Students checking in via the Drop-In Kiosk will now see their enrolled courses, making it easier to access relevant support.

December 2024

Date-Specific Availability: This new feature allows admins to create or remove ad hoc, one-time shifts for providers via the calendar view, via the tutors tav, or drop-in hours tabs, ensuring seamless updates to availability for appointments and drop-in sessions.
Penji Pathways Segments - Dedicated Tab and Additional Editing Capabilities: The "Segment" tab under the Students section makes it easier for admins to view, edit, rename, and delete segments for a more efficient experience using Penji Pathways.

November 2024

Unified Calendar View / Grid View: A single-screen solution for administrators to manage and oversee scheduling, availability, and center operations more efficiently.
Feat. Fix: Sessions > Tutor Dropdown.
- The dropdown now only displays active tutors, eliminating clutter from inactive or historical entries.
- This update ensures admins can focus solely on tutors who are currently available to take sessions.
Feat. Improvement: "SFTP Import Failed" email. This has been updated with clearer, actionable instructions to help admins and IT teams resolve the issue independently.
Feat. Improvement: "Calendar Connection" is not changed to "Calendar Conflict Checking". Clearly communicates that this setting is used to check for scheduling conflicts with external calendars.

October 2024

Drop-in feedback - Custom provider questions for log mode: This enhancement allows admins to set custom feedback questions specifically for Log Mode within the Drop-in settings.
Option to hide drop-in mode button on Learn screen: Admins can control student access to drop-in sessions directly from the student screen. Admins will have the option to either:
- Allow students to join drop-in sessions, making the option visible.
- Disallow students, which will hide the option from the student interface.

September 2024

Events - Student Removal Record: Tracks whether a student was removed from a group event by themselves, an admin, or due to no-shows, allowing admins to monitor attendance reasons.

August 2024

Drop-In Queue - Fast Re-Queue Option: Provides the option to quickly re-queue a student in the drop-in queue without ending their session, offering flexibility compared to fully closing out the session.

July 2024

Drop-in - Custom provider questions for queue mode: This feature allows you to prompt students with a brief questionnaire at the end of their Drop-In session, similar to the custom feedback questions in appointments.
Drop-In Kiosk - Show students their enrolled courses in Drop-in mode: The Drop-In Kiosk feature enables students to easily view their enrolled courses when they check in.

June 2024

Student Segments - Penji Pathways: You can now create segments based on course or student metadata for Penji Pathways
Account Deletion: Automated account deletion process
Display User Email Associated with Penji Account: 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.

May 2024

Fix for blank app loading: 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
Canvas Integration Update: We've upgraded our system to support Canvas LTI 1.3 integrations
Manage IT Integrations: You can now enable or disable your integrations on the IT Integrations tab on the admin panel.

April 2024

Course-specific Drop-in availability: 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.
Queue Mode - Students - Update to the waiting page: 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.
New Dashboards: 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.
Accessibility updates: 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%).

March 2024

Course-specific Appointment availability: 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.
Improved SFTP Setup: Now, IT can connect to the SFTP server and test their files all through one unique setup 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.

February 2024

Include the ended-at/check-out time in the school-wide Visit file
Record retroactive session feedback: 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.

January 2024

Fix for skip days: Limited admin users can add skip days for recurring sessions
Events - easily allow providers to see their event kiosk link: 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.
Events - Option to allow joining waitlist for same course as event already joined (if signing up for the event is restricted): This feature is conditional 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.
Events - Don't allow multiple joins per course: 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.".
Admin Provider Upload - Provision provider profile: 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
Ability to hide the appointment format buttons from the student side
DATA - School-Level Visits table: 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.
Appointment type hours availability: Providers and admin can tag certain appointment availability hours with "Any" or "Specific" appointment formats, like with locations

December 2023

Add unique IDs for each visit: to the data exports: 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.
Chat - Disable chat for school: 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).

November 2023

Fix for student feedback on the learn screen: 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
Show community timezone abbreviation: 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.

October 2023

Copy Change in the Data Dashboard: verbiage like "Tutor Submitted Length" now changes based on what providers (Advisor, Coach, etc). are labeled in the community.
Improved/Advanced Data Dashboard: 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.
- Session Composition
- Provider Availability (Sessions)
- Topic Details (Sessions)
- Usage Patterns (Sessions)
- Student Duration (Sessions)
Teach Screen Buttons: 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
Admin Events List export: 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.
Forward all calendar invites to a single email: 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.
Option to Hide Community from Web/Mobile App: 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".
Update to "No Account Found" message: 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
General, Session, and Drop-In Settings moved from Penji Controlled to the Admin Panel: We've added more settings to the admin panel so that you can control them right from the admin website vs. having to email Penji. This includes:
- General
  - Community full name
  - Community display name
  - Community description
  - Student request feedback during launch
  - Student require feedback to continue using
  - Restrict students to enrolled topics
  - Provider require feedback to continue using
  - Provider schedule change notification email
  - Guest check-in field
  - Student ID prefix
  - Confirm student check-in details
  - Provider payroll - Student no-show pay minutes
- Session
  - Booking schedule range
  - Fix session start times
  - Provider availability location preferences
  - Allow students to join sections from the learn screen
- Drop-In
  - Select specific provider
  - Allow check-in outside of scheduled hours
  - Minimum shift length

September 2023

"Student View" Copy Change: Change "Student View" to "Student/Provider View" to better indicate that this is for the student and provider view (link to web.penjiapp.com).
Pathways Additional Send Number: Ability to send communication from a separate phone number for a priority community
Session Change Provider Calendar Updates: On the admin website, when the provider of a session is changed, updated calendar invites will be sent to the new provider and a cancellation notice will be sent to the old provider.

August 2023

Filter by provider: 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.
Limited Admin Access now includes Events and Drop-in Mode: Your tutors will be able to adjust their own events, and adjust check ins. This updates any current limited admin user’s access. This is explained in the help center article linked here.
Improved Admin Booking Flow through the create a session button: 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.
Advanced Penji Dashboards have been re-enabled!

July 2023

Admin Onboarding Experience: We've updated the help video links in the admin panel to direct you to the help center article/video that is most relevant. The previous videos were outdated. We've also added a "non-course" example to the course.csv template.
EVENTS MODE: 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. This will be live for everyone soon, but for now, we can turn this on by request. If you want to enable events mode and start playing around with it, please email support@penjiapp.com. We will also reach out to programs to go over this new mode.
Improved Data Dashboard: We are investing in improving our data dashboard and will be running a free improved data pilot program for one year. If you would like to be included in this, please email support@penjiapp.com.

June 2023

A fix for large imports: We've made large imports more stable so that admin can import them successfully. If you were trying to manually import files like the course enrollment or student invite CSV's, and the import never seemed to finish, this should now be resolved.
Update to Student History Default Date Range: 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 view.

May 2023

Cancellation Lead Time: 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
Do not ask students to complete feedback if they were absent from the session
"Delete" a Drop-In Check-In: 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".
Edit the Start Time for a Drop-In Check-In: 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.
Allow providers to bypass Online Location setup: 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.

April 2023

From the Admin Panel, add a link to view as a student: We now have a link in the admin panel that will directly take you to the Student View for your community! It is in the upper right-hand corner of the admin panel. We hope that this helps you all see what the students see more easily.
School-wide student view: 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.
Add the student's last name to the session email receipts for 1:1 appointments
"Back to home" Button: 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.
SFTP Import - Sync Student Details: 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.
Community Eligibility Improvement: 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.
Update the "FAQ & Information" button: On the web/mobile platform, there is an "FAQ & Information" button that students/providers see. This can be linked to your center's website or the Penji Help Center. If it is linking to the Penji Help Center we have updated this link.
Calendar Event Update: We've added both the student's and provider's last names to the calendar event
Eliminate Pending session emails for auto-confirm communities: 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.
Updates to the confirmation email sent out to students when an admin creates a session for non@school.edu emails
Clarify that it's weekly availability, auto-copied each week: 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.
Add the scheduled duration to the Visits Table
Remove "rate" from the session booking flow when students confirm an appointment
Hide student feedback requests after a community-set number of days: 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 student feedback is enabled and the days are set to "2" - if student feedback is not filled out within 2 days, the feedback will be hidden from the student's 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.
- On the reverse side, if you make the date range longer or enable feedback, more "feedback needed" session placeholder cards will appear on the student's learn screen.