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πŸ—“οΈ Release Notes | May 2026

Written by Michael Stephenson

This article keeps you informed about the latest developments from Element451. Every month, we highlight everything from bug fixes and minor improvements to new features and major enhancements.

We update this article regularly throughout the month as new releases, improvements, and bug fixes are rolled out. Please check back frequently to stay informed.

To explore other months or specific release notes, visit our Release Notes collection. You should also check out our Planned Releases to get a glimpse of what's to come.


New and Enhanced Features

We introduced a new permission, View Full Date of Birth, that controls whether a user can see a student's complete date of birth. Without this permission, the DOB field displays as MM/DD/****, masking the birth year. With it, the full date (MM/DD/YYYY) is visible. Upon release, any user who currently holds a Contact view, edit, or admin permission will have this permission enabled automatically.

This release delivers a major expansion of granular permissions across Contacts, Segments, Notes, Labels, Applications, ID Verification and SSN visibility. These updates break apart several all-or-nothing permission bundles into more precise, role-appropriate controls. This gives admins the flexibility to grant the access each team member needs without over-permissioning.

Internal users (staff and faculty) can now be assigned identity values beyond email, with two new types: School ID and SSO ID. This expands Internal SSO matching: when an identity provider sends either value in its SAML response, Element451 authenticates the internal user against that identity instead of requiring an email match. Identities are managed directly from the internal user's Basic Info section, where they can be added, updated, or removed.

Fixes and Improvements

Applications + Decisions

  • Improved

    • Added frontend support for application vs. milestone conditions in submission prevention rules, enabling more precise control over when students can submit applications.

    • Added the ability to automatically waive condition checklist items using logic rules, in addition to the existing automatic completion capability.

    • Updated the start application screen to display a returning applicant's full name instead of showing only the middle name.

    • Added the ability for Intelligent Automation rules to update decisions that have already been released to students, with a configurable toggle on move to and change status actions.

    • Added row numbering and a total count to the decision index list, making it easier to see how many decisions are in a given status.

    • Added a "Received" status to condition checklist items, enabling staff to track when documents or materials have arrived but are still being reviewed or processed.

    • Added a "Verification Updated At" timestamp to identity verification records, showing when the status was last changed whether through an automated check or a manual staff update.

    • Added a "Manual Verification" identity verification status, allowing staff to manually verify a student's identity when automated verification is not applicable.

    • Updated the identity verification label from "Not Verified" to "No Attempt" for records where verification has not been initiated, providing clearer status terminology for staff.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where the application scrolled users to incorrect positions when navigating between sections instead of starting at the top of each new section.

    • Resolved an issue where hyperlinks added to the Dashboard Greeting were not saving correctly.

    • Resolved an issue where the Verified Identity rule did not trigger correctly when submission prevention was also enabled on an application.

    • Resolved an issue where high school entries were not saving correctly on the application portal.

    • Resolved an issue where repeater section progress did not update after a successful form submission, causing completed sections to appear incomplete.

    • Resolved an issue where application page views were not being captured across certain application flows.

    • Resolved an issue where the fraud detector ignored bounce history when rerun on an application, allowing previously bounced email addresses to pass validation.

    • Resolved an issue where the identity verification step incorrectly flagged a mismatch for valid applicants.

    • Resolved an issue where staff were unable to manually update a student's identity verification status on any application site.

    • Resolved an issue where applicants were unable to change their password within the application portal.

    • Resolved an issue where Intelligent Admissions rule conditions could not be opened for editing.

    • Resolved an issue where students could submit applications without required test scores being present on their record.

    • Resolved an issue where formatting in checklist item descriptions, including spacing, indentation, and paragraph breaks, did not save correctly.

    • Resolved an issue where applicants were unable to change their password from the Edit Profile section of the application portal.

    • Resolved an issue where external SSO authentication stopped working on application sites.

    • Resolved an issue where the "Released" stage was missing from the stage dropdown when configuring a "Change Status" decision rule, preventing staff from creating rules for released decisions.

Appointments

  • Improved

    • Updated the appointment booking site to use the institution's name as the logo alt text instead of the generic "Organization Logo," improving accessibility for screen reader users.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where appointments allowed bookings that overlapped with existing calendar events and ignored configured buffer times between appointments.

    • Resolved an issue where appointment cancellation notification emails contained a spelling error.

Bolt Agents for Students

  • Improved

    • Added support for event registration links that preserve the selected date when shared by a Bolt agent, ensuring students land on the specific occurrence promoted to them rather than defaulting to the next upcoming date.

    • Added contact network data (such as assigned Academic Advisor) to the User Data Access skill, allowing agents to reference relationship-based fields during conversations.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where scheduled callback requests from Bolt Agent voice calls were not being fulfilled.

    • Resolved an issue where the voice agent could hang up mid-conversation without warning.

    • Resolved an issue where the agent failed to recall event times from earlier in the conversation when answering follow-up questions.

    • Resolved an issue where the agent did not inform students when a required transcript was missing from their application checklist.

    • Resolved an issue where outgoing Bolt Agent calls failed immediately after being answered, preventing voice conversations from completing.

    • Resolved an issue where the Bolt conversation agent occasionally failed to respond, requiring users to re-enter their question.

Bolt Agents for Staff

  • Improved

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where the User Support Agent was unable to retrieve values from custom fields on contact records.

Bolt Agent Jobs

  • Improved

    • Improved how Bolt agents weigh historical conversation context when starting a new outreach jobβ€”older interactions are now treated as background rather than active subject matter, keeping generated messages focused on the current goal.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where Bolt Agent job emails and SMS messages had inconsistent paragraph spacing, formatting, and grammar errors.

Bolt Discovery

  • Improved

    • Improved safety guardrail vulnerabilities.

  • Fixed

Bolt Knowledge Hub

  • Improved

    • Improved content indexing for accordion and dropdown elements, enabling agents to retrieve information from expandable content sections.

    • Improved content indexing to allow public website pages at URL paths that were previously blocked by system-level safety rules, ensuring more institution content is properly ingested.

    • Added the ability to disable citations for web-based knowledge sources, allowing institutions to use URL and website sources for Bolt Discovery without exposing internal URLs in search results.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where the Knowledge Hub failed to learn and index certain website URLs due to browser processes.

Campaigns

  • Improved

    • Updated outgoing emails to display the student's preferred name in the "To" line when a preferred name is available.

    • Updated the unsubscribe landing page to pre-fill the recipient's email address, reducing failed unsubscribe requests caused by mistyped or incorrect email entries.

    • Added the ability to CC a student's primary personal email address in campaign sends and to deliver messages when the primary email is missing by falling back to other available addresses.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where individual email send counts displayed as zero in the Communications tab within Campaigns Analytics despite the overall total showing correct numbers; Bolt Insights also experienced a multi-day lag in analytics data refresh.

    • Resolved an issue where sent one-time campaigns could not be moved to folders or have their tags updated.

    • Resolved an issue where emails containing duplicate recipient addresses failed to send.

    • Resolved an issue where some SMS sends were incorrectly canceled due to a URL mismatch in message content validation.

    • Resolved an issue where email builder font styles, link formatting, and color settings rendered inconsistently between the builder preview and sent emails.

    • Resolved an issue where campaign templates could not be moved into folders.

    • Resolved an issue where the email builder did not preserve intended background colors and element visibility when recipients viewed emails in dark mode.

    • Resolved an issue where all-time campaign statistics displayed as zeros and engagement metrics such as open rate and click-through rate calculated incorrectly.

Case Management (Closed Beta)

  • Improved

    • Added Priority as a column in the Alerts table.

    • Added Status as a column in the Cases table.

    • Added a daily digest email for Case Management notifications, keeping staff informed about case assignments, priority changes, status updates, and comment mentions.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where priority chips with light-colored backgrounds displayed white text instead of black, causing poor contrast and readability.

Conversations

  • Improved

    • Improved email reply threading reliability, preventing cases where student replies to outgoing emails created new conversations instead of continuing the existing thread.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where the phone call transfer extension was not saved when configuring call forwarding for Bolt Agent phone numbers.

    • Resolved an issue where conversation notification emails in Gmail stopped threading into a single conversation, instead sending each message as a separate email.

    • Resolved an issue where clicking a reply hyperlink in a conversation rule notification broke the Messenger interface.

    • Resolved an issue where live chat notification emails displayed raw markdown formatting instead of properly rendered content, and lost the branded email template.

    • Resolved an issue where conversation permissions conflicted, preventing staff from accessing conversations they should have been able to view.

    • Resolved an issue where the messenger chat became unresponsive when a student sent a message while the agent was processing a response.

    • Resolved an issue where the conversation interface displayed with a stretched, distorted layout.

    • Resolved an issue where new contact profiles were incorrectly created from messenger interactions instead of matching to existing records.

    • Resolved an issue where email notification messages were not appearing as a thread in email client inbox.

Courses

  • Improved

    • Added search functionality to the sections table on the courses side sheet, enabling staff to find sections by section code, instructor name, or email.

    • Added filters for status, instruction mode, type, term, school, and campus to the sections table on the courses side sheet.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where auto-imported LMS terms were not appearing in the manual "Select Semesters" list, despite data continuing to sync correctly.

    • Resolved an issue where grade history was not preserved for Blackboard course enrollments, which prevented Grade Risk Detection from evaluating trends and assigning a risk level for affected students.

Data + Insights + Integrations

  • Improved

    • Added the ability to skip metadata rows at the top of CSV files during import, so users no longer need to manually edit files before importing or scheduling recurring imports.

    • Added error messaging in the connectors table when a data connector is automatically disabled due to authentication or credential errors, making it easier for staff to diagnose integration issues.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where successful PayPal payments were not being recorded in Element451, causing payment confirmations to appear missing on student records.

    • Resolved an issue where data transformations were missing from certain import configurations, causing imported data to bypass expected formatting rules.

    • Resolved an issue where the Import Builder intermittently cleared saved configuration and transformation settings, requiring staff to re-enter import rules.

    • Resolved an issue where the Staff Member filter on the Management dashboard's Notes tab did not update the displayed statistics or counts.

    • Resolved an issue where Bolt Transcript evaluation course-level data could not be exported due to missing data scopes.

    • Resolved an issue where webhooks triggered by Zapier were executing multiple times for a single event, causing duplicate actions.

    • Resolved an issue where Ethos course integration runs timed out due to missing database indexes, preventing enrolled courses from syncing to student records.

    • Resolved an issue where the Canvas integration displayed a forbidden error when attempting to connect.

    • Resolved an issue where the Common App transformation option was missing from the import tool, preventing staff from mapping Common App integration codes for terms and majors during data imports.

    • Resolved an issue where several web analytics sections were not updating or populating as expected.

Events

  • Improved

    • Added the ability to set registrant and guest limits independently for events, allowing institutions to cap the number of students who can register separately from the total attendee capacity including guests.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where staff with event attendee management permissions were unable to delete attendees from event registration lists.

    • Resolved an issue where event occurrence attendee limits did not prevent additional registrations once the limit was reached.

    • Resolved an issue where event data failed to load due to a configuration error.

    • Resolved an issue where the guest limit setting on events was not being saved correctly.

    • Resolved an issue where the delete option was not accessible from the event action menu for users with delete permissions.

Forms

  • Improved

    • Added a "Created By" column to the forms list, making it easy to identify who created each form without navigating into individual form settings.

    • Added active/inactive toggle and close date controls for forms, allowing institutions to manage form availability without deleting the form.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where "Required If" field validation remained active even after the triggering condition was no longer met.

    • Resolved an issue where transcript upload fields on forms had accessibility deficiencies affecting labels, error states, and screen reader compatibility.

    • Resolved an issue where selecting Canada's +1 country code on forms incorrectly defaulted to the United States.

General

  • Improved

    • Improved the system status widget to remember its minimized state across browser tabs, so dismissing the notification in one tab no longer causes it to reappear in others.

    • Updated all transactional emails to display the school name as the sender instead of "Element451," improving recognition and trust for recipients.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where social login could redirect users to unverified websites after authentication.

Journeys

  • Improved

  • Fixed

Microsites

  • Improved

  • Fixed

Organizations

  • Improved

    • Added the ability to create and manage notes directly on organization records, enabling staff to track institution-level context and interactions.

    • Added the ability to designate a primary contact on organization records, making it easier for staff to identify the main point person for each organization.

    • Added automatic linking of students to high school organizations based on CEEB code matching, eliminating the need to manually associate students with their feeder schools.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where staff with Edit Profile permission were unable to add a student to an organization from the student's profile card.

Pages

  • Improved

    • Improved accessibility on page shells to meet WCAG compliance.

    • Added the ability to customize the privacy policy link color on Pages, allowing institutions to meet color-contrast accessibility standards.

  • Fixed

People

  • Improved

    • Updated the documents profile card to a table format and added the ability to sort by name and date uploaded.

    • Added the option to delete a course from the courses card on contact profiles.

    • Added a graduation date filter for schools, allowing segmentation of contacts by graduation year.

    • Added Phone Call and Messenger as delivery method filter options in Segments, enabling teams to target students based on voice and chat interactions.

    • Added the ability to include a description or note on contact labels, allowing staff to document how each label should be used without maintaining a separate reference.

    • Added import and export history to the Activity section on contact profiles, showing when data imports or exports affected a student's record.

    • Unified milestone metadata collection across all milestone types, ensuring consistent data fields such as student type, major, and term are available on all milestones including graduation and date of inquiry.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where athletics data fields could not be scoped by sport, term, or position when configuring import and export mappings.

    • Resolved an issue where password reset links frequently expired before students could use them.

    • Resolved an issue where the People count displayed as zero while the people list still showed records.

    • Resolved an issue where attempting to delete a school email identity from a student profile failed.

    • Resolved an issue where the ID Verification segment filter was missing Mismatch, Processing, and Not Verified status options.

    • Resolved an issue where family member records were incorrectly flagged as 100% duplicates of student records.

    • Resolved an issue where newly created segment filters were not visible until the page was refreshed.

Settings + Permissions

  • Improved

    • Added date of birth masking on contact records, controlled by a new permission; users without the permission see a masked format (MM/DD/****).

    • Extended the View Full SSN permission to the deduplication merging screen, allowing authorized staff to see the complete Social Security Number when resolving duplicate records.

    • Updated permission names and descriptions for the Full SSN and Date of Birth permissions to clarify that only users with these permissions can edit, delete, or add the corresponding fields.

    • Updated the ID verification permission description to clarify that it must be combined with a view, edit, or administer profile permission.

    • Added new segment permissions, allowing administrators to control which users can view, filter, or modify specific segments in the People module.

    • Added additional identity fields for admin users, such as School ID, enabling more flexible matching between SSO providers and admin accounts beyond email-only matching.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where permission groups did not visually display as selected when editing user permissions, though the permissions were still being applied correctly.

    • Resolved an issue where visibility filters failed to load for certain user permission configurations.

    • Resolved an issue where the phone registration form displayed as "Not Submitted" with no option to resubmit, even after the form had been previously submitted.

    • Resolved an issue where users with the "Activate/Deactivate Profiles" permission received a forbidden error when attempting to deactivate a student profile.

    • Resolved an issue where the Live Support seat count displayed an incorrect number of available seats.

    • Resolved an issue where admins with the "Edit Application Details" permission could not view or edit application details from the student profile sidebar without also having the "Edit Profile" permission.

    • Resolved an issue where the query builder and "Add Filter" button appeared on segments the admin did not have edit access to when combining Use and Edit permission types.

    • Resolved an issue where the "Edit My Team Segments" permission did not display segments created by team members.

    • Resolved an issue where the "Edit My Segments" permission incorrectly displayed all segments instead of only the user's own.

    • Resolved an issue where the payment portal allowed initiating a second Flywire payment while a previous payment was still pending, potentially creating duplicate charges.

StudentHub

  • Improved

    • Updated StudentHub subtext to support darker color options, improving color contrast for accessibility compliance.

  • Fixed

Surveys

  • Improved

  • Fixed

Tasks

  • Improved

  • Fixed

Workflows + Rules

  • Improved

    • Added a "Record Created" trigger for rules and workflows, enabling institutions to automatically initiate actions whenever a new contact record is created regardless of the creation source.

  • Fixed

    • Resolved an issue where the People tab in workflows did not support searching by combined first and last name.

    • Resolved an issue where a workflow enrollment action was not triggering when initiated by a scheduled job.

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