Release Notes

Internal performance fix: sidebar loads faster with fewer database queries.

Each page load was triggering multiple unnecessary database round-trips when rendering the navigation sidebar. Premium feature badges were each issuing their own database query instead of sharing a single batch load. The fix pre-loads all feature tier information once per request and shares it across all sidebar items, reducing redundant database operations on every page view.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Eliminated N+1 database queries in sidebar premium badge rendering
• Feature tier data is now batch-loaded once per request via the context processor
• Premium badge and upgrade prompt tags now read from pre-loaded context instead of querying the database per item

Student attendance pages now load faster — no matter how many records a student has.

If a student had a busy year and racked up dozens of attendance records, their profile's attendance tab was quietly doing a lot more work than it needed to. Every single record was triggering a separate round-trip to look up which class the student was in for that day — sometimes 59 trips for a single page load.

We caught this through our performance monitoring, and the fix was straightforward: we now fetch all the class information in one step alongside the attendance records. The page renders the same way, but with a fraction of the work behind the scenes. Schools with large or long-running student rosters will notice the biggest improvement.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Attendance tab on student profiles now loads significantly faster for students with many records
• Fixes performance issue first detected February 18, 2026 (Sentry #7274443449)

Fix: Gradebook/attendance merge confirmation now works correctly when students need review.

When merging a linked gradebook and attendance tracker that had students requiring manual review (fuzzy name matches or over-capacity rosters), the confirmation step could silently fail. The backend was not including the partner tool's token in its response, so the confirm-merge request had no way to identify the other side of the link. Separately, the over-capacity student list was built from a key that does not exist in the response, so the selection UI always showed empty.

Both issues are now fixed: the needs_selection response includes the correct cross-tool token, and the over-capacity list is assembled from the actual new_to_gradebook / new_to_tracker arrays the backend already returns.

Fixes¶

• Merge confirmation from the gradebook side now forwards attendance_token correctly
• Merge confirmation from the attendance tracker side now forwards gradebook_token correctly
• Over-capacity student checkboxes now populate from the correct response fields in both tools

New: Free Attendance Tracker foundation (models + landing page).

Added the data models and SEO-optimized landing page for the free attendance tracker tool. Teachers and homeschool parents can soon track daily attendance for up to 10 students -- free forever, no account required. The landing page at /free-attendance/ includes structured data for search engines, FAQ section, and cross-promotion of the free gradebook and transcript tools.

Additions¶

• FreeAttendanceTracker, FreeAttendanceStudent, and FreeAttendanceRecord public schema models
• SEO landing page at /free-attendance/ with JSON-LD structured data and FAQ schema
• Cross-promotion links to Free Gradebook and Transcript Builder
• "free_attendance" source added to MarketingLead for lead tracking

New: Personal founder welcome email template for new signups.

Added a reusable email template for sending a personal welcome note from Ike to brand-new customers who just completed signup. Unlike the automated system welcome, this is a warm, conversational first-touch that introduces Ike, connects over shared values, and opens a genuine conversation about the school.

Additions¶

• New new_customer_welcome_v1 outreach template with customizable variables for school name, type, location, and closing question

Improved: Email delivery tracking with Brevo message IDs.

Switched from SMTP to Brevo's API for sending emails. Every email sent through NavEd now captures the Brevo message ID, enabling delivery tracking, bounce handling, and webhook correlation. This applies to both individual and bulk email sends.

Improvements¶

• Email backend upgraded from SMTP to Brevo API via django-anymail
• Brevo message IDs now stored in every email send log entry
• Bulk emails capture per-recipient message IDs for granular tracking

Elective enrollments are now fully protected from accidental removal.

If you've ever used the subject enrollment page to update a student's regular subjects, there was a risk that their elective enrollments could silently disappear in the process. This happened because the page's save logic compared what was checked against everything the student was enrolled in — including electives that weren't even visible on the form.

We've fixed both copies of the enrollment page so that electives are completely excluded from the save logic. The enrollment page now only shows and manages regular subjects. Elective enrollment continues to be handled exclusively through the dedicated electives page, where it belongs.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Elective subjects no longer appear as checkboxes on the subject enrollment page
• Saving regular subject enrollments can no longer accidentally delete elective enrollments
• Added automated tests to prevent this issue from ever returning

Parents, students, and staff can now see and fill out forms from the sidebar.

When we launched NavEd Forms, clicking "Forms" in the sidebar worked great for admins — but everyone else got an "access denied" message. Not ideal when the whole point of forms is collecting responses from your school community.

Now when parents, students, or staff click "Forms," they see a clean list of published forms available to them, with status badges showing which ones they've already completed. Each form links directly to the fill page — no more needing to hunt down a share link.

We also fixed the login redirect flow so that when someone clicks a form link while logged out, they're taken back to that exact form after signing in — instead of landing on the home page and losing track of what they came for.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Non-admin users now see a respondent view with available forms instead of "access denied"
• Login redirect now preserves the destination URL across the full multi-tenant login chain
• NavEd Forms announcement added to the deploy pipeline so HODs see the "What's New" modal
• Removed unused standalone announcement command (now handled by the catalog)

Search engines can now discover and crawl the signup page.

The signup and setup pages were missing from robots.txt, meaning Google and other search engines were blocked from indexing them. The signup page is also now included in sitemap.xml so crawlers can find it automatically.

Fixes¶

• Added Allow: /signup/ and Allow: /setup/ directives to robots.txt
• Added /signup/ to sitemap.xml

Parent weekly email now shows correct grade percentages for total-points subjects.

For subjects that use total-points grading (like Algebra 1), the weekly parent email was showing the raw score as a percentage -- so an 8 out of 8 appeared as "8%" instead of "100%." This fix ensures the email calculates the correct percentage based on each subject's grading method. The gradebook itself was not affected; only the parent email display was incorrect.

Fixes¶

• Fixed grade percentage calculation in parent weekly digest email for total-points subjects

Transcript PDFs are now more compact and grading scale percentages display cleanly.

We tightened up the transcript PDF layout so most students' transcripts fit on a single page. The grading scale also now shows clean integer percentages (90% instead of 89.5%) and uses a two-column layout to save space. Additionally, 8th grade courses that carry a GPA bump (Honors, AP, IB, Dual Enrollment) now automatically appear on transcripts when using the default upper-school filter.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Compact transcript PDF layout: smaller header, tighter spacing, reduced font sizes throughout
• Removed redundant Academic Summary table (per-year sections already show GPA and credits)
• Grading scale uses two-column layout, cutting vertical space in half
• Grading scale percentages now display as clean integers (no decimals) in both PDF and HTML preview
• 8th grade courses with Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment designation now appear on transcript automatically