Two big releases! Well, one real release and another beta release.

Voice memos are launched! This has been one of our most requested features — you can now send voice notes similar to Whatsapp or iPhone messages. This is a big plus for teachers and staff that need to send out longer messages but don't have the time to type as well as for multilingual families who may have an easier time talking into their phone or listening than reading the text. Additionally, native speech to text still works within the app.

Playground also is doing a beta launch of calendar. The calendar feature is going to be the future hub for everything on Playground. Events, scheduling, meal plans, lesson plans, absences, billing, and more are all date based and the school calendar and day to day functions revolve around calendar. While our calendar out of the box supports holidays, birthdays, events, recurring events, invites, locations, notes, downloadable event files, and more, we are planning to add a ton of functionality around calendar in the coming months — which is why we are calling this only a beta. Stay tuned!

And as always, a bunch of upgrades and fixes :)

Releases

• Voice memos — send voice recordings directly through chat

• Calendar — create events, track birthdays, invite people, and more

• Staff roles — message us if you're interested, we have launched an alpha version of staff roles to track permissions and access to data

• Staff paperwork, like student paperwork, but for staff

• A hidden changes dashboard at /changes. Track updates to your center and family information

• Staff can now adjust the recipients to their posts on the app

• You can record meal items on the meal posts now

Improvements

• App now downloads significantly less data. Should make it feel snappier

• Program attendance is now ~20-30x faster/snappier, especially for large centers and slow internet

• Chat on the app should also be 2-3x faster than before

• Parents can hide their graduated students to reduce clutter

• Can now filter by absent students for quicker record tracking

• There are now sort options on program students

Fixes

• Admins now have a back button during attendance tracking

• "Parent" is now a relationship option

• Sound now plays for videos, even on silent mode

• Exact time shows on posts instead of "xx days ago"

• Comments on students show on the mobile app for admins

• Chat recipient fixes