Release Notes - Genius CE & Enterprise

May 2025 releases

Learning Path Custom Fields

The Genius team has added the ability to create and configure custom fields for Learning Paths.  By visiting Administration > System Setup > Custom Fields and clicking on the Learning Path tab, your administrators have the ability to create new custom fields for that object.

Affiliation Administrators can configure their own Custom Fields for Learning Paths as well, ensuring every program you work with has the ability to use these fields accordingly.

Automated Refunds for Dropped Grace

Genius is excited to continue our journey on improving workflows regarding your financial processes by introducing automated refunds, which will be available over the next weeks.

Within your Payment Gateway setup, you can choose to enable automated refunds.  By default, this process is turned off and you can choose to enable it by going to Administration > Integrations > Payment Gateways.  From there, click edit on your active payment gateways.

Once enabled, there are four parameters to help Genius CE and Enterprise understand your specific processes.  The first two parameters involve the amount of money that is refunded to the learner.  They are

1. REFUND_FEE: the fee associated with all refunds. the fee associated with all refunds. For example, the fee could be $1 and if the course was $100 the Learner would be refunded $99.
2. REFUND_PERCENTAGE: is for partial refunds, ex: we give back 75% of the course cost.

The second two parameters relate to the timetable that a refund can be issued:

1. GRACE_PERIOD_BEFORE_SECTION_STARTDATE: is amount of time Learner can drop with grace before the section begins. Ex: Learner can drop 2 days before the section begins.
2. GRACE_PERIOD_AFTER_ENROLL_STARTDATE: is the amount of time for Grace Period Drops after the Learner has enrolled. Ex: Learner can drop 10 days after they enrolled.


Section Start Date is used first.  If there is no section start date inputted, Genius will look at the Enroll Start Date parameter.  The refund will be issued based on the window provided.

If the section start date exists and the drop happens during the parameter window, Genius will issue a refund.

If the section start date parameter has passed and the enrollment date is in the future, Genius will issue a refund.

If the section start date parameter has passed and the enrollment date is in the past, Genius will not issue a refund.

Refunds are then initiated via the payment gateway to the learner’s payment method.  This includes the following workflows: learner-initiated course drops, admin drop actions for enrollments, and enrollment imports via csv or sftp.

Please note that that not all payment gateways allow for this functionality.

April 2025 releases

Learner Dashboard

Thanks to your feedback, Meetings Times and Room Locations are now more visible on the Learner Dashboard.

Guardians

As you prepare for your upcoming summer camps, we have streamlined the process for Guardians to upload documents to help you centralize all information needed. 

Administrators will get notified if a new file is uploaded.  If you have approvals enabled, you can approve those files just like other learners today.  Once approved, the learner will be added to any pending courses with pre-requisites.

Courses

As we continue to update the platform to bring consistency, UX updates, and more, the course list view is getting a new look and feel to match the new learner’s list from last month.  Thank you to everyone for your feedback along the way to help improve the product.

A few reminders, columns can still be configured by your team so that your view matches your needs.  Filters and sorting allow for you to get to information quickly.  Lastly, the Export button allows you to export your filtered course list to a csv file.

March 2025 releases

Additional Enhancements

We are excited to announce the addition of PATCH calls to our Triggers functionality. This enhancement allows for more granular updates, enabling you to modify specific fields of a resource without affecting the entire entity. With PATCH calls, you can now:

• Update only the fields that need changes, improving efficiency.
• Reduce the amount of data sent in each request.
• Maintain greater control over your data updates.

Thank you for your feedback on the redesigned Administrative Learner View. Based on your use of the redesign, we have made searching easier and maintained filtering on columns with predefined values. Our team appreciates your efforts to continue to submit feedback to help us improve the product.

A new email template has been added to allow for affiliation administrators to receive notifications when new files have been uploaded by learners: ___AUTO_EXTERNAL_FILE_SUBMITTED.  This email template is disabled by default but can be turned on by removing the "_" at the beginning of the name.  To edit and enable this notification, please visit Administration > System Setup > Default Templates.

New SCORM Setting

A new setting from ScormCloud has been brought into Genius to allow for you to decide what happens to existing enrollments when you update the SCORM package to a newer version.  Previously, this could only be accomplished within ScormCloud itself.

When editing your sections and ScormCloud is the chosen LMS for that section, this option will appear:

The possible values are as follows:

Never - never moves existing enrollment to the newer version.
Incomplete - moves the enrollment to the latest version if it is marked as incomplete or unknown.
Complete - moves the enrollment to the latest version if it is marked as complete.
Failed - moves the enrollment to the latest version if it is marked as compete and failed.
Passed - moves the enrollment to the latest version if it marked as complete and approved.
Always. - always moves the enrollments to the latest version.

New File Upload Experience

Do you currently use file uploads for pre-requesites or to gather more information from your learners?  If so, a new experience to upload files will be introduced to streamline the process for your learners.  

The learner will see a new version of the screen where they can view their documents or add additional documents.  This screen will allow them to see all uploaded documents and their statuses.

When a learner clicks on Add File, a popup will appear with the ability to drag and drop a file to submit, select the Type, and add a description (optional).

Administrators can configure this experience in a few ways:

1. To turn on file uploads for learners, administrators can visit Access Setup for learners and ensure Files is checked off.
2. To configure file uploads for your learners, you can visit Administration > System Setup > Themes.  Looking at the themes page, you can change the default name of the left-hand menu item.  
3. As an administrator you can enable this in your administrative setting and edit the document types under Administration > System Setup > Lists > External File Type.

Administrative Learner View Update

As we continue to improve the user experience across the administrative experience, the Learners page has been redesigned and improved to bring consistency, more enhanced functionality, and cleaner design.

1. Columns can be customized by your team to allow for the appropriate information to be seen by your administrators.  Any previous custom columns will be automatically carried over to the new view.
2. Filters and sorting per column are available to help you find learners as quickly as possible.
3. The export button will pull an export of the content in view to allow you to run reports quickly.

As we progress on our goal of improving the user experience, we will add additional information here on Release Notes.  As always, if you have any feedback we would love to learn more at Our Ideas Page.

February 2025 releases

Now that your users have been interacting with the new Course Catalog, we have introduced a new course card with improvements based on your feedback. We plan to enable this week of February 24th. Thank you to everyone that submitted ideas at ideas.geniussis.com for the inspiration.

1. Have you ever wanted an easier way to get prospective learners to a recommended course? Course cards now include hyperlinks to recommended courses.

2. Do your learners have pre-requisite courses that are part of their learning journey? Those are now hyperlinked on the course card to ensure they know where to register for a simpler experience.

3. Once a learner or prospective learner adds a section to the cart, we will now display “Go to Cart” on that section so that they can get to the checkout process immediately from that screen.

We have also aligned the course experience to showcase the sections in cards, similar to the learner dashboard. This creates a more unified experience for your learners.

January 2025 releases

• Learners can now also be a guardian. The learner lefthand menu has been updated to allow for users to more easily navigate between multiple roles and has improved accessibility updates.
• Additional accessibility updates

December 2024 releases

• Terms now have the ability to add External Term Codes to help you integrate with additional platforms. This new field can be created in Genius and is available in the API.
• We have added Direct Enrollment URLs to give you the ability to create unique URLs that bypass catalog visibility settings and validations in checkout. This way you can prevent certain course sections or learning paths from displaying in the general catalog and have the ability to send a direct URL to certain users.
• Accessibility updates include page titles for all admin and learner pages, color contrast fixes, alt text for all images, adding missing labels and more.
• We now have the ability for guardians to register a learner or multiple learners under 18 for a course or summer camp. Currently, this feature can enabled by a Genius team member.

November 2024 releases

• Catalog updates
  • Pricing is now available on the course card without having to click into more details. It will always be a range of $lowestprice - $highestprice to allow for more transparency.
  • Sections are now listed in order of start date.
  • All hyperlinks in course descriptions will open in a new tab without having to edit the html code.
• API updates including exposing external course codes and user addresses.

October 2024 releases

• The following GET calls have been added to the API:
  • GET /affiliations/{affiliationId}
  • GET /courses/{courseId}
  • GET /departments/{departmentId}
  • GET /sections/{sectionId}
  • GET /enrollments/{enrollmentId}
  • GET /roles/{roleId}
  • GET /lms/{lmsId}
• New Financials data by Account 

September 2024 releases

• Course Catalog Update:
  • New filters have been added based on user feedback including available for registration to help learners find courses that are available today.
  • Now all courses and learning paths appear in the Course Catalog to allow for a more simplified searching process.
  • New Affiliation Custom Fields page that matches the experience of Admin Custom Fields.
  • New variable for certificates, COMPLETION_DATE_FULL which will return the following format: Date_DDMMYYYY.
• Learner Dashboard Updates
  • Added dates for current enrollments based on learner feedback
  • Added a Sync Data button alongside Last Sync Date

August 2024 releases

• Cybersource is now available as a payment gateway.
• New Learner Dashboard. We have rolled out a new opt-in Learner Dashboard aimed at simplifying the experience for learners. Learners will have the option to opt into the new experience or continuing to use the legacy dashboard. The new dashboard includes:
  • Simplified viewing - quickly view Active Course, Active Learning Paths, Pending Course, and Completed Course. Sections will be hidden if not applicable.
  • Updated Course Layouts - more visible and easier to access.
• Additional URL flexibility to allow for more shareable course catalog content.

July 2024 releases

• Learner import file now allows for primary affiliation to be included. Old versions of the file are still compatible.
• Xetta is now available as a payment gateway.
• As an admin, if you are doing an external course import and adding the equivalent course (using CourseIndex, Course Name or Course Code), it will now count towards completion of a Learning Path or Prerequisite similar to if a learner reported their own external course for credit.
• Now, you can use Google Analytics in tandem with your Genius+ instance to gain insights on the effectiveness of your business strategies and plans. To read more, go to this article.
• Genius is excited to announce updates to our course catalog experience in the Genius+ platform. The updates to this catalog provide users with better ways to find the offerings that they need!