We’re proud to announce a major new feature on Finalsite Explore - we now display a map of all schools, including an address filter for parents to add their home address and check their distance to each school! For districts, we also display school zones to better guide parents to the school their child must enroll in and other schools they can apply for. 

For lotteries, we have added a new field and tier option which will order and accept students on a first-come, first-served basis using their application submit time. 

Finally, we’ve extended our SFTP offering to support multiple connections, and we’ve added a PDF file preview for improved security (no need to download PDFs to view them!).

What's New

• Major Feature Release: School Map & School Zones in Finalsite Explore!
  Parents browsing district schools in Finalsite Explore can now enter their home address to view their location in relation to all schools in the group, including zoned schools. They will be able to see their distance from each school, as well as easily enroll to their zoned school or apply to any nearby schools that accept outside applications.
• New "Application Submit Time" field: This field includes the application submit time down to the second, and can be used as a search criterion. The field “Application Submit Date” still remains and will continue working as normal.
• New “Application Submit Time” lottery tier: The application submit time field can now also be used as a lottery tier. This option can be used when you want to accept students still in the lottery pool in the order in which they applied, ensuring that the ones who applied earliest get in.
• Multiple SFTPs now supported: You can now set up multiple Secure File Transfer Protocols (SFTPs) to leverage as many integrations with other systems as you need. We’ve also added the ability to add a Display Name and a File Directory, although both remain optional.
• File Preview: PDFs and images uploaded to checklist items can now be viewed in Preview mode, no longer requiring school administrators to download the files to view them. This will help files remain more secure.

Bug Fixes

• Users with financial permissions could see "Billing" but not access any of the reports: We now take into consideration whether or not they have the Financial permission - if they do, they will be able to see all reports. If not, the entire Billing section will be hidden.
• Embedded Inquiry Thank You page: Whenever the form is embedded, the Thank You page should now adjust its size properly, so that parents see the Thank You text at the top without having to scroll up.