Happy New Year! Welcome to Finalsite’s release blog for our New Mobile App, giving you a well-designed experience for engaging your community with school news, events, student information, parent-teacher chat, and more! In this blog, you’ll find details of the enhancements and fixes implemented during the release of the newest version, 200.3.0.

We are excited to announce the release of Web Chat, allowing anyone to communicate and collaborate via URL in a browser without having to download an app or own a smartphone.

• Not seeing these updates on your device? Update your app to the latest version and remember to tell your school community to do the same so they can enjoy new features and fixes. 
• Are you on an iOS device and still not seeing the changes? Log in to your Apple account and approve the changes.

What's New

• Web Chat: Finalsite Chat is now available as a URL that you can share with your community. Now, anyone with a login can join in on chat room conversations and participate in direct messages using a web browser, in addition to a mobile device. See how it works:
  • School Leaders Article: “Web Chat Option: Help your community chat in a browser with a URL"
  • Parent Article: “Web Chat: Chat in a browser with a URL” 
  • Teacher Article: “Web Chat: Chat in a browser with a URL” 

Chat Fixes 

• General Fixes: We've fixed the “Add members” window, chat participant counter inaccuracies, pinned message issues, and problems with users being kicked out of rooms with more than 100 users.
• Push Notifications: Issues with being redirected to the previous room and search requests saved in the search field when creating a new DM chat have been fixed.
• Unread Messages & Notifications: Errors with unread message counts and unnecessary notifications will no longer occur.

Mobile App Improvements

• General Functionality: Issues with the "Try Again" button and Language screen when Internet connectivity is inconsistent have been resolved.
• Athletics: UI improvements for event locations, fixed scrolling issues in the filter screen, and corrected display of sport titles.
• Calendar: We've addressed content failing to display as it should, local storage updates on filtering, day counters for multi-day events, and placeholders for no events.
• Directory: White screen and UI issues are resolved, including problems with long titles and the 'no people found' screen.
• Filters: UI issues and extra spacing between schools have been updated.
• Home Screen: There are fixes coming out for overlapping upcoming events cards and scroll issues.
• News: Issues are resolved with the infinite loading spinner at the end of the News posts list.

Resources for your Community

• Mobile App Course (including Chat) in the Training Portal! (login before clicking link)
• Get started with the New Mobile App 
• Chat for Parents & Guardians articles
• Chat for Teachers articles
• Chat for School Leaders articles