🌓 Past Quarterly Updates - Q1 2023

Delve into our legacy release notes archive for a glimpse into past quarterly updates. Discover the evolution of our products and service over time.

Getting Started Updates
Recognition Experience Updates
Rewards Experience Updates
Celebration Experience Updates
Feedback Experience Updates
Communication Experience Updates
Admin Center Updates

 📢  Getting Started News

1. Rework of the Social Feed Wall
   We’ve made updates to the way that the recognition messages are displayed on the social wall. These updates include changes to the way that gifs, ecards, and attached images are represented alongside the recognition message. By allowing these types of multimedia content to be more easily shared and displayed on the social wall, we can help to enhance the overall user experience for those who use our recognition program. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article.
2. The Publishing Awards Page has been Redesigned and Reworked
   The awards for publishing page has been reworked to include an option for bulk action, which allows users to group posts together instead of publishing them one by one. This means that instead of manually publishing each post individually, the user can now select multiple posts and publish/dismiss them together with a single action. The reworked page is now modernized, with updated design and functionality. Overall, this feature is intended to make it more efficient and user-friendly for people to publish content on the social feed wall by reducing the time and effort required to post multiple items. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article. 
3. Outlook Integration for Seamless Recognition Experience
   

   With this integration, users can easily send recognition to their colleagues without needing to open the platform. This feature streamlines the recognition workflow and makes it even easier to show appreciation for a job well done. From there, you can select the recognition type, recipient, and message, and send it off with just a few clicks. This means you can send recognition messages without interrupting your workflow or switching between applications. We believe that this new feature will greatly improve the user experience for those who frequently send recognition messages, making it faster and more convenient to say thanks to colleagues, employees, or team members. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article.

4. Streamlined Login for Enhanced MS Teams Integration
   With the JobPts app now available on MS Teams, recognizing and rewarding your team has never been easier. Simply download the app on Teams and start sending recognitions within your organization. The app is designed to streamline the recognition process, enabling you to quickly and easily send kudos to team members who have gone above and beyond.

🔧 Getting Started Enhancements

1. New Setting to Disable GIF option in 'Celebrations'
   This feature was added in response to feedback from one of our customers who expressed concern that GIFs may not be appropriate in certain work environments or may be distracting to some team members. By giving the administrator the ability to disable the GIF option, we are providing more control over the types of content that can be shared in the program. Once administrator disables the GIF option in System settings it means that users will no longer be able to include GIFs in their celebration messages. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article.
2. Opt-out from Moments that Matter
   While many users find these Moments valuable and informative, we understand that not everyone may wish to receive them. By adding an opt-out feature for Moments that Matter, we are giving our users more control over the content they receive in the application. This feature allows users to unsubscribe from Moments that Matter notifications, which will prevent them from receiving further updates on these events. We believe that this new feature will enhance the user experience for those who prefer to receive content that is more tailored to their individual interests and needs.
   for more details click here. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article.
3. Streamlined Notification Settings Menu
   We have recently made an update to our application that removes the Feedback, Campaigns, and Nominations options from the Notification Settings if these modules are turned off. This means that if an organization has disabled one or more of these modules within the application, users will no longer see the related notification settings in their Notification Settings menu. By removing options that are not relevant to the user's organization, we can reduce clutter and confusion in the Notification Settings menu, making it easier for users to navigate and customize their settings.
4. Improved Selected Recipients Page and the Culture Profile View of Users
   With the reworked selected recipients view, users can now easily see who they have selected to receive their recognition messages. The new interface provides a clear and concise overview of all recipients, making it easier for users to manage their messages and ensure that they are being sent to the right people. In addition, we have also reworked the culture profile view of users. The new interface presents this information in a more visually appealing and user-friendly way, making it easier for users to track their progress and celebrate their accomplishments.

📢 Recognition Experience Updates

1. Easy Sharing of the Recognition Program
   We've added a direct link feature that allows program administrators to easily share the recognition program with others via email, instant message, or social media. This helps to increase the visibility of the recognition and showcase the positive culture of the organization. Additionally, providing a direct link can help to increase transparency and accountability while reinforcing positive behaviors and driving better performance. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article.
2. Annual Limits
   Program administrators can now set an annual limit on the number of recognitions that can be sent per user. This helps to ensure that recognition is distributed fairly, effectively, and efficiently while controlling costs and improving the overall quality of the recognition program. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article.
3. Clarity and Transparency of the Value of Recognition
   We’ve made it easier to understand the value of recognition by including the local currency next to points whenever they are used. This means that if points are awarded or redeemed in a specific geographic region, the local currency of that region should be clearly displayed alongside the points.
4. Increase User Reach with SMS-based Recognition
   By using this feature, users can increase the reach of their recognition award beyond the platform and engage with employees who may not regularly log in to the platform. This can be particularly useful for organizations with a large and geographically dispersed workforce, where traditional modes of communication like email or in-person recognition may not be feasible or effective. The recipient of the recognition can either receive a notification via SMS that they have been recognized or they may receive the entire message expressing appreciation in the SMS. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article.
5. Notify Others
   This feature provides a way for senders to include additional stakeholders in the recognition process and promote greater transparency and awareness of the recognition being given. Senders can now add someone who will be notified for the recognition they are sending. This feature enhances the communication and visibility of the recognition, as it allows other relevant parties to be notified and aware of the recognition being given. Under ‘System settings’ we have an option to limit the number of participants that can be added in CC. In other words, the system administrator can set a limit on the number of individuals who can be included in the ‘Notify others’ field for a given recognition message.
   
   To learn more about these features, please click on the following links:
   - Create Monetary Recognition Program
   - Create Non-Monetary Recognition Program
   - Administer the System Settings
6. Hide Recognition Program(s)
   This feature was developed in response to feedback received from customers. We have added the ability to hide recognition programs within the application while still being able to send them out through the admin center. This feature enables the admins to create a recognition program that is designed to acknowledge and reward individuals for their contributions.
   
   To learn more about these features, please click on the following links:
   - Create Monetary Recognition Program
   - Create Non-Monetary Recognition Program

🔧 Recognition Experience Enhancements

1. Allow Users to Boost any Post
   This feature provides users with more flexibility and options for recognizing their colleagues, including the ability to give both monetary and non-monetary recognition, and it simplifies the process of sending recognition through the social feed wall. Previously, users were limited to boosting only non-monetary recognitions, but now they can also choose to give a monetary award. Furthermore, if the program is enabled with SMS, then the recognition will be sent via SMS to the recipient's mobile phone number, making it easy and convenient for them to receive and acknowledge the recognition. In addition, the "boost" feature is designed to make recognition easier and more efficient by providing a shortcut through the social feed wall. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article. 
2. Nominate With Ease: Award Reasons are No Longer Mandatory
   Previously, it was mandatory to create a nomination program with award reasons, which required users to provide specific reasons for why they were nominating someone for an award. However, this limitation has now been removed. The updated nomination program allows users to create nominations without any mandatory award reasons. Users can enter free text or no text at all when making a nomination. This update provides greater flexibility and allows users to make nominations more quickly and easily, without the requirement to provide specific award reasons for each nomination. 
3. Label for Payroll Program
   Enhancement intended to improve the user experience by making it easier for users to navigate and understand the different types of recognition programs available within the application. The new recognition type label is likely to help users identify payroll programs more easily within the recognition program list.
4. Edit Texts for any Program through translation (P2P programs, Nomination programs, Feedback programs & Campaigns)
   The option allows admins to edit program texts through a translation button, which suggests that the program texts can be translated into different languages. This new option is more in line with how translations are typically managed within applications.

📢 Rewards Experience Updates

1. Equitable Budgeting for Organization Budget
   This feature is designed to provide a more structured and transparent approach to reward budgeting for recognition purposes within an organization. It enables the admin to allocate points to employees and distribute budgets to organizational units/divisions in a more equitable and efficient manner. The budget is calculated based on the number of points allocated to each employee. The admin will add a specific number of points for each employee, which can be used to participate in recognition programs. By using this approach, each organizational unit/division receives a budget that is proportional to the number of employees within that unit/division. This ensures that larger units/divisions receive a larger budget, while smaller units/divisions receive a smaller budget, based on their respective sizes.
   
   To learn more about this features, please click on the following links: 
   - Build your Rewards Budgets
   - Create and Manage Budget for a Monetary Program
   
   
2. Unlock a World of Personalized Products 
   We've integrated our rewards catalog with Shutterfly, a leading provider of customized products. With this integration, you can now redeem your rewards points for a wide range of personalized products offered by Shutterfly, including photo books, cards, calendars, prints, and valuable gifts that can be easily personalized and visualized. To get started, simply browse our rewards catalog, and look for the Personalized products. Once you've selected your desired product, you can customize it with your own photos and text, and our built-in integration Shutterfly will take care of the rest! We hope this integration will provide end users with even more ways to use their rewards points and create unique keepsakes or gifts. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article.

📢Celebration Experience Updates

1. A New User Perspective on Celebrations
   The key feature of this interactive celebration page is the use of sliders and help to bring the celebration to life and make it more meaningful for the user. By incorporating interactive elements such as sliders and better visual representations of moments that matter, users will be able to more easily navigate and celebrate the important events in their lives. By consolidating different celebration types into a single category and reworking existing options, users will be able to easily select the appropriate type of celebration for their needs. Currently, there are different celebration types within the application, such as Birthdays, Anniversaries, and Moments that Matter. However, this feature proposes to combine these celebration types under a single page called "Celebrations". This means that users will no longer need to navigate between different pages to find the celebration type they want.

To learn more about these features, please click on the following links:

• Interactive Celebration Page
• System Settings Administration for Celebration

🔧 Celebration Experience Enhancements

1. Key Moments to Celebrate: Birthdays, Anniversaries, and New Hires
   The feature being described involves the automatic creation of predefined programs for certain types of special moments within an application. Specifically, the application is designed to create three types of programs automatically: Anniversary, New Hire, and Birthday. The programs are created automatically with the help of a job, which ensures that the appropriate parameters are in place for each program. Employees can be assured that their special moments will be recognized and celebrated appropriately. When a "Moment that Matters" is created for an employee, the employee's department is notified about the upcoming celebration. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article.
2. Setting up Celebration Configuration 
   We've made it easier for you to configure how long you want past events to be displayed and how long events are represented in the slider. You can also choose between using tiles or an interactive page to view your celebrations. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article. 

📢 Feedback Experience Updates

1. Better Collaboration and Coaching with the Feedback Forum
   The feedback forum is designed to help facilitate ongoing communication between feedback recipients and their direct managers. With this new feature, all feedback messages will now be opened in the forum, allowing for continued discussion, coaching and collaboration between the recipient and their manager. This new forum is a great way to ensure that feedback is not just received, but also acted upon, and that both parties are able to stay engaged throughout the feedback process. By opening feedback in the forum, the recipient and their manager can respond, ask questions, or provide additional context, leading to better understanding and improved outcomes. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article. 
2. Delete Sent Feedback from Feedback Report
   This option allows the administrator or the person in charge of managing the feedback system to delete feedback that has been previously sent from the admin report. This feature is useful in situations where there may be errors or inaccuracies in the feedback that has been sent. For example, if someone accidentally sends feedback to the wrong recipient or if there is inappropriate or irrelevant content in the feedback, the administrator can delete the feedback from the admin report. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article.
   
3. Delete Requested Feedback from Application
   This option allows the sender of the feedback request to delete the request. This feature is useful in situations where the requester of the feedback has sent the feedback by a mistake. Also, if an employee sends a feedback request to their supervisor, but the supervisor does not respond within a certain timeframe, the employee can choose to delete the request. This prevents the feedback system from becoming cluttered with requests that are no longer relevant or necessary.
   If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article.

🔧 Feedback Experience Enhancements

1. Recipient Controls Feedback Sharing
   By giving the recipient control over whether their manager is informed, this feature empowers employees to make their own decisions about how they receive feedback and how it is shared with others. This can help to create a more open and safe feedback culture within the organization, where employees feel comfortable giving and receiving feedback without fear of negative consequences. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article. 
2. Request Feedback for Multiple Feedback Behaviors
   This feature expands the scope of feedback by allowing users to request feedback on multiple behaviors or aspects of their performance simultaneously. For example, an employee may want to request feedback on both their communication skills and their ability to work in a team. With this feature, they can request feedback on both behaviors at the same time, which saves time and effort compared to requesting feedback separately for each behavior.If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article. 

📢 Communication Experience Updates

1. New Instant Communication Channel: SMS
   To provide even more options for reaching team members, we have added SMS as a communication channel within Nurture. This feature allows for direct and immediate communication with team members, particularly useful for urgent or time-sensitive messages.
   To learn more about these features, please click on the following links:
   - Create Instant Comms: SMS
2. Editor Now can Create Communication from Scratch
   We have added a new feature that allows editors to create communication from scratch, providing greater flexibility in crafting messages and templates.
3. Exposed Settings for Power Users
   We have exposed a number of settings for system admins, that provide greater control and customization options. These include the ability to filter users and criteria, add additional users, and use merge tags to personalize communication.
4. New Custom Calendars
   

   We're excited to announce that Nurture now offers a new feature that allows users to create custom calendars for their scheduling and communication needs. With this feature, each event can be linked to a Communication that can be sent to a specific target audience on the designated date.

   One example of how this feature can be used is for a Recognition Event Calendar.

   With the Recognition Event Calendar, administrators can easily create and schedule recognition events along with linked recognition communications. The process of planning and organizing recognition events becomes more streamlined and efficient as templates can be created and reused for recurring events. This feature allows administrators to focus on creating meaningful recognition experiences for their employees, which can increase employee engagement and foster a stronger sense of belonging within the organization.

   To learn more about these new features and how to use them, please click on the following links:

   • Use the Editorial Calendar.
5. Integration with JobPts
   Nurture now integrates with JobPts, a recognition and rewards platform. As part of this integration, we have added a custom Recognition calendar that is linked to Recognition communication templates, streamlining the process of sending recognition messages to team members.
6. Introducing the Recognition Event Calendar: Create and Schedule Recognition Events with Ease
   Our new Recognition Event Calendar functionality allows admins to easily create templates for recognition events and schedule them for specific dates. With this feature, recognition event planning becomes streamlined and efficient, as templates can be created and reused for recurring events. The Recognition Event Calendar simplifies the entire recognition event planning process, enabling admins to focus on creating meaningful recognition experiences for their employees. By creating more opportunities for recognition events, the Recognition Event Calendar can help increase employee engagement and foster a stronger sense of belonging within the organization.

To learn more about these features, please click on the following links: 
- Use the Editorial Calendar 

🔧 Communication Experience Enhancements

1. Display Notification Icons if Comm has a Survey or Journey
   We have added a small but useful enhancement to the platform by displaying notification icons for communications that have an attached survey or journey. This improvement allows users to quickly identify and access these features, improving the overall user experience and making it easier to engage with surveys and journeys.
   If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base articles. 

Admin Center Updates

1. Report for SMS
   A new report has been created that provides details on the SMS communications. This feature allows admins to view information such as the status of the SMS (e.g., sent, pending, failed), the number of segments that were sent (since SMS messages have a character limit, longer messages are broken into segments), the sender of the SMS, the recipient of the SMS, and the date and time the SMS was sent. Overall, this feature provides valuable insights into SMS communications and helps admins to identify the reasons why some messages might be failed. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article. 
2. Hyperlink for Internal and External Pages
   With the new hyperlink feature for the welcome slider, administrators can now add external or internal links to the welcome slider messages. This allows companies to announce new recognition programs, company announcements, or important updates to employees by providing them with a direct link to the relevant information. This feature provides more interactive and engaging way for companies to communicate with their employees, while also improving the user experience and making it easier for employees to stay informed. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article.
3. Self-Exclusion Report for Admins
   This feature allows admins to view which users have chosen to exclude themselves from certain features within the application, such as anniversary or birthday celebrations, leaderboards, moments that matter, or monetary awards. This information can help admins to better understand user preferences and tailor the recognition program to better suit the needs of the users. The self-exclusion report also helps to ensure that users have control over their own recognition experience and can opt-out of certain features if they choose to do so. Overall, this feature promotes a more personalized and user-centric approach to recognition and ensures that users have a positive and meaningful experience with the application. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article.
4. Personalize Recognition with Mapped E-Cards
   Admins now can map E-Cards with award reasons or recognition programs, or both. This feature allows admins to personalize recognition and tailor specific E-Cards to specific award reasons or programs. For example, if an admin wants to make sure that every recognition message sent through the program includes an E-Card, they can now use this feature to force the use of E-Cards. Additionally, if there is a specific E-Card that is relevant to a particular award reason or program, admins can now associate that E-Card with that award reason or program to make recognition more meaningful and personalized. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article.
5. Proxy Login Monitoring and Management Report
   This report allows admins to track who used the feature and logged in as someone else, providing details such as the time of login and logout, as well as who granted permission for the login. This feature can be useful for several reasons. For example, it can help admins to identify any unauthorized or suspicious login activity, allowing them to take appropriate action to protect the system and its data. Additionally, it can provide insight into how often the proxy login feature is being used, which can be helpful for monitoring system usage and identifying any potential issues or areas for improvement.
   To learn more about these features, please click on the following links: 
   - Proxy Management
   - Proxy Feature - Admin
   - Proxy self-service enablement

🔧 Admin Center Enhancements

1. Report on Unique Users that Have Received Recognition
   The enhancement feature allows users to generate a report that shows unique users who have received recognition, along with all other relevant information. This report can be useful for tracking recognition, rewards, and incentives, as well as for performance management. The report can help identify top performers, track the effectiveness of the recognition program, and determine where improvements can be made. It can also be used to identify users who have received a certain number of recognitions or have been recognized for specific behaviors, which can be used to award incentives or rewards to top performers and encourage others to strive for similar recognition. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article.
2. Personalize the Logo in the Admin Center
   Users are now able to personalize their admin center by uploading a branded logo image file. This feature provides users with the ability to visually customize their system and make it more aligned with their brand or organization's identity. By adding a logo, users can create a more engaging and memorable experience for their employees, reinforcing their brand and values. If you would like more in-depth information, please see our knowledge base article. 
3. Customize Users Data for Presentation Purposes
   With this enhancement super admins are now able to add all the necessary fields by themselves, such as managers, org units, and job titles without the assistance of a developer. These new options for custom columns allow super admins to modify user data for presentation purposes.