FOCUS-50985- Fixed Assets | Default Include Disposed/Inactive Selection

System enhancement to Fixed Assets > Assets > Manage Assets defaulting the include disposed/inactive check box to checked. The user can chose to unselect and run the report.

FOCUS-50946- Budget Maintenance|Remove Accruals Inclusion in Budget Maintenance Request Submission Balance Check

System improvement to Budgeting/General Ledger > Budget > Internal Account Budget Maintenance removing accruals from the Budget Maintenance budget balance calculation.

FOCUS-50916- Budgeting/General Ledger | Expenditure/Revenue Report Default to End Month on Prior Year Report

System enhancement to Budgeting/General Ledger > Budget > Expenditure/Revenue report defaulting the month filter option to the ending month when a prior year is selected.

FOCUS-50763- Fixed Assets - Device Check In Fee History

System enhancement to Fixed Assets > Assets > Check Out > Fees adding a Fee History button.

FOCUS-50558- Fixed Assets | Add Asset Fields to Fixed Assets Report & Take Inventory Screen

System enhancement to Fixed Assets > Fixed Assets Report and Fixed Assets > Take Inventory > View Inventory adding additional asset fields including Vehicle ID, License Plate, PCard, Donation, Gift and Internal Accounts.These fields will are also added to the Toggle Columns pop up where appropriate.  

FOCUS-50525- Setup Accounts Payable | Add Import Button to Terms and Conditions

System improvement to Setup > Settings > Accounts Payable adding an import button to the Terms and Conditions table.

FOCUS-50209- Fixed Assets | Disposal Facility Selection

System enhancement to Setup > Settings > Miscellaneous > Misc > Disposal Facility allowing the user to select more than one facility to define the disposal facilities.

FOCUS-49327- Setup Accounts Payable | Add Date Ranges to Terms and Conditions

System improvement to Setup > General Ledger > Settings > Accounts Payable > Terms and Conditions replacing the active checkbox with Start/End dates. The user will be able to utilize Terms and Conditions within a valid date range, while maintaining historical detail.

FOCUS-48961- Automatic Invoices: New Active Checkbox and Staff Search Terms

This system enhancement adds a new 'Active' checkbox on the Automatic Invoices screen to determine which records should be active when the Automatic Billing Invoice scheduled job runs. The checkbox should be added to both District Invoices & School Invoices and the enhancement includes a migration that enables the checkbox by default for all existing records. A Staff Search Terms field will be added to the District Invoices tab.

See Billing > Automatic Invoices and Scheduled Jobs for more information.

FOCUS-50878- Applicant Tracking | Only Approved Job Postings Should Have Open/Closed Status

System enhancement to Human Resources > Applicant Tracking > Job Postings ensuring only approved job postings have an open or closed status.

FOCUS-50873- Payroll | Deduction Adjustment Allocation Override

System enhancement to Payroll > Run Payroll > Adjustments  introduces an Allocate button to allow users to override the allocation of a deduction adjustment.

FOCUS-50848- Payroll > Maint by Fiscal Year > View only

System enhancement to Setup > Profiles > Payroll adding a View Only profile to the Maintenance by Fiscal Year Main Tables and Pay Schedule tabs.

FOCUS-50441- Time and Attendance | Cal Day Type Titles

System improvement to Human Resources > Time & Attendance Approval > Timekeepers Report ensuring Cal Day Type is displayed. Cal Day Type can be set in Setup > District Codes > Cal Day Type.

FOCUS-50071- ERP Scheduled Jobs | Nightly Job to End Benefits for Terminated Jobs

System enhancement to Human Resources > Employee > Deductions and Human Resources > Employee > Benefits via a scheduled job that will end the benefits of terminated employees.  The job will load the last day of the month into the Dropped column of the Deductions tab and the End Date column of the Benefits tab.  The scheduled job is Titled "End Benefits for Terminated Jobs."  

See Scheduled Jobs for more information.

FOCUS-51040- Student Photos Now Display Correctly in Advanced Reports

This update resolves an issue that previously prevented student profile photos from displaying correctly within Advanced Reports. Reports will now accurately show each student's photo instead of displaying "No Photo," enhancing the usability of these reports.

FOCUS-51018- Scheduling Improved When Using Room Seat Limits

Resolved an issue where enabling the system preference "Limit Seat Count By Max Seats in Room" prevented scheduling of students into sections if assigned rooms did not have a defined maximum seat count. With this update, rooms without a specified seat count no longer block scheduling, allowing the scheduler to function correctly.

FOCUS-50992- Email Verification Improved for Parents Adding Students

Resolved an issue causing parents with previously verified email addresses to be incorrectly prompted to verify their email again when adding an already enrolled student to their portal. This update ensures verified parents can link students seamlessly without unnecessary email verification prompts.

FOCUS-50980- New Online Application: Allow Parents to Complete Forms for Future Active Students

Enhanced the New Student Online Application to better handle students with future active enrollments. Students enrolled in a future year now correctly appear in the parent's available student list for application summaries. Additionally, when a parent begins an application for such students, the system automatically switches to the correct enrollment year. The "Re-enroll Students" option is now appropriately hidden for students who already have active future enrollments, providing a clearer, more intuitive application process.

FOCUS-50966- Schema Change: New custom_fields.visible_updated_by (BIGINT)

Implemented a database update to the custom_fields table, adding a new column, "visible_updated_by" (BIGINT). This schema adjustment prepares the system for future enhancements related to tracking visibility changes on custom fields. No user-facing functionality changes accompany this update.

FOCUS-50956- Elementary Scheduler: Resolve Visibility of Previously Scheduled Students

Resolved an issue where students previously scheduled into a section without an assigned teacher were not appearing in the Elementary Scheduler. Now, students who were associated with sections that lost teacher assignments correctly display under the Unassigned column, ensuring visibility and allowing schedules to be updated appropriately.

FOCUS-50927- Preferences: Restore Password Complexity Validation

This update restores proper validation for password complexity requirements when users are prompted to change their passwords. When the "Require Complex Passwords" preference is enabled, users are now correctly prompted with a message specifying password requirements, including minimum length and required character types.

FOCUS-50922- Print Teacher Schedules: Rotation Days 'Number' Showing as Letters

This update resolves an issue with rotation day labels on printed teacher schedules. Previously, rotation days always appeared as letters, regardless of the system preference setting. Now, the labels correctly reflect the selected preference--either numbers or letters--ensuring clarity and consistency when schedules are printed.

FOCUS-50906- Final Grades: Validation Exception Added for Grade Title 'T'

This update expands the exceptions for grade title validation on the Final Grades screen by including the title "T." Previously, only the titles "NG," "NC," and "P" bypassed validation. With this enhancement, manually entered grade titles continue to be validated against their associated grade scale, except for these specified exceptions, maintaining accuracy and flexibility in grade reporting.

See Final Grades, GPA, & Class Rank > Did You Know? for more details.

FOCUS-50887- Form Builder Footer Visibility Improved

This update resolves an issue in Form Builder where the footer would incorrectly appear when adding additional pages to a form, even if the footer display option was disabled. With this improvement, the footer remains hidden or visible consistently according to the selected setting, regardless of the number of pages added.

FOCUS-50885- Communication Platform: Add SMS Short Code Opt-Out Subscription Capability

The Communication Platform now supports recipient opt-out functionality for SMS messages sent via short code. Recipients can reply "STOP" (case-insensitive, whitespace allowed) to unsubscribe from receiving future short code texts, or reply "START" to resubscribe. A new scheduled job, "Communication Short Code Subscriptions," manages this process by retrieving inbound SMS replies from Vonage daily and automatically updating unsubscribe preferences based on the recipient's most recent message. This ensures that communication preferences are consistently honored.

Technical Notes:

• A new scheduled job "Communication Short Code Subscriptions" was added, available when Vonage integration is enabled.
• The job processes inbound SMS messages from Vonage, specifically handling the "START"/"STOP" commands, and updates unsubscribe flags accordingly in the address, people_join_contacts, and gl_contact tables.

See Scheduled Jobs for more details.

FOCUS-50883- New Online App: Include PDF Snapshot to Completion Email Enhancement

This update enhances the New Online Application module by including a PDF snapshot of the completed application in the confirmation email sent to applicants upon form submission. Previously, completion emails did not include the application snapshot. Now, once an application form is submitted, recipients receive an email containing an attached PDF of their completed application, providing a convenient record for both parents and students.

See New Application Editor and Online Enrollments for Students and New Application Editor and Online Applications for Users for more information.

FOCUS-50871- Florida PEER Scheduled Job Query Update

This update resolves an issue with the Florida Reports PEER Scheduled Job, specifically correcting how the query retrieves the first day of school.

FOCUS-50853- Student Info: Consistent Labeling of Student Phone Number Field

This update resolves an inconsistency where the primary phone number in Contacts and Addresses was labeled as "Student Phone Number," but displayed as "Home Phone" in Advanced Reports and the Communication Portal. The label has now been standardized to "Student Phone Number" across all relevant areas of the software, ensuring clarity and consistency.

FOCUS-50850- Calendar Event Modal Size Adjustment

This update improves the display of the "Add Event" modal in the Calendar module. The modal size has been adjusted to ensure the "Save" button is fully visible without requiring users to resize or zoom their browser window.

FOCUS-50844- Improved Attendance Calculation to Prevent Minute Rounding Issues (Kiosks)

This update enhances attendance calculations by addressing scenarios where kiosk check-ins or check-outs recorded exactly at or beyond the 30-second mark previously resulted in rounding errors. The system now ignores seconds during attendance minute calculations, preventing unintended inflation of attendance totals. For example, timestamps at 10:20:30 will no longer incorrectly add an extra minute. After applying this update, running the "Recalculate Minute Attendance" scheduled job is required for changes to take effect. This ensures accurate and consistent attendance reporting.

See Scheduled Jobs for more information.

FOCUS-50837- Periods: Improved Protection Against Deletion of School Periods in Use

This update strengthens data integrity by preventing the deletion of school periods currently referenced in other records. When attempting to delete a school period (Setup > School Setup > Periods), the system now performs checks across multiple related tables, including attendance records, scheduled courses, communications, lunch periods, and scheduling rules. If any dependent records are found, the deletion is blocked, and the user is presented with a clear message listing the tables and record IDs affected. This enhancement ensures consistency of data and prevents unintended disruption to scheduling and attendance records.

See Periods for more information.

FOCUS-50832- Communication Platform: New Allow Reply to Affect Staff and Admin Profiles

This update enhances the Communication module by extending the "Allow Replies" feature to include staff recipients. Previously limited to student and parent communications, administrators can now enable or disable replies from staff via SMS and email. Additionally, wording throughout the Communication module has been updated from "Allow Student/Parent Reply" to "Allow Replies" for clarity. When enabled, messages to staff are sent using a 10DLC number to facilitate replies; when disabled, messages use the SMS short code, preventing replies. Staff can always reply through the Focus portal regardless of this setting.

Technical Notes: This update adjusts messaging logic to select either the SMS short code or 10DLC number based on the "Allow Replies" setting. Additionally, wording for preferences in Communication Settings and System Preferences has been standardized to reflect this expanded functionality.

FOCUS-50813- Calendar Module Now Displays Events Correctly

Resolved an issue in the Calendar module where certain events visible on the portal's Upcoming Events section did not display when viewing the full calendar. This update ensures that events correctly appear in both the Upcoming Events list and the Calendar module, addressing an inconsistency related to school year filtering.

FOCUS-50809- Add Student Image to Hall Passes

A new column has been added to the Active tab of the Hall Passes screen to display the student's ID picture as the first entry in the data table. This update allows teachers and administrators to quickly verify a student's identity against the name listed on the hall pass, streamlining hallway management and improving student accountability.

See Hall Passes (Admin) and Hall Passes (Teacher) for more information.

FOCUS-50767- Advanced Report Date Filter Accuracy Improved

Resolved an issue in Advanced Reports where date filters using the "Equals" operator returned incorrect or incomplete results due to a mismatch in date formatting between PHP and Moment.js. The update corrects the underlying formatting logic, ensuring that date searches now accurately retrieve only exact matches.

FOCUS-50756- Acknowledgement Step Removed from Legacy Enrollment Applications

The acknowledgement checkbox and explanatory text that previously appeared after course selection in legacy enrollment applications using the Application Courses field have been removed. Applicants will now directly proceed through course selection without interacting with this acknowledgment step, simplifying the application process. This change does not affect applications without the Application Courses field or the new application system.

See Application Editor > Setting Up Application Courses (Postsecondary) for more information.

FOCUS-50750- Discipline: Reduced Padding for Referral Resultant Actions

The padding within the Discipline Referral Resultant Actions table has been slightly reduced. This enhancement provides a cleaner, more compact display, making it easier to review multiple actions associated with discipline referrals.

FOCUS-50742- Student Search: Enrollment Date and Drop Date Added as Search Filters Enhancement

The Enrollment Date and Drop Date fields have been added as search filters within Student Search > More Search Options > Student Fields > Enrollment. Users can now effectively filter student records based on enrollment or withdrawal date ranges directly from the student search interface. This update ensures consistent search capabilities across different areas of the system.

FOCUS-50711- Communication: Communication Platform: Letter Log Enhanced to Display Email Delivery Errors

This update enhances the Communication Platform by introducing an Error column within the Letter Log, providing clearer visibility into email delivery issues. When emails fail to send, the relevant error messages will now display directly in the Letter Log entry, streamlining troubleshooting and improving communication transparency. Existing log entries are automatically updated through a one-time migration, ensuring historical data accurately reflects prior email delivery errors.

Technical Details: A new logical column ("Error") utilizes the existing log_field11 within the custom_field_log_entries table. A migration creates this logical mapping for both student (SISStudent) and staff/parent (FocusUser) log records, assigns permissions based on existing Letter Log access, and backfills historical error messages from the communication_queue table for email records dated on or after January 1, 2025.

See Student Info: Letter Log for more details.

FOCUS-50649- Student Audit Trail: Discipline Incident Tracking Enhancement

This update enhances the Student Audit Trail with a new sub-permission, "Discipline Incidents," which tracks changes made to Discipline Incident (SESIR) forms linked specifically to student referrals. The Audit Trail now clearly displays records of modifications, including creation of new incidents and updates to existing details, increasing visibility and accountability.

Technical Details: The new sub-permission "Discipline Incidents" within the Student Audit Trail is disabled by default to maintain existing system behavior. Audit records for discipline incidents are stored in a newly created audit schema table: audit.discipline_incidents.

See Users > Profiles > Students tab and Audit Trail > Discipline Incidents for more details.

FOCUS-50604- System Preferences: Migration to Delete Unnecessary School-Specific Preferences

Resolved an issue where district-level default system preferences incorrectly included school-specific values for the 2024 and above school year years. Duplicate school-specific records are now removed from the database, ensuring that default district-level system preferences remain correctly configured without hidden school-specific settings.

FOCUS-50565- District Reports: URL Parameter Passing Enhancement

This enhancement adds the ability for users to create dynamic hyperlinks within District Reports, enabling quick drill-down from summarized data to detailed student lists. A new 'URL_PARAMETERS' variable type allows districts to define custom URL parameters in aggregate queries (e.g., counts or totals). Users can now click directly on numeric totals, seamlessly launching another linked District Report with filters pre-applied based on those parameters.

Technical Details: A new district variable type 'URL_PARAMETERS' has been added, supporting URL parameters defined via SQL. This functionality enables direct parameter passing between linked reports through clickable aggregate results. No physical schema changes were required.

See District Reports > Editing & Running Reports for more details.

FOCUS-50564- Attendance Calendar: View All Schools Enhancement

This enhancement adds the ability to view a student's attendance records across all schools attended within the district, consolidated into a single calendar view. A new View All Student Attendance option has been added to the Attendance Calendar, allowing users to easily access attendance details from multiple schools without needing to manually switch between them. Attendance data from other schools is presented in read-only mode, ensuring data integrity while providing a comprehensive attendance overview. Note: This new option requires the View All Attendance profile permission. These changes have been applied to the admin screen as well as the teacher screen.

See Users > Profiles > Admin > Attendance tab > Attendance Calendar, Attendance Calendar (Admin), Profiles > Teacher > Attendance tab, and Attendance Calendar (Teachers) for more information.

FOCUS-50539- Communication Platform: Teacher Permissions for Publishing Student Groups

This enhancement updates the Communication Platform by adding 'Publish to Portal' permissions for Student Groups to teacher profiles. Teachers with existing View and Edit permissions to Groups will have these new permissions enabled by default. Teachers can now control which student groups are visible on the Student and Parent Portals, allowing announcements targeted at specific groups. Students and parents will see only the groups to which they belong, maintaining privacy.

FOCUS-50481- Form Builder: Improved Handling of Long Queries

This update resolves an issue in Form Builder where running lengthy queries from Collections previously resulted in a "403 Forbidden nginx" error due to URL length limitations. With this improvement, queries exceeding approximately 4000 characters can now be executed successfully, allowing users to seamlessly navigate from the Form Builder interface directly to Run Query, regardless of query length.

FOCUS-50418- Communication Platform: Improved Visibility of Hidden Schedules

This update enhances the Communication Platform by ensuring that when schedules are hidden from teachers, the corresponding section tags no longer appear in the communication dropdown.

FOCUS-50414- Populate Graduation Requirements Summary with Seal Indicators Enhancement (Florida & Missouri)

The Populate Graduation Requirements Summary scheduled job has been enhanced to include indicators for Scholar, Industry, Fine Arts, and Biliteracy seals for Florida customers, and the Aplus indicator for Missouri customers. Each student's seal completion status will be flagged as Yes, No, or Pending (Biliteracy uses only Yes/No). The new indicators provide schools and districts with clear and consistent data in the database that can be leveraged in custom procedures or data extractions for third-party systems.

Technical Notes: Schema changes include the creation of a new table, grad_requirements_metric_summary, with the below fields. Each indicator stores seal completion values of Y, N, or P, except for Biliteracy fields which store Y or N only.

• scholar_met_status
• biliteracy_silver_met_status
• biliteracy_gold_met_status
• industry_met_status
• fine_arts_met_status
• aplus_met_status

See Scheduled Jobs > Built-In Scheduled Jobs Explained for more information.

FOCUS-50397- Gradebook Templates Job: Enhanced Stability for Section Modifications

This update improves the stability of the Gradebook Templates scheduled job. Previously, if course sections were deleted or modified while the job was running, it could cause the entire job to fail. With this improvement, the job now gracefully skips sections that have been deleted or no longer have a primary teacher assigned, ensuring reliable execution and accurate assignment creation.

FOCUS-50311- Course History: Enhanced Permissions for Editing Posted Grades in Course History

This update adds a new profile permission titled "Edit Posted Grades," available under Grades > Course History. Users with this permission enabled will continue to edit and delete posted grades as before. If this permission is disabled, users can only delete manually entered grades that are not linked to active schedules or sections. Grades from other schools (schools different from the one selected at the top-right) are viewable but appear grayed out and are not editable. Additionally, grades tied to course sections can only be deleted by users without this permission if the current date falls within the defined section start and end dates.

Technical Details:

A migration is included to automatically grant the "Edit Posted Grades" permission to all existing profiles that previously had edit access to Grades > Final Grades, Class Rank, and GPA, preserving their current functionality. The permission specifically controls editing access and is not available as a "view-only" option.

See Users > Profiles > Grades tab for more details.

FOCUS-50163- Student Schedule Mass Requests: URI Too Long

This update resolves an issue with Mass Requests where excessively long URLs caused errors when processing a large number of student requests.

FOCUS-50126- Communication: Add Ability to Upload Audio Files for Calls

Users can now upload pre-recorded audio files when composing call messages in the Communication module. This enhancement offers an alternative to existing options of recording live or using text-to-speech. Supported file formats include WAV and MP3, with file length restricted based on the district's call duration limit. This feature streamlines the call creation process and expands flexibility for call content delivery.

See Communication > Attaching a Call > Audio File and Communication (Teachers) > Attaching a Call > Audio File for more information.

FOCUS-50125- Alert Icon Asset Management Improvement

This update enhances Alert Icons by converting icon image paths to use asset.php URLs, similar to the method used for student photos. Both custom user-uploaded and default alert icons are now managed through asset URLs, improving reliability, consistency, and performance of icon loading across various screens within the system.

FOCUS-49909- Online Application: Updated Letter Trigger Implementation

This update addresses an issue with letter triggers in the Online Application process. Previously, letter notifications triggered by application actions.

FOCUS-49828- Improved Performance for Communication Report

This update significantly improves performance when loading the Communication Report. Users will now experience faster load times, particularly when running reports for longer date ranges or with the 'View All Users' option enabled.

FOCUS-49396- Scheduling: Improved Room Capacity Validation

This update enhances validation for room capacity during scheduling. Previously, students could be added to sections without triggering warnings, even if the assigned room was already at maximum capacity due to multiple sections occurring simultaneously. Now, the total number of enrolled students across all sections using the same room and period is accurately considered, and a clear error message will display when attempting to exceed room capacity. This ensures accurate scheduling and helps prevent unintended over-enrollment.

FOCUS-49308- Medical Module: Enhanced Diabetic Log and Medication Administration Functionality

This update introduces significant improvements to the Medical module, specifically around medication management and diabetic logging:

• Medication Order Enhancements: A new "Insulin" checkbox was added to the Medication Order system field, allowing insulin-specific orders to route automatically to the Diabetic Log instead of the Medication Administration Log.
• Diabetic Log Integration: The Medical Cron Job now recognizes insulin-designated medication orders, ensuring proper logging to the Diabetic Log. A standardized Diabetic Log system field has also been created or updated automatically to align with this functionality.
• Medication Order Auto-Population: When creating medication events on the calendar, the medication order details (Name, Dosage, Medication Form) now auto-populate based on the linked medication order, streamlining data entry and ensuring consistency.
• Medication Inventory Management: Introduced new tracking capabilities via the "Medication Supply Received or Wasted" log, coupled with a computed Medication Inventory table, providing real-time tracking of medication supplies.
• Medical Calendar Enhancements: The portal calendar now clearly displays scheduled medication administration times with improved formatting and readability.
• Improved Field Management: Enhanced field persistence logic ensures explicit column naming without unintended overrides, preserving custom configurations.

These enhancements significantly streamline medication administration and diabetic tracking processes, ensuring compliance, improved accuracy, and easier management for school health professionals.

See Scheduled Jobs > Built-In Scheduled Jobs Explained for more information.

FOCUS-44199- SIS Schema: Remove Legacy Tables

This update will remove the following tables from the schema as they are no longer leveraged by the SIS program: - letter_queue_text - email_queue - grad_programs_join_subjects - grad_programs_join_course_requirements - grad_programs

FOCUS-50447- Florida June 2025 snapshot

This update includes the June 2025 updates to Florida SSS Master Forms. Please reference this Zendesk Article for full release notes:

https://focusschoolsoftware.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/38857874991259-June-2025-Updates-to-FL-Master-Forms-Setup-Revised

FOCUS-50147- SSS: Enhanced IEP and EP Progress Monitoring Workflow

This update streamlines the IEP and EP Progress Monitoring workflow by introducing several new features:

Portal Alerts: Teachers now receive portal alerts when quarterly progress monitoring is due. Alerts list students on their caseload requiring monitoring, linked directly to active grade posting windows and applicable IEP or EP events. Selecting the alert navigates teachers directly to their Caseload screen.

Automatic Caseload Management: A new trigger action, "Push to Caseload," automatically adds students to a user's caseload based on selections made within SSS forms, eliminating manual entry. Students already present on the caseload will not be duplicated.

Enhanced Caseload Interface: The Caseload screen now includes an "Include inactive IEP or EP" checkbox, allowing users to view students whose IEP or EP has expired. Additionally, a new "Progress Monitoring" button appears on the Caseload, enabling direct access to existing or new IEP and EP Progress Reports.

Improved Navigation: Within the IEP Goals Progress Report and EP Progress Report screens, a "Next Student" button is available next to the Save button, allowing quick navigation to the next student requiring progress monitoring on the user's caseload. If needed, it automatically creates a new progress monitoring event.

See General > Setting the Caseload & Services Preferences, Caseload & Services, and Manage Students: ESE Events for more information.