Introducing the latest update from AwardSpring! With our new in-app document preview feature, you can now seamlessly access attached files without downloading them. Plus, we've enhanced qualification configurations to align with recent FAFSA updates. Finally, we've also deployed some great new features for our Donor Management users and mixed in a few bug fixes as well.
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Reminder: improving performance for reviewers is still top of mind for us - expect an update on our plans to patch in the next day or two.

Lots to read up on, so let's dive in on today's changes!

We're excited to introduce the in-app document preview feature in AwardSpring! Now, all users, including admins, students, recommenders, and reviewers, can seamlessly view attached files without the need to download them first. With support for the most common file formats, accessing important documents has never been easier.

All you need to do is click on the file name's hyperlink, and the file opens in a new tab, making it incredibly convenient to review documents within the platform.

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For users who prefer to download or have a need to save documents locally for any reason, you still have the option to download from the preview screen.

To align with recent updates to FAFSA, particularly the allowance of a negative Student Aid Index (SAI) down to -1500, we have updated our qualification settings. This update enables the use and saving of negative numbers as qualifiers, ensuring compatibility with the latest FAFSA standards and regulations.
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For instance, you can now set qualifications based on criteria such as “Applicant must demonstrate significant financial need”, with the flexibility to specify a Student Aid Index (SAI) value to be lower than 0, for instance, -100.

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For further insights into these changes and their implications, please check out our latest article on Navigating the FAFSA Simplification Act: What It Means for Students and Institutions.

For our growing Donor Management user base, we've deployed some new features specifically for this product in today's release, starting with:
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Ability to track donation type
With this latest update, organizations now have the ability to track multiple donation types, providing full visibility into the different ways donors contribute to support your mission. The available options include:

In-kind Donations: In-kind donations refer to non-monetary support to a non-profit in the form of goods, services, or assets, rather than cash. In the educational field, in-kind donations can take various forms, contributing to the improvement of educational programs and facilities. Here are some examples:

Monetary Donations: In case of direct financial contributions made to a non-profit, you may select one of the following options:

Soft credits are acknowledgments or attributions of a donation to individuals or organizations other than the primary donor. Typically, they are assigned when a donation is influenced or facilitated by external factors, such as matching programs or family relationships and networks. To summarize:

Let us look at an example to better understand this feature: Let's say a donor makes a contribution, and their spouse or family member plays a significant role in influencing the donation. Now, you can take action to assign a Soft Credit to the spouse or family member, acknowledging their impact:

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Navigating back to the Soft Credited account (in this case, a family), we will find the gift donation in their associated Activity Records as well:

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There's a lot more to this Soft Credits features to explore. We recommend joining our upcoming webinar on May 29th about Donor Management to learn more (or look for an invite to our planned Donor Management user feedback session where we'll explore new features and gather feedback on other ideas to make this new product even better).

The Relationship Tagging feature is designed to track donors' personal connections and networks. Administrators can now flag relationships between accounts across roles, providing detailed insight into relationships across the entire platform, including connections with other donors, admins, reviewers, students, and even non-users. The Relationship section is presented as a two-column table: