Prove you're enrolled, without asking the registrar
A student can now generate an enrollment verification letter — the document a landlord, employer, or visa office asks for — directly from Folio, instead of filing a request and waiting on the registrar's office. It's a first version: institutions can expect refinements as real use turns up edge cases.
Alt text is now required before a figure or course image goes live
Folio used to infer alt text for you — a Studio figure took its caption, or the literal word "Figure"; a course-unit image took its block title. That looked done but wasn't: a screen reader got a caption repeated as a description, or no real information at all, and the inference quietly removed the signal that would have told anyone to fix it. Inserting a figure or a course-unit image now asks for real alt text before it publishes — the button isn't simply disabled, it explains inline what's missing and moves focus there, so it's clear what to do next rather than just what's blocked. Institutions also get a console-level accessibility policy panel to set expectations tenant-wide.
Set an AI-use policy per assignment
An instructor creating a Classroom assignment can now set its own AI-use policy — separate from any institution-wide default — so students see the right expectations for that specific piece of work instead of one blanket rule for every assignment.
Also new
- Bulk enrollment now enforces prerequisites, matching what registering one student at a time already checked.
- A course section's seats can no longer be oversold. Seat capacity is now claimed atomically, closing a race where two near-simultaneous enrollments could both succeed past the limit.
- A registrar gets a dedicated review surface for exam room allocation, instead of reading the assignment off a raw list.
- Consequential institution settings now ask for confirmation before saving, instead of applying immediately.
- Institutions can grant tenant-local IT/helpdesk access — a scoped support role that doesn't require full admin rights.
- A course's sections can now carry a structured schedule (days, times, location) instead of free text.
- Room-allocation shortfalls are now announced, instead of an allocator run silently leaving a course without a room.
- Course modules can be configured at creation, instead of only after the course exists.
- A public researcher profile now shows a "Verified reviews: N" count.
- Sign in with Microsoft is now available alongside Google and email.
- A new
/preprintsdirectory page lists preprint servers Folio's Discovery Agents and Radar can search. - Search picks up a news lane, built on the same fetchers Radar already uses for a research field.
- Discovery Agents and Radar gain DOAJ scanner parity and curated, verified grant feeds.
- A course syllabus can be attached as the PDF or Word file it already is, instead of being retyped into Folio.
- Surveyor's canvas builder supports read-only pinch-and-pan on mobile.
- A manuscript's survey data drift check flags content in the document that has moved past what the linked survey plan describes.
- The AI review panel now states what it did not check, not just what it did, so a report doesn't read as more exhaustive than it is.
Fixed
- A failed institution term rename no longer reports "no changes were made" — it now says the rename failed.
- Institution settings saves are now confirmed from the server instead of assumed to have worked, and an SSO draft survives toggling the provider off and back on.
- A fulfilled waiver request card now retires from the queue instead of sitting there indefinitely.
- A newly-enabled sign-in provider no longer takes up to 15 minutes to appear for users.
- Signing in no longer risks a stray auth-client race across browser tabs that could randomly sign you back out.
- Typing into a selected equation no longer deletes it and replaces it with the character you typed.
- A click into an equation now reliably lands inside its source field, instead of sometimes missing.
- The equation "Describe with AI" field now actually receives focus, and its placeholder text renders correctly instead of showing a broken translation string.
- A dismissed claim flag now survives a page reload.
- A source-database lookup error is now hidden from readers instead of surfacing as a raw error inline.
- A published report's link now shows its real name, not placeholder text.
- The citation suggester stops proposing sources a sentence already cites.
- DOCX import stops guessing between two sources by the same author in the same year and asks instead of picking one silently.
- PDF section headings now stay with the start of their section instead of stranding at the bottom of a page.
- DOCX exports now carry alt text on figure images, matching what equations already had.
- A tenant's favicon no longer falls back to Folio's own mark when the tenant has set its own.
- The last of the pre-rebrand indigo is retired from export defaults and the favicon manifest.
- The researcher directory's search now covers profile fields, not just names.
- Referral attribution now survives a directory signup and a public share, instead of being dropped along the way.