What's new in PortalHQ — June to August 2026

A summary of the major changes deployed across PortalHQ between June and August 2026. We’ve grouped changes by area so you can find what’s relevant to you. Smaller fixes, refactors and behind-the-scenes infrastructure work aren’t listed.

Highlights

A busy three months. The changes worth calling out:

Risk assessments for events — a structured risk assessment built into Event Planner: activity, staffing, transport, a proper risk register with calculated ratings, an emergency plan, staff acknowledgement, parent consent and a printable excursion pack. Events that require one can’t be approved until it’s complete. See the full guide: Risk Assessments — plan safer excursions and events.
Web Apps — a new module for hosting your school’s own small custom tools (fee calculators, sign-up boards, directories) inside PortalHQ, with shared data storage and access control. See the guide: Web Apps — host your own school apps on PortalHQ.
Camp Management — a new module that turns a school’s EnrolHQ instance into a staff dashboard for running a school camp: students, dietary needs, medical flags and medications, with Excel exports for the kitchen and the first aid team.
A big Slips overhaul — archive and copy slips, assign staff to slips, a My Slips filter, proper search and pagination, a rebuilt printable PDF, and two new permission levels so the right people (and only the right people) manage slips.
Email preferences done properly — campaigns are now typed as general school communications or marketing, recipients manage their own preferences through a new preference centre, and unsubscribes can never be silently undone again.
Newsletter issue templates — flag an issue as a template and start each week’s newsletter from it in two clicks, with sections, items and settings carried across.
Public co-curricular sign-up — prospective families can register interest in activities before their child is enrolled, and staff match them to students when they arrive.
Refine any newsletter item with AI — for schools with the AI assistant enabled, every item in an issue gains a “Refine with AI” button, with the previous version always restorable.
The Studio interface kept rolling out — event approval screens, event requirements, the slips pages and the risk assessment register all picked up the new look this quarter.

Events and Event Planner

Risk assessments against events (Aug 2026) — The headline feature of the quarter. Activity and venue, staffing and supervision ratios, transport legs, a risk register with ratings derived from the standard 5×5 matrix, an emergency management plan, live medical alerts for the students on the trip, staff acknowledgement, linked parent consent slips and a printable excursion pack. Approval is gated on completeness for event types that require one. Read the full guide.
Submit for approval (Aug 2026) — Once every section of a risk assessment is complete, the author explicitly submits it, which moves the event into the approvers’ queue and emails them.
Event approval screens redesigned (Aug 2026) — Approve, decline, “more info needed”, “request a new date” and “propose new staff” now carry the event’s title, type, date, owner and status alongside the form, so approvers always know which event they’re acting on.
Requirements screens redesigned (Aug 2026) — The catering, ICT and maintenance requirement pages match the new look, each carries its event and a link to its locations, and the requirements printout no longer prints the app chrome around it.
Permission slip notifications (Jun 2026) — When an event is approved with “Generate Permission Slip” ticked, the staff member responsible for permission slips is emailed automatically, like the existing ICT, maintenance, canteen and finance notifications.
Event times display correctly (Jun 2026) — Event start and end times in the Events and Need Approval lists were showing in UTC (about ten hours out for Australian schools); they now show school-local time everywhere.
Calendars use your local date format (Jun 2026) — Calendar day headers were rendering in American month/day order on every calendar in the app; they now follow the school’s region.

Newsroom and email communications

Another big quarter for Newsroom, focused on getting email preferences, deliverability and campaign statistics right.

Communication types on campaigns (Aug 2026) — A campaign is now tagged as a general school communication (reaches everyone) or a marketing communication (individually opt-out-able), chosen via cards on the campaign form — replacing the old per-list type, which couldn’t express one list serving several kinds of communication.
A new email preference centre (Aug 2026) — Recipients manage their preferences per communication type on one page, with a global unsubscribe link. Opt-outs are now permanent flags — previously the nightly mailing-list rebuild could silently reverse an unsubscribe within a day.
The “reaches everyone” override is earned, not assumed (Aug 2026) — General school communications only override unsubscribe preferences for contacts confirmed as current parents, staff or students by a recent sync. Alumni, past parents and stale records can opt out of everything.
Bounces and complaints handled separately (Aug 2026) — Hard suppressions (bounces, spam complaints) are now tracked separately from unsubscribes, and removing a suppression makes the address mailable again.
Communication types archive instead of deleting (Aug 2026) — Deleting a type used to silently re-subscribe everyone who had opted out if it was recreated. Types now archive and unarchive with opt-outs intact.
Campaign Reply-To is real and configurable (Aug 2026) — Campaigns previously sent no Reply-To header at all. It’s now set per campaign, defaulting to the school’s address, and the stats page shows where replies actually go.
Newsletter issue templates (Aug 2026) — Flag an issue as a template, and it gets its own list, a “Use template” action that asks for the new issue’s name and cut-off, and a “Start from a template” picker on the create-issue form. Templates can never be accidentally published.
Copying an issue copies everything (Aug 2026) — Visibility groups, each item’s Publish-in and category selections all carry across now, and the copy gets a sensible web address derived from its name.
Newsletter cut-offs honour the time (Aug 2026) — An issue closing at 9:15am used to stay open to submissions until midnight; the cut-off time is now enforced, and “Make a Copy” refuses a target issue that has already closed.
Suppressions search spans every category (Aug 2026) — Searching the Suppressions screen now covers bounced, complained and unsubscribed at once, with a type column on the results.
Personalised “View in browser” (Jun 2026) — The campaign “View in browser” link used to show raw merge tags like %recipient.first_name%; it now shows each recipient their own personalised copy, with a shareable de-personalised link too.
All news items page paginated (Aug 2026) — At larger schools this page rendered thousands of rows in one table; it now pages 50 at a time with search and filters carrying across pages.
Newsletters stay out of search engines (Jul 2026) — Newsletter pages are now excluded from Google and other search engines by default across every school, with a per-school opt-in for schools that want their newsletters indexed. News Centre articles — the school’s public-facing news — remain indexable.
Focal point and image fit on newsletter heroes (Jul 2026) — The newsletter issue hero and News Centre article hero now respect the image’s focal point and fit settings, so faces stop being cropped out.
Look and feel fixes (Aug 2026) — Newsroom primary and secondary colours are editable again, footer colours now work on the unified public templates, the News Centre header got its own font colour setting (fixing unreadable navy-on-navy titles), and News Centre social icons render again.
Refine any newsletter item with AI (Jul 2026) — For schools with the AI assistant enabled, every item in the issue detail page gains a “Refine with AI” button that opens the AI chat seeded with that item’s content. Accepting a refinement updates the item in place, with the previous version snapshotted to version history first.

Steady improvements for schools on the new page-builder editor:

Local-first drafts, explicit save, and undo/redo (Jun 2026) — Every change persists instantly to your browser, the server is only written when you click Save, and a crash or accidental navigation silently restores your work. Undo/redo via toolbar buttons and Ctrl/Cmd+Z.
Table widget grew up (Jun 2026) — Insert rows and columns between existing ones, reorder them by dragging, and sort by column.
Sharper images, faster saves (Jul 2026) — Uploaded images are automatically orientation-corrected and web-sized, editor images render responsively at the right resolution for every screen, and saving a gallery no longer blocks while thumbnails generate.
No more embedded images bloating content (Jun 2026) — Pasted and dropped images are uploaded properly instead of being embedded into the newsletter content itself.

Slips

The biggest set of Slips changes in years:

Archive slips (Jul 2026) — Archive and unarchive slips, with a separate Archived list. Slips are auto-archived 30 days past their due date, and archived slips disappear from every family-facing surface.
Copy slips (Jul 2026) — Duplicate a slip — form, content, due date, audience and staff — without its submissions, landing on the edit page so you can update the date before re-use.
Staff on slips and My Slips (Jul 2026) — Assign staff to a slip and filter the list to just yours.
Search, sort and pagination (Jul 2026) — Search by name or date (Australian formats work), sort by name, due date or submissions, 25 per page.
A better blank PDF (Jul 2026) — The printable slip now carries the school crest and renders print-friendly: checkbox squares, ruled write-lines and a signature box.
No more double submissions (Jul 2026) — A family following a stale email link to an already-completed slip now sees a friendly “already completed” notice instead of submitting twice.
Closed means closed (Jun 2026) — Slips with “Close after Due Date” no longer accept submissions via old email links after the close date; the visitor gets a clear notice naming the slip and when it closed.
Read-only access for teachers (Aug 2026) — Grant a user group the new “Is slips viewer (read only)” permission and assign teachers to their slips: they can see responses, the waiting-on list and exports for their own slips, but can’t change anything.
A dedicated Slips Admin permission (Aug 2026) — Managing slips is no longer tied to the Form Builder permission. Schools can now have someone running slips who can’t change the underlying forms, and vice versa. Existing forms admins kept their access automatically.

Co-Curricular

Public activity sign-up (Jun 2026) — An unauthenticated sign-up page lets prospective families register interest in activities before their child is enrolled. Staff review the held registrations on a new detail page and match each one to an enrolled student with a fast typeahead search.
A public description for activities (Jun 2026) — Keep internal detail off the public pages: activities gain a separate Public Description with a “Copy from Description” starting point, and the public pages never show coordinator names or session venues.
Term filter and Newest sort on sign-ups (Jun–Jul 2026) — Next term’s activities are no longer buried below the current term’s, each activity card shows its own term, and the term filter stays visible year-round.
Assign a student to multiple teams (Jul 2026) — The Team/Group column on the Signups page is now a checkbox dropdown, so a student can be placed in several teams, with a bulk “Unassign from all teams” option.
Families can see school-added placements (Aug 2026) — When staff sign a student up, the family now sees an “Added by the School” section on their sign-up page — previously these placements were invisible to families, who could accidentally register and pay a second time.
Sign-ups close when the window does (Aug 2026) — Direct links to an activity whose sign-up window has closed no longer accept registrations and payments.
“Unlimited places” fixed (Aug 2026) — Activity groups where schools had entered a negative max-students value were showing as Full and refusing sign-ups; blank (or negative) now correctly means unlimited.
Coordinator notifications (Jul 2026) — Optionally email an activity’s coordinators when a new sign-up comes in, gated by a per-activity date window.
SMS works on every provider (Jul 2026) — Roll-marking reminders, absence alerts and co-curricular alerts now respect the school’s SMS provider. Schools on MessageMedia or Twilio were previously receiving no SMS at all.
Absence emails wait for a grace period (Aug 2026) — The “lesson missed” email to parents now waits a configurable period (default 60 minutes) and re-checks before sending, so a corrected roll no longer triggers a wrong email.
Staff overview of activities (Jun 2026) — Staff visiting the sign-ups page now get a read-only term overview of the school’s published activity groups instead of a 404.
More at a glance on Manage Activity Content (Jul 2026) — Gender and year-group access, max students, waitlist, invite-only and external registration are now visible directly on the content management list.

Camp Management

A new Camp Management module (Jun 2026) — For schools running camps through EnrolHQ: a staff dashboard grouping campers by feeder school, with Students & Parents, Dietary and Medical & Medications tabs, form-completion tracking, and Excel exports — per-tab downloads plus a whole-camp workbook (summary, medical, dietary, medical dispensary and contact list). Anaphylactic students always appear on the dietary lists, even when the parent left the dietary field empty.

Web Apps

A new Web Apps module (Jul 2026) — Host your school’s own small HTML/CSS/JS tools at /apps/your-app/ on your portal: file uploads (single or zip), access levels from public through to staff-only, a settings document your app reads its configuration from, and collections for shared structured data — so a change saved by one staff member is instantly what everyone sees. Export/import moves an app between schools or environments. Read the full guide.
Group-level access control (Aug 2026) — Every access level gains a “Selected member groups” option, so a school can let only the finance team change a fee calculator’s figures while every staff member can still open the app.

File Manager

Search finds folders too (Aug 2026) — Search now spans the whole library and covers folders as well as files, with each result showing where it lives as a clickable path.
Images normalised at upload (Jul 2026) — Uploads are automatically orientation-corrected and sized for the web, and the picker supports selecting multiple images at once for galleries.

Notices

Expiry works on recurring notices (Aug 2026) — A recurring notice’s expiry is now derived from its last occurrence rather than being overwritten, expired notices disappear everywhere (dashboard, mobile app, parent portal, digest), and shortening the expiry ends a recurrence without deleting occurrences one by one.

Absences

Orderable absence reasons (Aug 2026) — Schools control the order of the parent-facing “Reason for absence” dropdown instead of alphabetical.
A comment is now required on future absences (Aug 2026) — So the school always receives a parent-written note with the reason.

Parent portal and mobile app

Google Analytics for the parent app (Jun 2026) — Schools can enable GA4 tracking on the parent web app under Settings → Google Analytics, with privacy done properly: no personal information is ever sent to Google.
Author email addresses hidden from notices (Aug 2026) — The mobile app no longer shows the notice author’s email address to parents, matching every other notice surface.

Members and User Groups

User group permissions now reach every member (Aug 2026) — A long-standing issue meant permissions ticked on many user groups weren’t actually reaching their members; group membership and permissions now stay in sync automatically, both when granting and when members leave.
Dynamic user group filters fixed (Aug 2026) — Filter values no longer silently blank themselves on save, errors are actually shown, and every filter row has a Remove button.
No more duplicate members from email case differences (Aug 2026) — SIS syncs no longer create a second person when the same email address differs only by capitalisation between the SIS and single sign-on.
Departed students leave the audiences too (Aug 2026) — Deactivating a student now reliably removes them (and stops their parents receiving parent campaigns) from every mailing audience and the daily digest.
Staff data exports can be restricted (Aug 2026) — A new per-school setting limits the Export buttons on the Students, Parents and mailing list pages to portal admins.

SIS integrations

TASS: future students (Jun 2026) — An opt-in sync creates accounts for future students ahead of their start date, with a configurable lead time.
TASS: parent import fix (Jun 2026) — Schools whose TASS communication rules use reversed parent address labels were importing zero parents; both label variants are now handled.
Sentral: extra parent relations (Aug 2026) — Schools can extend the parent relation allow-list (e.g. foster parents), so those parents import and receive communications.
Sentral: placeholder student emails (Jul 2026) — Schools that don’t use student email addresses can force placeholder emails, stopping students claiming a parent’s address and blocking the parent’s import.
Synergetic: reliable parent contact decisions (Aug 2026) — Parent mail opt-outs are now derived only from genuine parent records, fixing parents being randomly opted out by unrelated emergency-contact rows.
Compass: email changes no longer duplicate people (Aug 2026) — Students, parents and staff are matched by their Compass identifier rather than email alone.
Edumate: duplicates and missing guardians fixed (Jul 2026) — Email changes no longer create duplicate parents, and step-parents and guardians now link to their students and receive communications.
Medical conditions sync for all TASS schools (Aug 2026) — The medical conditions sync now covers every school on TASS (it was previously limited to one), which also powers the medical panel on event risk assessments.

Canvas

Grades card no longer times out (Aug 2026) — The mobile dashboard’s grades card was making a Canvas call per subject and frequently timing out; it now loads in a fraction of the time and handles Canvas outages gracefully.

Security and privacy

Alongside the features above, this quarter included a substantial security hardening sweep: tighter access checks across slips, mailing lists, user group tools and campaign statistics, safer handling of uploaded content in Web Apps, and more private defaults throughout. None of these require any action from schools — they’re already live.

Feedback

We genuinely want to hear what works and what doesn’t. Send feedback, bug reports or feature requests to your usual PortalHQ contact and they’ll route it to the team.

This changelog covers the period from 1 June 2026 to 31 August 2026. Smaller fixes, internal refactors and dependency updates are not listed.