SchoolAuction.net Changelog — Earlier Releases

    The archive of platform updates predating our main changelog. We've been helping organizations run auctions and raise money since 2007. The detailed month-by-month records below begin in 2015 and run through mid-2023 — earlier change history isn't preserved.

    Detailed records cover July 2015 – June 2023; the platform itself first launched in 2007. For July 2023 onward, see the main changelog.

    June 2023

    • Flexible page headers — Enabled the "Page Header Text" option on snapshot and poster templates.
    • One-click color reset — Added a quick way to reset custom site colors.

    May 2023

    • Bigger online bidding — Scalability improvements to handle higher online bidding volume.
    • Ticket quantity tracking — Added quantity tracking to tickets.
    • Theming — A new custom-color screen and theme-helper improvements.

    April 2023

    • New homepage templates — Refreshed home pages with new public-page styling and per-template edit and print controls.
    • Manual payment handling — New tools to accept or cancel payments manually, a new cart/self-checkout payment flow, and easier ways to spot and resolve credit-card errors.

    March 2023

    • Smarter ticket linking — Added safeguards so a ticket email is only reused when it's already linked, with stronger record validation.

    February 2023

    • Online bidding confirmation — Added a confirmation screen to online bidding and clearer messaging when a link has expired.
    • Closing times & reporting — Added auction closing times, improved the Sales Report, and added fee controls to the edit box.

    January 2023

    • Add/Edit Item improvements — Streamlined the item add/edit experience and standardized the bid, donor, and signup lists.
    • Cleaner bidding form — Improved how data displays in the bidding form.

    December 2022

    • Custom-field safeguards — Added warnings when a field value isn't in its select list, and surfaced field names in import dropdowns.
    • Webinar signup — Added webinar signup.

    November 2022

    • Add staff from the dashboard — Admins can now add staff directly from the dashboard.
    • Trial visibility — Show the trial end date while in trial.

    October 2022

    • Flexible line items — Made the participant optional on line items.

    September 2022

    • QR codes on sheets — Added QR codes to sellable-item and signup sheets, with item-number centering fixes.
    • Bid paddle settings — New bid-paddle configuration options.

    August 2022

    • Peer-to-peer fundraising — Early peer-to-peer (P2P) capabilities.
    • Offset controls — Super users can adjust offset-fee info, with improved error handling.

    July 2022

    • Team fundraising — A new team-level page, with support for give pages that don't use groups.
    • Recurring donation compliance — Updated recurring donations to meet new requirements.

    June 2022

    • Team levels — Added default team levels for peer-to-peer campaigns.
    • More supporter features — Updated underlying components and added supporter-facing features.

    May 2022

    • SMS keywords — Added support for spaces in text-to-give keywords.
    • Ticket sorting — New "has ticket" sort override.

    April 2022

    • Outbid alerts everywhere — Outbid emails and texts are now logged to email history, with fixes so outbid notices send during live, hybrid galas.
    • Texting compliance — Added the toll-free texting requirement form and improved ticket logic.

    March 2022

    • Account recovery — Improved tools to recover different types of user records.
    • Friendlier passwords — Replaced strict password blocking with client-side warnings, and made texting optional when no phone number is provided.
    • Bulk edit — Added a Save button to the top of bulk-edit items, in a larger modal.

    February 2022

    • Online-only setup fix — Resolved a credit-card setup issue for online-only products.

    January 2022

    • Virtual event polish — New social-share (Open Graph) images for campaigns and homepages, plus give-page story text.

    December 2021

    • Streamlined signup — A new signup form with a show/hide password toggle and verification-code email.
    • Livestream access — Added livestream access configuration.

    November 2021

    • Health-screening fields — Added a predefined custom-field group for health screening.
    • Stronger validation — Client-side validation on ticket sales and required signup fields.

    October 2021

    • Sponsorship export — Added sponsor-package item export.
    • Auto-close & bulk venue — Added auto-close and bulk venue-edit validation.

    September 2021

    • Setup wizard — Added upgrade buttons and a subscription-info section to the dashboard setup wizard.
    • Category importer — Added master categories to the category importer, with Buy Now price validation.

    August 2021

    • Mandatory offset fee option — New setting to make the credit-card offset fee mandatory.
    • Bot protection — Additional safeguards against bad bots, plus a text version of the 404 page.

    July 2021

    • Campaign templates — Added campaign template controls and a mobile welcome-screen preview.
    • Reporting — Sortable chart rows, common filters, and admin messaging when campaign limits are reached.

    June 2021

    • Better receipts — Added pickup info to receipts, a reworked receipt header, and responsive images.
    • Virtual events — Added "Virtual" as a valid event system, with bulk-venue support.

    May 2021

    • Venue overrides — Systematic venue-name overrides based on selected combinations.
    • Buy Now & tax — Quantity checks on the Buy Now form and more efficient tax handling.

    April 2021

    • Round-up donations — Added round-up donation options to the cart.
    • Online store pledge mode — Pledge-mode alerts for the online store, with a collapsible banner section.

    March 2021

    • Virtual public view — A public viewing option for virtual events, plus public virtual signup.
    • Custom banners & cart edits — Custom banner colors, editable cart quantities, and printed descriptions.
    • Spam protection — Added reCAPTCHA.

    February 2021

    • Progress tracker configs — New progress-tracker configuration options.
    • Cash-donation images — Upload and manage images for cash-donation items, and remove items from the give cart.
    • Campaign revenue — Revenue display on new campaigns.

    January 2021

    • Delivery tracking — Added a "delivered" status across orders, receipts, and notifications.
    • Live winner chat — Winning-chat photos and entries for live events.
    • Flexible quantities — Option to sell items without tracking quantity.

    December 2020

    • Livestream video — Added an integrated livestream video service for virtual events.
    • Shipping — A new shipping feature for fulfilling purchased items.
    • Hybrid galas — Hybrid event support combining in-person and online giving.

    November 2020

    • Online store groundwork — New online-store layouts and per-item image management.

    October 2020

    • Virtual event tools — Virtual "live" checks, proxy-availability messaging, and dynamic donation-type fields.
    • Email opt-in — Added subscriber/opt-in columns to the users view.

    September 2020

    • Give-page media — Upload a custom image or pick a stock image for the classic give layout, with new template icons.
    • Virtual paddle raise — Improved the paddle-raise experience for virtual galas.

    August 2020

    • A new give experience — Launched a new give index and fundraiser pages, with crowdfunding layouts featuring images, video, contributor lists, and top donations.

    July 2020

    • Progress tracker — A new progress-tracker admin page and post-event display options, plus a cart in the navbar.

    June 2020

    • Virtual events expand — More virtual-event features, live-chat tools, and refined alerts.

    May 2020

    • Virtual gala toolkit — Event-type messaging for virtual galas, a livestream navbar and banner, chat avatars, and SMS templates.

    April 2020

    • Virtual Gala launch — Introduced the Virtual Gala with live video support, auction-night controls, and the option to hide vote totals and standings.

    March 2020

    • Thermometer on give pages — Added the fundraising thermometer to give pages, with smart display logic.

    February 2020

    • Catalog categories — Master-category management and sellable-item package filtering, with maximum-quantity offer limits.

    January 2020

    • Add a second guest — Capture a second guest during ticket sales.
    • Item gallery — A new photo gallery, plus premium support features.

    December 2019

    • Category images & tiles — Added category images and a catalog browse experience with item counts.

    November 2019

    • Master categories — Master-category tiles for the catalog, with image cropping and editable SMS templates.

    October 2019

    • eCheck payments — Added eCheck support with refunds, plus payment methods and transaction descriptions in sales reports.

    September 2019

    • Concierge call requests — Added "request a call" buttons and authorized-caller views, plus a pause-closeout option to extend bidding.

    August 2019

    • Bidding groups — Create and manage bidding groups from the item form and during migration, with an "items without bids" badge.

    July 2019

    • Award & pay — New award and pay buttons, online closing-time tables, and bulk checkout from the dashboard.

    June 2019

    • Text notifications — Added text-message preferences and counters across ticket sales and invites.

    May 2019

    • Text messaging opt-in — Text-notification options across signup, self check-in, and ticket sales, plus auto-invite templates.

    April 2019

    • Mobile catalog — Added a catalog preview, user-selectable item views, and mobile item names and descriptions.

    March 2019

    • Catalog navigation — New catalog navigation, category lists, and mobile catalog views.

    February 2019

    • Theme overrides — Added theme overrides and a Buy Now confirmation; Online Auction added to table-management autocomplete.

    January 2019

    • Tax deduction in exports — Added potential tax-deduction amounts to orders and CSV exports, with a vault-only processing flag.

    December 2018

    • Installment payments — Added installment-month options, with a customizable view modal and select-all.

    November 2018

    • Display screens — New display-screen color schemes and grouping, plus a postponed-order status.

    October 2018

    • In-app guidance — Added inline help to public pages, including the homepage.

    September 2018

    • Vaulted-card giving — Process give-page payments with a saved (vaulted) card, plus sponsorship admin email improvements.

    August 2018

    • New printouts — Launched a new printout format with banner images on bid and description sheets, plus card-vault export/import tools.

    July 2018

    • Site customization — New "Customize Your Site" general settings, dashboard updates, and banner images on bid and description sheets.

    June 2018

    • Contests & voting — New contest and candidate features, bulk delete, and dashboard nav tabs.

    May 2018

    • Modern theme engine — Converted themes to a modern styling system with a color picker and sortable donation items.

    April 2018

    • Security & imports — Enabled TLS 1.2, added will-call flags to sales exports, and improved import rollback messaging.

    March 2018

    • Import safeguards — Added quantity tracking to ticket imports with failure reporting, plus delays to prevent import conflicts.

    February 2018

    • Catalog & sponsorship — Added a catalog refresh timer, a sponsorship tab on donor pages, and recurring billing to cache clearing.

    January 2018

    • Cash contributions — Added cash-contribution filtering, reporting, and catalog-display controls.

    December 2017

    • Recurring & guest forms — A new ticket-guest form, recurring email templates, and a global external-payment setting.

    November 2017

    • Point of sale — A new point-of-sale order search and edit screen, online sponsorship-sales controls, and client-side donate-item validation.

    October 2017

    • Catalog controls — Public catalog per-page settings, the option to hide closed online-only items, and sponsor image export.

    September 2017

    • Mobile quick nav — Rolled out mobile quick navigation across pages, low-quantity notifications, and outbid status in the mobile bid bar.

    August 2017

    • Sponsorship packages — Sponsorship stats on the dashboard, package line items, and show/hide of donor name and item number on catalog tiles.

    July 2017

    • Email & print invoices — Email and print invoices from checkout, donor custom fields on the Donate-an-Item form, and editable ticket instructions without a reload.

    June 2017

    • Sponsorship levels — Sponsor-level forms, social-media button customization, and contest controls in the public navbar.

    May 2017

    • In-kind items — Links and reports for in-kind items, plus a public layout for catalog and login pages.

    April 2017

    • Will Call search — New search controls on the Will Call page, with guest-management improvements.

    March 2017

    • Guest & ticket management — Add new guests and ticket users with email validation, terms-and-conditions links, and an auditor invitation flow.

    February 2017

    • Display screens & voting — New display-screen themes, custom CSS, voting-guest controls, and donor info in bid reports.

    January 2017

    • In-kind donations & analytics — Added in-kind donations, Google Analytics on display screens, and role-based selection tools.

    December 2016

    • Email reporting — A new email-report view, with outbound-email controls, limits, and notifications.

    November 2016

    • Online open/close times — Added online and mobile homepage display times, ticket-syncing, and FMV totals on CSV sales reports.

    October 2016

    • Migration import/export — Ticket export/import for migrations, plus signup-quantity tracking.

    September 2016

    • Move tickets between users — A new feature to move a ticket sale to a logged-in user (for external sales), plus table rank on display screens.

    August 2016

    • Donor importer — Initial release of the donor importer, sponsor-image management, and user-specific email merge tags.

    July 2016

    • Email history & limits — Added outbound-email history logging, send limits, and bulk actions across list views, plus voting templates.

    June 2016

    • Text invites & templates — Send alternate invites by text message, with reusable email-merge templates and business-name user search.

    May 2016

    • QR alt-login & voting — Added a QR-code alternate login, editable vote prices, and non-attending tickets for imported guests.

    April 2016

    • Roles & permissions — A new roles-and-permissions system with granular controls and a max-bidding option.

    March 2016

    • Templates & receipts — A new template system with migrators, max-bid notifications, and gift-certificate border options on receipts.

    February 2016

    • Signup integration — Initial release of signup integration, with a setup/help wizard, additional supported payment processors, and zero-dollar items at ticket sales.

    January 2016

    • Foundational work — Behind-the-scenes platform improvements.

    December 2015

    • Proxy bidding & Buy Now — Added single-item proxy purchases, fixed-price selection on the proxy bid screen, and an early Buy Now button.
    • Self-checkout customization — Custom text for the self-checkout screen.

    November 2015

    • Point of Sale & online bidding — Added Point of Sale across item types, max and fixed-price options on the proxy bid screen, and self check-in/check-out controls, with new bidding validations.

    October 2015

    • Import/export tools — Added exporters and importers for terms, privacy, communication, and organization settings, with duplicate-donor handling.

    September 2015

    • Give-page display — Improved how items for sale appear on the give page.

    August 2015

    • Help map — Added an event help map to the dashboard.

    July 2015

    • Our month-by-month change history starts here. The platform first launched in 2007 and saw years of improvements before this point that aren't captured in this archive.

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