Product Updates, May 2025

Summary

In May 2025, Scholarly Software, Inc. introduced significant updates to its platform, focusing on enhancing collaborative workflows, improving accessibility, and streamlining data integrations. The workflow engine now supports multiple reviewers per step, cleaner admin views, and easier editing—making processes like faculty evaluations and promotions more efficient. Accessibility was prioritized with a new public accessibility page, WCAG-driven UI improvements, and better PDF generation for users with disabilities. Data integrations with Banner Ethos and Workday have been made more transparent and reliable, while the AI Assistant now provides faster, more accurate responses and richer expertise tagging. These updates underscore Scholarly’s commitment to responsible, user-centered innovation in higher education administration.

What improvements were made to Scholarly’s workflow engine in May 2025? * The workflow engine now allows multiple reviewers per step, offers redesigned admin views, enables faster edits, and introduces instant workflow previews for easier management. (Source)
How is Scholarly addressing accessibility? * Scholarly added a detailed accessibility page, implemented WCAG-driven UI enhancements, and improved PDF generation to better support users with disabilities. (Source)
What updates were made to data integrations? * Integrations with Banner Ethos and Workday now feature clearer sync reports and daily automated data pulls, while login processes have been simplified for institutions using employee-ID credentials.
How has the AI Assistant improved? * The AI Assistant now uses the GPT 4.1 model for more accurate citations and faster replies, and has auto-generated over 7,000 new expertise tags to enhance search results.
What quality-of-life enhancements were included? * Faculty lists under expertise tags are now sorted by last name, dashboard and workflow pages are faster, and several UI bugs have been fixed for a smoother user experience.

Scholarly continues to prioritize user feedback and responsible innovation, ensuring that higher education institutions benefit from secure, efficient, and accessible administrative tools. As always, Scholarly invites users to share their thoughts and book a demo to see the latest features in action.

Book a Demo with Scholarly to unlock the power of your data, automate workflows, and improve the lives of your faculty.

May 30, 2025

May was all about deepening collaboration in Scholarly’s workflow engine, streamlining data integrations, and putting accessibility front‑and‑center. Below is a quick tour of everything that landed in customer accounts this month. (Missed April’s recap? Catch up here.)

Workflow Engine – Built for Team Reviews

Scholarly's workflow engine powers all sorts of workflows, from promotions to annual evaluations. This month saw some great improvements in functionality and quality-of-life.

Multiple reviewers per step – Evaluation and promotion workflows can now collect independent responses from several reviewers on the same step, complete with updated diagrams and dashboard cues.
Cleaner admin views – A redesigned workflow index page separates the cycles you administer, participate in, or are the subject of, so you can jump straight to what matters.
Fewer clicks, faster edits
- Pick a default assignee while creating a step.
- Delete entire evaluation cycles yourself (no more support tickets).
- Legacy fields were removed, trimming setup time for new workflows.
Preview anything – Instantly open a step in preview mode—no need to spin up a full test cycle first. It's never been easier to preview a new workflow!

Accessibility & Export Enhancements

Scholarly takes accessibility seriously, and continues to make investments here.

Added an Accessibility page to our public site, which discusses in detail Scholarly's approach to building an accessible platform. There you can also download Scholarly's latest VPAT.
Implemented a round of WCAG‑driven UI tweaks (contrast, focus states, ARIA labels).
Changed the underlying technology we use to generate PDFs; this paves the way for generating accessible PDFs.
Large Excel exports (e.g., annual faculty reviews) now complete reliably, even with tens of thousands of rows.

Data Integrations & Sync Transparency

Banner Ethos & Workday – Both connectors moved onto our new sync‑report infrastructure, giving administrators clearer success and failure logs right in the UI.
Improved our sync engine with Banner Ethos, which can now pull information daily and automatically from Banner.
Login improvements allow institutions that use employee‑ID‑only credentials to authenticate without extra configuration.

AI Assistant – Sharper Suggestions, Faster Replies

AI Paste upgraded to a GPT 4.1 model, delivering more accurate citations and noticeably snappier responses.
Tweaked prompts for AI‑generated letters, improving tone consistency.
Behind the scenes, the expertise engine auto‑generated 7,000+ new expertise tags, enriching search results across many institutions.

Quality‑of‑Life Polish

Faculty lists under expertise tags now sort by last name.
Workflows pages and the dashboard got performance boosts.
Fixed an issue where a modal would flicker in and out when clicking the browser back button.
Fixed an issue with editing step due dates.

Enjoy the start of summer. We hope commencements were smooth for everyone. As always, let us know what you think and reach out if you have any questions.