v1.19.22 — Enrollment verification letters, and alt text becomes required

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 /preprints directory 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.