Changelog

Notification Preferences

Employees can now choose which PraisePal notifications they receive — per type and per channel — from a new Notifications page under Account settings.

Every notification type is grouped by topic: Recognition Activity, Recognition Reminders, Points & Programs, Claims, Nominations, Rewards, Celebrations, and Product Updates. Each type shows its available channels (email and Slack DM) as toggles. Required messages — workspace invitations, claim decisions, reward confirmations, and export-ready notices — remain on and show a Required badge. Groups that don't apply to the workspace are hidden automatically: Slack channels when Slack isn't connected, Celebrations when celebration bots are off, and Admin Digests for non-admin users.

Slack DM notifications are now enabled by default for optional notification types when a workspace has Slack connected. All existing email notifications — weekly recognition summaries, allowance-refresh notices, recognition reminders, celebration wishes, and changelog announcements — now respect individual preferences. Email footers link to PraisePal's own notification preferences page instead of SendGrid's preference centre.

• Per-type, per-channel toggles for email and Slack DM

• Required notifications locked on with a visible badge

• Context-aware visibility: groups hide when features are off or Slack is disconnected

• Slack DM defaults to on for optional notifications

• All cron-driven emails (weekly summary, allowance refresh, recognition reminder, celebrations) migrated to preference-aware delivery

• Email footer "Manage notification preferences" links to the in-app settings page

Employee Retention Review

Workspace owners now receive a quarterly email when deactivated employee records are approaching PraisePal's default five-year retention period — so organisations can review whether records should be kept or deleted before the window closes.

On the first business day of each quarter, PraisePal checks which deactivated accounts will reach five years of retention in the following quarter. If any are found, every workspace owner receives an email listing the count and the date range. The email asks whether those records should be deleted or retained, and includes instructions to reply or contact support. PraisePal does not delete records automatically — it waits for the organisation's instruction.

• Sent on the first weekday of January, April, July, and October

• Covers deactivated records whose five-year retention date falls in the next quarter

• One email per workspace owner, with record count and date range

• Idempotent delivery — duplicate sends are prevented even if the cron runs more than once

• Reactivating a user clears the retention clock; re-deactivating restarts it

Improved Recognition Analytics

Filters on the Recognition Analytics page now apply consistently across every section — not just the activity table.

Date range, search, person, team, and company value filters update the KPI summary cards, time-series charts, company value breakdown, leaderboard, and CSV export together. When a filter is active, participation KPI cards show adjusted labels and tooltips so the numbers stay meaningful in context.

• One filter set drives summary cards, charts, distribution, leaderboard, and export

• Search, person, team, and company value join the existing date-range filter

• Participation KPIs show context-sensitive labels and tooltips when filters narrow the data

• Analytics queries retry once on transient failures

📖 How to Use Recognition Analytics

Improved Celebration Analytics

Celebration Analytics can now be filtered by celebration type — birthdays, work anniversaries, or both.

The type filter updates the summary cards, the activity table, and the CSV export together, alongside the existing date, person, and team filters. Select Birthday to see only birthday celebrations, Work Anniversary for anniversaries, or leave it unset to see everything.

• Birthday-only and work-anniversary-only views

• Summary metrics, activity list, and export stay in sync with the selected type

• Type filter combines with date, person, team, and search filters

📖 How to Use Celebration Analytics

GIF Attachments in Recognition

Employees can now attach a GIF when giving recognition — search by keyword or browse trending clips, powered by Klipy.

Tap the GIF button on the message step, search or scroll trending results, and pick one. The selected GIF previews alongside the message before sending and displays inline in the Home feed with autoplay. When a GIF occupies the hero slot, the company value chip becomes clickable so readers can still view its image and description. Admins control whether GIFs are available from the Recognition Rules tab under Admin Settings > Programs > Recognition.

📖 How to Give Recognition · Roles and Access

Bulk User Deactivation via CSV

Admins can now deactivate multiple users at once by uploading a CSV of email addresses — ideal for end-of-contract offboarding, restructures, or seasonal workforce cleanup.

Open the toolbar menu (⋯) on the Users page, choose Deactivate Users (CSV), download the template, add one email per row (up to 500), and upload. A confirmation step shows what will happen before anything changes. After processing, a result summary breaks down successes, skipped rows (with a reason per row), and any failures.

• CSV upload with single-email-column template and download link

• Confirmation prompt before deactivation executes

• Result summary: success (including already-deactivated), skipped with per-row reasons, failures

• Skip reasons surfaced inline: not a workspace member, cannot deactivate yourself, cannot deactivate the workspace owner

• Duplicate emails and empty rows handled automatically

📖 How to Deactivate Users · Roles and Access

Enhanced Recognition Analytics

The Recognition Analytics tab now includes time-series charts, a company value breakdown, and a leaderboard — giving admins a richer picture of recognition health without exporting data.

Two line charts show recognition volume and unique givers/recipients over time, with granularity (daily, weekly, monthly) chosen automatically based on the selected date range. A horizontal bar chart ranks company values by recognition count. A tabbed leaderboard surfaces the top givers and receivers for the period. KPI cards now include private recognition counts and raw ratios for participation rate and budget utilisation.

• Recognition volume and participation time-series line charts with auto-granularity

• Company value distribution horizontal bar chart

• Top givers and receivers tabbed leaderboard

• KPI cards updated with private recognition counts and raw participation/budget ratios

• All charts respond to the same date-range picker as the existing summary cards and feed

📖 How to Use Recognition Analytics

Recognition Quality Guardrails

Recognition messages are now validated for quality before they can be sent — helping teams build a culture of meaningful praise rather than one-word shoutouts.

When a message is too short, repetitive, or lacks substance, the sender sees a prompt asking them to write something more meaningful. The guardrails run on both the frontend (inline feedback) and the backend (authoritative enforcement), and they catch single-word Latin messages, repeated characters, repeated patterns, and duplicate messages recently sent from the same browser.

• Single-word, repeated-character, and repeated-pattern detection

• Duplicate message detection via hashed browser storage

• Consistent frontend and backend length counting (Unicode code points)

• Generic, non-judgemental prompt for all rejection reasons

• Always on — no admin configuration required

📖 How to Give Recognition

Rich Text Celebration Messages

Celebration bot messages now support rich text formatting — bold, italic, bullet lists, numbered lists, and links — replacing the previous plain-text field.

Admins write birthday and work-anniversary messages using a toolbar-based editor with a 500 visible-character limit. Formatted messages render in Slack using mrkdwn and fall back to plain text in analytics exports.

• Toolbar editor with bold, italic, lists, and links

• 500 visible-character limit with sanitised HTML storage

• Slack mrkdwn rendering for connected workspaces

• Plain-text normalisation in analytics exports

📖 How Celebration Bots Work

Unified Home Feed, Program Membership, Celebration Analytics & Google Chat

Unified Home Feed

Recognition, celebrations, and incentive program posts now live together on a single Home page — one scrollable feed for everything happening in your workspace.

Employees land on Home after sign-in and can filter the feed by type (All, Recognitions, Celebrations, Programs) or narrow to posts relevant to them. Deep links, share URLs, and email CTAs all open the right post on Home. Old bookmarks to separate recognition and celebration pages redirect automatically.

A dedicated Incentives page lists programs employees can participate in, plus a My Programs view for anyone managing or supporting a program.

• Unified activity feed combining recognitions, celebrations, and program completions

• Feed-type filters plus a "Relevant to me" toggle

• Infinite scroll with cursor-based pagination

• Deep-link support via post ID and post type query parameters

• New Incentives section with eligible and managed program views

Program Membership

Admins can now delegate incentive program management without handing out full workspace admin access.

Assign colleagues as Managers (full program control) or Finance members (read-only access to Claims and Budget). Grant the new Create Programs permission to let trusted admins create and run programs while seeing only the Programs section in the admin sidebar. Program creators are automatically added as the first manager.

• New Create Programs workspace permission for scoped program creation

• Program-level roles: Manager and Finance

• Members tab on program detail — add, list, and remove members (with last-manager protection)

• My Programs view on the Incentives page for program members

• Manage Program button on eligible program detail for managers and finance members

• Finance members get read-only Claims and Budget tabs; managers retain full write access

📖 How Program Roles and Delegated Access Work

Celebration Analytics

A new Analytics tab on the Programs → Celebrations page gives admins real-time visibility into birthday and work-anniversary activity — the same pattern as Recognition Analytics, without exporting data.

Three KPI cards summarise celebrations given, unique recipients, and points distributed for the selected period. Below, a celebration activity table supports date-range, person, and team filters, with CSV export and quarter/year presets.

• Three at-a-glance KPI summary cards

• Date-range filter (defaults to current calendar month)

• Filter by person or team

• Export filtered celebration data to CSV

• Quarter and year date-range presets on analytics exports

📖 How to Use Celebration Analytics

Google Chat Notifications

Workspaces on Google Chat can now receive recognition and program announcements directly in a Space — alongside existing Slack and MS Teams integrations.

Connect an incoming webhook from your Google Chat Space under Settings → Integrations. Public recognitions and one-off program completions (when Program visibility is on) post as rich cards with giver details, recipients, points, and a link back to PraisePal. Private recognitions are never broadcast.

• Card notifications for public recognitions and one-off program completions

• Respects program visibility — completions only broadcast when published to the feed

• Private recognitions excluded, same as Slack broadcast channels

• Configured per workspace via incoming webhook URL

📖 How to Set Up Google Chat Notifications

Manager Recognition Alerts

Team managers are now notified when someone on their team receives a public recognition — so leads can celebrate wins they might otherwise miss.

Managers receive an email and Slack DM (when Slack is connected) with a summary of who was recognised and a View Recognition link. The giver, recipients, and deactivated managers are excluded. Private recognitions do not trigger manager alerts.

• Email and Slack DM notifications to team managers of recipients

• Fires on public recognition only

• Deduplicated per manager when multiple direct reports are recognised together

My Teams Feed Filter

The Home feed gains a My Teams filter so employees can focus on activity from teams they belong to — useful in larger workspaces where the full feed moves fast.

The filter is reflected in the page URL and works alongside existing feed-type and relevance filters. Deep-link views to a single post are unaffected.

• My Teams toggle on the Home feed

• Shows posts linked to the viewer's team memberships

• URL-persisted filter state

📖 How to Organize Users Into Teams

Other Improvements

• Default program visibility — New one-off and claim programs default to visible (publish to feed) unless an admin turns it off

• Email previews — Improved inbox preview text for invitations, claim updates, and changelog notifications

• Analytics export presets — This/last quarter and this/last year options on analytics date-range exports