Release notes - Aug 2021

The latest Safety Console release includes the following:

1. We introduce the time-based policy feature designed to help admins customize filtering for students down to the minute. This feature smartly utilizes the policy prioritization capability, and always assigns the right policy to the student every time. This means that one student can have multiple policies assigned and they will be applied as per time and policy priority throughout the day. Time-based policy can be applied to students even off-campus. Learn how to set up time-based policies with this KB article. (Note that this feature is currently available only for Chrome Extension users and support for DNS & SmartPac will be available in upcoming months.) (Update: The feature is now available for everyone)
2. With this release, we extend support for keyword scanning to searches on Google Maps. This means that users will not get any locations/directions if they search for suspicious keywords such as gambling. Similar to search engines, this feature also requires keyword scanning to be turned on in the Safety Console.
3. At the request of schools, the Music category was added to the YouTube tab for each policy to help admins allow or block that category for their students.
4. The timestamp for user activities will be displayed in milliseconds instead of the existing seconds. This change will ensure that no events or flagged activity cases are missed when they happen almost simultaneously with a difference of milliseconds.
5. The URL level scanning ability to SmartPac users such that two different URLs with the same primary domain can be listed under different categories and filtered as such. For example, bbc.co.uk/iplayer can be set as social media and bbc.co.uk/news can be set as games category.
6. Students were able to bypass filtering for Chromebooks by using chrome://restart after restarting the internet. This issue has been fixed.
7. The issue with user activity not being displayed correctly in scheduled reports if the policy name contained special characters has been fixed.
8. It has been ensured that URLs and keywords with spaces and special characters can be added to allow/block lists and honored when filtering users.