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bthebigclass
Changelog

What's new

The running list of meaningful improvements we've shipped — most recently, a sprint of in-class wedges (live polls with notification fan-out, raised-hand queues, in-class agenda, lobby presence, auto-chaptered recordings, a community classes tab, two-field instructor bio). Below that: cloud recording, a unified inbox, cohort community tools, and the small stuff that quietly piles up. Most items link to a help article that goes deeper.

Inside the live room — the May 2026 sprint

A burst of features that show up where students actually feel them: during the call. Polls, raised hands, agenda checkpoints, lobby presence, chat persistence, recording chapters, community classes tab, and an instructor bio that finally syncs.

  • Live polls with notification fan-out

    Launch a 2–4 option poll from the host rail. Students vote inside the call; results render in real time. Launch + close both fire a notification to every enrolled student and every invited co-instructor — minus the launching host — so absentees can tap in to vote.

    Read the help doc →
  • Raised-hand queue with Live #N badge

    Students raise without unmuting. The host's right-rail Hands panel orders questions by raise time with a Live #N badge and a one-click Answer button. Persists across host reconnects.

    Read the help doc →
  • Mark agenda items done in class

    Add an agenda when you schedule. During the call, click items to mark them Done (timestamped) or Skipped. 3 / 7 pacing chip lives at the top of the panel. Late joiners see a 'You missed: …' banner pulled from your check-offs.

    Read the help doc →
  • Waiting-room presence

    Before you open the door, you see a live roster of every student who's loaded the lobby (3s polling). When you hit Start, everyone auto-admits — no per-student click. Late joiners after that skip the lobby and auto-admit instantly.

    Read the help doc →
  • Class chat persists to the recording

    Live chat messages are captured with sender + body + timestamp and attached to the recording. Re-watchers see the Chat tab in the player; clicking a message seeks the video to that moment.

    Read the help doc →
  • Auto-generated recording chapters

    We parse WebVTT transcripts for transition phrases ('now let's talk about', 'moving on to') and emit 5–12 chapter markers per recording, ≥90s apart. Chip rail below the video — click any chip to seek.

    Read the help doc →
  • Classes tab inside the community

    Every community attached to a course now has a Classes tab — upcoming live sessions, recordings grid with per-viewer watched / unwatched badges, a Join button when the host opens the room, and a 'wraps in N days' cohort banner. End-of-class recap auto-posts to the feed.

    Read the help doc →
  • Two-field instructor bio + AI 'Help me write'

    Short tagline (≤55 chars, used on cards) + long About (Tiptap rich text). Two-way sync between the faculty edit form and the public profile page, with a manual 'Sync from public profile' button. Sparkles button generates three opinionated AI drafts (Warm / Authoritative / Outcome-led).

    Read the help doc →
  • Host time-left + overtime pill

    Host-only pill in the bottom bar shows minutes remaining against the scheduled end time. Goes amber 5m before end, red after — a quiet pacing signal without leaking the scheduled end to students.

Live classes you can run from the browser

We moved off the self-hosted Jitsi stack onto LiveKit Cloud — same one-link experience for students, dramatically more reliable media, and recording you actually trust.

  • LiveKit-powered live rooms

    In-house live calls now run on LiveKit Cloud. No moderator-gate prompts, no XMPP / Prosody / Jicofo octopus to host, no UDP forwarding gymnastics on local dev. Same join-link experience for your students.

    Read the help doc →
  • Cloud recording → your CDN

    Start recording inside the host view; LiveKit's egress workers capture the composited room, encode at 1080p / 30fps, and upload the MP4 directly to your Cloudflare R2 bucket. The instructor gets an email the moment the file lands.

    Read the help doc →
  • Watch recordings inline (new dialog)

    Click Watch on any past class and the recording opens in an inline player dialog with full playback controls. Supports MP4 files, common video-host embed URLs, and direct CDN links — falls back to a download link for anything else.

    Read the help doc →
  • Recordings index page

    A new /dashboard/recordings sidebar entry lists every class with a recording in one searchable table — duration, recorded date, the linked course. No more hunting through individual classes to find one you watched last week.

    Read the help doc →
  • Zen mode for live calls

    When you're inside a class, the dashboard sidebar and header vanish so the call takes the whole viewport. Same treatment for students on the join page — students see exactly the class, nothing else.

  • 1080p across the pipeline

    Browser captures at 1080p, LiveKit publishes at 1080p simulcast, and the egress encoder writes 1080p / 30fps MP4. Screen share goes higher (1440p) so slides + IDE text read sharp.

Unified Inbox

Stop checking five different pages. The new Inbox aggregates everything that needs your attention — and lets you reply without leaving the page.

  • One front door for everything

    Doubts, discussions, batch-room posts, public-site leads, and unread blog comments all land in /dashboard/inbox. Sorted newest-first. Filter pills slice by source.

    Read the help doc →
  • Inline reply with cross-channel fanout

    Click Reply on any row to type a response without leaving — your reply gets appended to the source and fires a notification across in-app, email, and WhatsApp to the original sender. Guests with only an email get email + WhatsApp.

    Read the help doc →
  • Needs attention vs Show all

    Default view shows open / unresolved items. Toggle to Show all to surface resolved doubts and contacted leads with a status badge — useful when triaging a backlog.

  • Pre-sale signals are highlighted

    Guest doubts (from your public site) and new leads get an accent border because they're the highest revenue-sensitive items. The eye lands there first.

Cohort community tools

Your Batch detail page just became a chat-grade workspace — without the separate-app overhead. Mentions, file previews, broadcasts, post editing.

  • @-mention picker

    Click Tag in the composer, pick a teacher or member, and a styled @Name chip drops into the post. Click the chip in a published post to open the profile in a new tab.

    Read the help doc →
  • Type-aware file previews

    Click Attach to upload anything. Images render as thumbnails, videos play inline, audio gets an audio widget, PDFs open in an embedded viewer, and other files become download chips with the filename + size.

    Read the help doc →
  • Broadcast notifications

    Every new post fires an in-app + email + WhatsApp notification to every member of the batch (skipping the author). Replies notify the post author plus anyone who already commented in the thread.

  • Mention notifications are louder

    Tagging someone fires a separate "X tagged you in {Batch}" notification with the author's name in the title — it beats the regular broadcast and pulls the tagged user into the conversation.

  • Edit posts

    Author or admin can edit any post via the ⋯ menu. Edited posts show a subtle "edited · 3m" footnote so readers know it changed.

  • Instructors pinned at the top

    A Instructors card sits above the feed showing the course's primary instructor + co-instructors as chips. Member count is on the right. Everyone knows who's leading at a glance.

Onboarding + simpler forms

New tenants land on a guided path. Returning power users keep their full surface. Both happy.

  • Get started in 5 minutes

    A 4-step rail at the top of the dashboard (create your first course → add a lesson → schedule a live class → invite a student) tracks progress automatically and self-hides once you're done.

    Read the help doc →
  • Collapsible sidebar

    The 30-item sidebar is now 5 collapsible sections (Teach · Certificates · Community · Public site · Workspace), with Dashboard pinned at the top. State sticks across navigations; the section you're in auto-expands.

    Read the help doc →
  • Simple / Advanced form mode

    Course creation and Live-class creation now default to Simple mode — only the essentials are visible. Flip the pill in the header to Advanced for the full surface (certificate template, learning outcomes, recurrence, host picker, channel-level notify toggles). Sticks per browser.

    Read the help doc →
  • Product tours on every key form

    Course creation, live-class scheduling, the Inbox, and the Batch detail page each ship a step-by-step tour with a Take a tour button in the header. Auto-flips Simple/Advanced toggles during the walkthrough so you see what each mode contains.

Polish + bug fixes

Less spectacular, but the kind of things that quietly add up.

  • Quiz creation in the follow-up composer

    Post follow-up → Quiz tile now actually opens the Quick Quiz Dialog. Previously the tile rendered but didn't fire on class detail pages.

  • HTML-safe assignment previews

    Description previews in the assignments table now strip HTML so a WYSIWYG paragraph reads as plain text instead of <p>asdf</p>.

  • "From class" deep-link on assignments

    Assignments created from a class settings page now show a small From class · {title} link beneath the description — one click back to the source.

  • Notify channels collapsed by default

    Assignment composer no longer shows 3 toggle rows up front. A single line summarises which channels will fire; click Customize to expand and mute one.

  • Confirm before deleting a space

    Removing a Batch space now asks for confirmation. Same dialog pattern as the rest of the app.

  • Profile sheet redesign

    Member profile sheet (Batch directory → click a member) no longer drifts the avatar to the wrong corner. Cover stretches edge-to-edge, avatar lands bottom-left as designed.

More on the way

We ship every week. Bookmark this page or follow our changelog for what's next.