✨ Coming to you live… this year’s Summit features!

Everything in this list has been released and is ready to try out in your Slate database (or will be in the next few days). As such, we won’t be updating this document as we have for previous Summit executive summaries.

Dashboard widgets in portals

In a portal’s widget palette, you’ll now find a Dashboard widget.

Drag it into a portal part, select an existing dashboard that matches the portal’s scope, and that dashboard renders in the portal.

Until now, to get an existing dashboard into a portal, you’d have to recreate it from scratch. Now, you can port them in with a click.

Dashboard widgets are a great way to re-use your dashboards—including AI dashboards—in new contexts.

📖 Learn more: Portal Widgets → Dashboard

Dashboard portals

Replace the record’s default Dashboard tab with your own portal content.

And with the Dashboard widget now available in portals, that portal content can itself include dashboards.

📖 Learn more: Customizing Standard Tabs

Quick actions

On the person or dataset record, find new quick actions:

• Contact icons let you get in touch with a constituent from anywhere on the record.

• A new dropdown next to the record’s ID lets you quickly copy or edit the record ID, edit record access, or set a tab other than Dashboard as the default.

Interactions & Activities

We’re bringing Interactions back to their original purpose: capturing meaningful engagements like conversations and meetings—separate from system-generated activity.

You’ll now see:

• Activities: All the usual system items (messages, gifts, etc.)

• Interactions: Just the real interactions, cleaned up and focused

Plus, modern upgrades like:

• Rich text formatting

• Multi-record association

• File attachments

It’s a return to form—with powerful new functionality.

📖 Learn more: Interactions

Maximized modals

Select the Maximize icon to expand eligible modals (pop-ups) to full screen.

Select the icon again to return to the modal’s original size.

Universal keyboard shortcuts

You can now use these keyboard shortcuts to perform actions in Slate:

• ctrl + alt + N or cmd + option + N:  Launches new object modal (pop-up) on pages with a New [object] button (Deliver, Events, etc.).

• ctrl + E or cmd + E: Opens the Edit modal (pop-up) for the current object on pages with an Edit button (Mailing overview, form overview, etc.).

• ctrl + S or cmd + S: Save current modal (pop-up).

• ctrl + I or cmd + I: Launch Slate AI.

Persistent interface

The user menu—the sidebar that includes Slate AI, Projects & Tasks, and more—is now accessible when modals (pop-ups) are open.

Of particular note, this frees up Slate AI to help you with things you’re building, like queries, portals, mailings, and more.

📖 Learn more: The User Menu

Slate AI in Batch Acquire

Slate AI is now a part of Batch Acquire.

With a document open, ask Slate AI anything about the document. It can perform GPA recalculations, find relevant passages, and whatever else you can think to ask it.

📖 Learn more: Batch Acquire

Integrated immersive interfaces

The user interfaces of tools like Reader, Inbox, and Batch Acquire have been refreshed to allow access to the top-level navigation from within the tool.

This brings the Omni Search bar into play in places it was previously inaccessible: using it in the Reader, for example, will return applications and their contents.

Reader AI highlighting

Ask Slate AI to highlight information directly on an application.

For example, ask Slate AI to highlight just the math and science courses in a transcript, or mentions of a particular phrase in an essay.

📖 Learn more: Reader AI

Slate AI universal knowledge

Slate AI’s purview has been expanded beyond the Slate Knowledge Base to the wider Internet.

Ask Slate AI when Slate Summit is scheduled to happen, the best place to take a prospective donor to dinner in Las Vegas, or what the weather will be like at your next trip stop—Slate AI knows it all.

📖 Learn more: Slate AI

Knowledge sources

As Slate AI’s knowledge of the world broadens, it also becomes more specific: AI-enabled chat bots can be linked to knowledge sources.

A knowledge source is a named list of URLs or domains that is indexed by Slate AI. When you associate a knowledge source with a bot, the bot preferentially searches these sources first. If it finds an answer in the source, it responds that much faster. If not, it expands its search to the wider Internet.

📖 Learn more: Knowledge Sources

Slate AI internal knowledge

Slate AI—the general-purpose tool accessible from any Slate page—can also take advantage of knowledge sources for prioritized searching.

Grant a user, permission, or role access to the Slate AI Searchable permission in a knowledge source, and when those users, permissions, or roles ask Slate AI a question, it will preferentially search these sources before expanding to the broader web.

Like with AI-enabled chat bots, this lets Slate AI return answers even faster.

📖 Learn more: Knowledge Sources

AI chat bots

Available for both SMS as well as web embedding, new AI-enabled bots scour online sources that you provide.

Give an AI chat bot access to knowledge sources, or simply include a URL in its prompt, and it’ll search for an answer.

These bots can carry out dynamic conversations with constituents and can submit forms on their behalf.

📖 Learn more: AI Chat Bots

Inline HTML source editing

The HTML source editor is now an inline experience:

• The editor can be maximized for full-screen editing.

• Source code autocomplete provides progressive completions for HTML tag names.

• Collapse tags by selecting the line number.

HTML source live preview

In a Deliver mailing, select the Preview icon to open a live preview of the rendered mailing content. Select a record to preview merge fields as they would appear for that record.

Nested dictionary subqueries

Dictionary subqueries can now be nested. Say you want to see a list of applications, and, for each application, you want to see its associated decision codes.

You can now do this by:

1. Creating a dictionary subquery that joins to Applications.

2. This dictionary subquery export has two exports of its own: a GUID and another dictionary subquery export.

3. The nested dictionary subquery export joins to Decisions and returns an export for decision codes.

In a mailing or portal, you can access each of these layers with nested Liquid for loops:

<body>
  {% for app in apps %}
  <div>
    App GUID: {{app.guid}}
    <ul>
      {% for decision in app.decisions %}
      <li>
        Decision Code: {{decision.code}}
      </li>
      {% endfor %}
    </ul>
  </div>
  {% endfor %}
</body>

Slate AI HTML editing

Let Slate AI do the work wrangling <div>s and nesting <tr>s. In any WYSIWYG editor, whether in a mailing or in a portal, open Slate AI and ask it to lend a helping hand.

• Highlight certain text in the editor, and Slate AI knows to only make changes to that highlighted portion.

• Slate AI can also help with the content of the mailing or portal and is aware of recipient lists and associated queries.

Slate AI for portals

Slate AI is accessible anywhere there’s a WYSIWYG editor, and that includes portals.

Ask Slate AI for help styling a portal view, arranging Liquid markup in a table, or anything else you might need help with.

📖 Learn more: Express Portals

Suitcase dataset items

You can now import datasets from one database to another with Suitcase.

Datasets in Slate let you recreate the functionality of the Person record for other entities that resemble them, like organizations, donor funds, alumni volunteers, and more. Datasets often include related Slate objects, like fields, tabs, and queries.

Before, if you wanted to move a dataset between databases, you’d have to rebuild each element individually. Now, all you need to do is create a Suitcase object for your dataset, select everything you want to include with it, and then paste its Suitcase ID in another database.

This process preserves the original dataset ID and makes moving complex dataset structures much faster and more efficient.

📖 Learn more: Suitcase, Datasets

Suitcase merge/replace

Suitcase now lets you merge changes to existing objects—or outright replace them—on import.

For example, when you add a field to a form in your test environment, that new field naturally isn’t reflected in your production environment’s version of that form.

Where once you’d have to bring in a new copy of that form to production and delete the old one, you can now use Suitcase to copy that form from test, paste it in production, and, when Slate matches their GUIDs, merge the changes from the production version.

You can also choose to replace the existing production environment form with the new one, or to make a new copy.

📖 Learn more: Suitcase

Form pagination

Long forms just got easier on your users: you can now create multi-page forms by adding section breaks configured as Page Breaks.

• Registrants access your form one page at a time with Continue and Back buttons, without ever losing their input.

• Required fields are validated step-by-step before progressing the registrant’s submission.

📖 Learn more: Form Palette

Electronic signatures

A new Signature form field widget lets you collect cryptographically-secured electronic signatures.

• Form registrants can select from one of six signature styles.

• Signatures are stored with the form ID, field ID, time of signing, the signature itself (including its style), the IP address, the user agent, and the device hash.

📖 Learn more: Signature Form Field Widget

Payment amount item details & discounts

The Payment Amount form widget gets two big upgrades:

Item details

Along with the ability to make the field itself visible, you can now add metadata to a Payment Amount form field, including:

• Item name

• Item code (for example, an SKU)

• Option to display the item’s cost

• Option to display an item quantity selector

  • Option to add a maximum item quantity

  • Option to set a default selected quantity

When a form registrant selects items of various quantities, Slate calculates the total cost.

These fields are available in the Form bases for events, including as a join to find all payment amount line items. This lets you create a dictionary export to include a line-by-line invoice in confirmation messages.

Discounts

You can now use the sum(*) formula in both the Payment Amount and Payment fForm widgets’ Amount / Formula field.

For example: multiply the total (sum(*)) by a negative percentage (-0.2) to produce a 20% discount on the total price.

Behind the scenes calculations prevent discounts from being applied more than once. The Payment widget returns a total amount due with the discount applied:

📖 Learn more: Payment Amount Form Widget

Payment Terminal enhancements

Not to be outdone, Payment Terminal gets some upgrades of its own:

• Payment Terminal transactions now remember your last-used reader. When you collect payment again during the same browser session, it appears pre-selected.

• With this cached reader information, you’ll find a real-time cart view on the collecting device.

• Tap-to-Pay can be initiated prior to collecting payment details, so your cart can accumulate additional items.

• Pending transactions can be cancelled and begun anew. The form won’t be re-submitted until you collect and re-authorize a new amount from the customer.

📖 Learn more: Payment Terminal

Query by dataset population

A new Related query base has been added to your database: Dataset Row by Population.

Select this base to return all dataset rows for all datasets within a given population.

📖 Learn more: Standard Configurable Joins Query Bases

Query by population

When you select the query base Person by Population, you’re now presented with a Population list.

Select a population from the list to narrow query results to only that population of records.

📖 Learn more: Standard Configurable Joins Query Bases

Query base views

Materialized views now present a new export option: Enable query base for this view. With this option selected, Slate builds a new query base from the view.

This new query base behaves like any other in your database, meaning you can:

• Grant certain users, permissions, and roles access to it

• Create queries on it, where direct exports come from the view itself, and filters can show lists of possible values in the view

• Join out to the original source table, and from there to other standard bases

These query bases piggyback on a useful behavior of materialized views: because they retrieve data on a schedule, rather than in real-time, they return data much faster.

This point-in-time nature brings down from minutes to seconds the time required to return complex subquery calculations and logic.

These new bases also save you time in queries on standard bases. For example, a person-based query that joins to a custom view dealing with complexly-calculated person data can shave execution time by joining to a custom, materialized base containing that data and returning those data as exports.

📖 Learn more: Materialized Views, Query Base Views

Slate AI snippets & system instructions

Create reusable prompts that appear in Slate AI above the text box.

Contexts let you determine where a given snippet appears (in the Reader or in HTML editors). Further refine context by adding a URL path in which the snippet should appear:

Setting the snippet’s type to System Instructions creates a systemwide prompt that informs all responses from Slate AI:

📖 Learn more: Slate AI Snippets

Video essay attempt tracking

Limit the number of attempts an applicant can make at a video essay recording with the Video Capture form widget.

• Works with both signed-in applicants and anonymous applicants.

• Assigned staff can reset the applicant’s attempts administratively.

📖 Learn more: Video Capture Form Widget

AI interviews

Let Slate AI do the talking.

Configure a Video Capture form widget as an AI interview, enter a prompt for the AI interviewer to work from, and choose a voice from a list of avatars.

Respondents to your form will find themselves engaged in an open-ended, thoughtful, conversational interview on the topics and in the tone you’ve specified.

📖 Learn more: AI Interviews

AI identify verification

Slate now lets you require that applicants complete a Stripe-powered AI identity verification process.

At any point in an applicant’s journey, you can configure Slate to send them a communication to initiate identity verification. Applicants are directed to continue on a smartphone if they aren’t on a device with a camera.

The process requires that applicants:

• Take a selfie

• Take pictures of their photo ID

• Provide part of government ID number, like the last four digits of a Social Security Number

The selfie portion uses AI to ensure applicants are really “there” and aren’t just holding up someone’s picture.

When they’re done, their Slate record is updated with a full report of what information was verified and what wasn’t. An application rule can place a hold on their application for further processing, depending on the outcome.

📖 Learn more: AI Identity Verification

Event communication calendar integration

Go beyond .ics attachments with full-fledged meeting invite attachments for Slate event communications.

• Recipients of your event communications will find a meeting penciled in on their calendar client of choice, like Google Calendar, Outlook, and more.

• The recipient’s RSVP choice comes back to Slate and is reflected accordingly on their record.

📖 Learn more: Event Communications Overview

Universal Google & Microsoft 365 calendar integrations

Automatically synchronize all events assigned to a user to their Google or Microsoft 365 calendars. This expands the two-way calendar integration with Availability to all events and interviews.

When users add their Microsoft 365 or Google calendars to Slate, they can select Sync Events to reflect their assigned Slate events in their external calendar.

📖 Learn more: Syncing your Microsoft 365 or Google Calendar with Slate

Form & event reminder communication exports & filters

Custom exports and filters are now available to all event communications, including those that fire on time-based triggers, like Time before event, Time after event, and Upon event cancellation.

With the Edit Conditions button available on all of your event communications, you can now target your reminders to specific registrants.

📖 Learn more: Conditionally Send Form and Event Communications

Remote Inbox Gateway

Remote Inbox Gateway brings the power and flexibility of our universal Google and Microsoft 365 calendar integrations to Inbox.

When you grant Inbox access to your external email client, you’ll have instant access to your personal inbox in Slate. All message content, including attachments, is preserved.

With Remote Inbox Gateway, you can:

• Route incoming email to folders during and after assignment

• Assign email addresses to existing records, or create new ones

📖 Learn more: Inbox Setup

Documents

A new Deliver method, Document, brings dynamic message content to PDFs.

When you configure a Document message, you can:

• Style the mailing with CSS rules that target elements like pages and page breaks

• Create rich, dynamic mail merges using HTML with full liquid markup support—including conditionals, loops, and CSS for page formatting

• Proof it as a PDF before sending it to Outbox for approval and printing, directly from Slate

Like the Mail Merge method, printed documents appear in the timeline alongside other communications.

📖 Learn more: Documents

Deliver send with edits

In a Deliver mailing, when you select Send Message, you’ll now find the message content available for editing.

• The Send Test option now prepends [Test] to email subject lines, and the Send Ad-Hoc option now lets you add personal touches to the message body of one-off Deliver mailings.

• This applies to SMS messages too: use this opportunity to note that an SMS message is a test in the message body.

📖 Learn more: Deliver Send Ad-Hoc and Test Messages

Inbox conversation view

Navigate Inbox in a brand new way with Conversation View.

Conversations appear inline, with subjects and senders visible in the sidebar as you navigate from one thread to the next.

📖 Learn more: Sending Inbox Messages

Inbox real-time receipt

Once processed in 5-10 minute batches, emails sent to your Slate Inbox are now processed immediately upon arrival.

This gives inbound email parity with the behavior of inbound SMS messages.

Inbox compose

Inbox now lets you compose new email and SMS messages.

Use autosuggest to select a recipient and device, then compose your message in a new window with access to past conversations, snippets, and dashboards.

📖 Learn more: Sending Inbox Messages

Message number pooling

Staff in the same Inbox group can now share phone numbers.

Add any number of phone numbers to an Inbox group’s number pool. When a user in this pool sends a text message, Slate selects one of the pooled numbers and assigns it to the conversation. Responses from the recipient are routed back to this conversation.

📖 Learn more: Purchasing Slate Credits for SMS, Print, and Voice, Inbox Setup

Agents

Agents are a new type of bot you can create in Slate.

As with AI chat bots, you can create as many as you need, configure their behavior with a prompt, and feed them knowledge sources.

Where AI chat bots are relatively contained—embedded on your website or associated with an SMS number—agents are up to any task you give them, including Inbox and Deliver campaigns.

AI as you like it

You determine the level of agency to give your agents:

• On-demand: The agent drafts messages only at your request

• Auto Draft: The agent drafts messages automatically, but doesn’t send them without your input

• Auto Reply: The agent sends messages automatically

As with AI chat bots, you can supply agents with internal knowledge sources.

Automate drip campaigns—even more than they already are—with agents

Configure a Deliver message as Agentic, associate it with an Inbox group that has an Auto Draft or Auto Reply agent assigned, and you’re off to the races.

Beyond the usual prompting for tone and content:

• Tell the agent how often it should reach out to recipients when the recipient isn’t actively responding

• Tell the agent under what circumstances it should escalate to human intervention

• Include exports and filters to provide the agent more context about the person it’s talking to

📖 Learn more: Agents

Assignment lists

A new addition to the main navigation’s Home tab, Assignment lists are a brand new way to track assigned populations in Slate.

They are a combination of portals, a query filtered for only records assigned to the current user, and an optional AI recommendation about the cohort of assigned records.

Altogether, they provide a filterable, sortable list of assigned records in an easily accessible location.

Configurable portals let you dive into the details on any of your assignments.

📖 Learn more: Assignment lists

Cadences

Paired neatly with assignment lists are cadences.

A cadence is a scheduled, repeating set of tasks that you want to be followed for a given record that enters an assignment list.

Create a new cadence, add steps in a given order and along a given time frame:

When you select a record from an assignment list, you can add cadences:

Check off cadence items as you complete tasks, and you’ll move though the cadence flow.

Find all of your cadences under the Home tab in the main navigation:

📖 Learn more: Cadences

Slate AI query analysis

Ask Slate AI about your query results.

Not sure what to start? Just ask Slate AI what to ask it about:

Slate AI can perform complex calculations and report-like breakdowns on huge queries in seconds:

📖 Learn more: Slate AI