Summary

The following is a summary of updates that were from the September/October 2024 NextZen release. Links to articles are provided with more detailed information where available. 

• Collect Signatures from Applicants Directly Within your Form with Dedicated E-Signature Field
• Support for Additional Languages and Right-to-Left Reading
• Applicants May Have Multiple Applications to a Single Program
• Mitigate Risk with Enhanced Compliance Checks 
• Import Applicant Award History 
• Manage Multiple Application and Award Cycles (“Parallel Cycles”) in a Single Program
• Improvements and Branding to Generated PDFs 
• Connect NextZen to your Other Business Tools through Webhooks

Collect Signatures from Applicants Directly Within your Form with Dedicated E-Signature Field

Now available across all NextZen subscriptions, the new E-Signature Field allows Program Owners and Program Managers to easily add and collect legally binding electronic signatures directly within a Form (Intake, Request, Feedback and Award Agreements) without needing to use a separate e-signature service or platform (such as Docusign). 

Organization Owners can choose to make this field required, can determine how a signature is provided (stroke or type), and can configure the signature field box to the size of their choosing. 

Please note:

• e-Signature forms cannot be routed outside of NextZen. Individuals “signing” must be an Applicant, Lead Applicant (invited through collaboration), Requestee, or Reviewer. 
• The Signature Field is not available on Eligibility Forms. 

Support for Additional Languages and Right-to-Left Reading

To support an accessible experience across languages, NextZen is available in a variety of languages. Applicants and admins alike may select a language at any time to automatically translate static text within the platform. With this latest update, NextZen now supports Arabic and Right to Left reading, as well as 17 total languages.  

Languages available for selection seen above. Go to Organization Settings > Languages

Right to Left Reading experience seen above. 

Applicants May Have Multiple Applications to a Single Program

Previously, applicants were limited to a single application per program. We’ve removed that limitation and introduced a new setting where administrators can chose to allow multiple applications within your Cycle Setup. To enable multiple applications, contact your Customer Success Manager or submit a support request. 

Mitigate Risk with Enhanced Compliance Checks

Safeguard your program from fraud, financial, and reputational risks with our new screening capabilities.

Easily identify high-risk individuals, including Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) and those subject to Sanctions, before they progress further in your grant program workflow or review process. These fraud prevention tools not only help you comply with regulatory requirements but also protect your organization from potential legal or financial complications, ensuring your program operates with confidence and security.

Organization Owners can select to turn the compliance checks on in Individual and Organization Profiles under Organization Settings. Program Owners and Managers can view and manage records for both Sanction checks and PEPs in their compliance tab under the Admin controls in both Intake and Review rounds.

This feature is available to NextZen users on Enterprise packages. To add this feature to your account, contact your Customer Success Manager. 

Import Applicant Award History

Organization Owners, Program Owners, and Program Managers have the option to import awarded application history details from their legacy system to their NextZen platform, offering administrators a holistic view of their relationship with awarded applicants over time.
Using a CSV file, the user has the option to import all or selected ranges of awarded applicant history details. Imported field options include, but are not limited to: Name of program applied to, Name of cycle applied to, Award Status/Decision, etc.) 

Manage Multiple Application and Award Cycles ("Parallel Cycles") in a Single Program

Program Owners and Managers now have the ability in their deadline-based cycles to publish parallel cycles within a single program, allowing multiple application and award cycles to run concurrently. 

Owners and Managers gain greater flexibility across their cycle-based programs, with the option to create a new cycle for specific applicants when one cycle has already reached the awarding phase. Creating a new cycle while an existing cycle is simultaneously running is the most efficient way for new applicants to avoid the award acceptance workflow.

Improvements and Branding to Generated PDFs

Generated PDFs now more closely reflect product and customer branding, for improved cohesiveness for applicants and awardees. Please note that tables have limited formatting in PDF downloads. Learn more about branding in NextZen.

Connect NextZen to your Other Business Tools through Webhooks

Use NextZen’s enhanced webhooks to keep your greater organization in sync with the applicant and event data collected in NextZen. Webhooks are an efficient way to define unique automations and workflows that must occur when critical data is collected.

Learn more about these Webhooks and the activity log that they provide here.

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