Quizzes, workflow delays, event reminders, and 10+ other updates
I can’t believe it’s July already.
Way back in January, I shared our commitment to making Circle undeniably great, and we’ve been working tirelessly toward that goal. We’re always listening to your feedback and thinking up new ways to improve our platform to serve you and your members even better.
Now that the first half of 2024 is behind us, let’s take a moment to reflect on the progress we’ve made. Over the past six months, we’ve rolled out more than 70 new features and improvements to Circle 🤯
- Edit posts & comments on mobile
- Share events publicly
- New video settings and 10+ other updates
- Moderation settings
- Mobile analytics
- RSVP “Not going” to events and 10+ other updates
- Analytics 3.0
- Portuguese language support
- Brazilian paywalls and 10+ other updates
- Topics
- Community calendar and 20+ other updates
- Paid events
- Activity logs
- Search filters and sorting and 10+ other updates.
We’ve made great strides in the first half of the year, but we’ve still got lots to do with some incredible launches coming up in the next few months. I can’t wait to share them with you.
Without further ado, let’s get into what shipped in June 👇
Introducing quizzes
Enrich your course lessons with quizzes
You asked and we heard you — quizzes are coming to course lessons.
Quizzes are an excellent way to help your students with material retention, provide them with a pulse check on their learning progress, and boost their engagement in your course.
When creating a new lesson in your course, you’ll now be able to choose between either a lesson or quiz.
On the quiz creation page, you can add a description for your quiz and as many questions as necessary for your material. You’ll be able to select between questions with a single correct answer or multiple correct answers.
If you’d like to set a passing grade for your quiz, you can toggle on Set passing grade under Settings. This will prevent your students from advancing to the next lesson until they meet the threshold you’ve set to pass.
Admins will be able to see the quiz results on your course dashboard. Quiz results include, the date the quiz was submitted by the student, their quiz score, and their pass or fail result (if a passing grade threshold was set).
To add a quiz to your course, navigate to your course and click on Edit lessons. Under the section you’d like to add a quiz, click on + Add new and select Quiz.
Quizzes are supported on the web, as well as Circle’s iOS, Android, and Plus mobile apps.
Rollout begins today, and will be available to all communities by July 20.
Workflow delays
Add time delays to your automated workflows
You can now add a delay to your automated workflow or bulk action.
In cases where you want certain actions to take place only after some time, it’s now possible to add time delays to your workflows.
To add a delay, click the Add an action option when setting up a workflow, select Time delay, and choose the amount of time you’d like to delay the action which comes immediately after it. A delay can be specified in hours, days, or weeks, and can be added to both automations and bulk actions.
For example:
Entry rule = Member joined community
Action 1 = Time delay (1 day)
Action 2 = Send a direct message
In this example, a new member will receive a DM a day after they join your community. Enjoy!
Learn more about our workflows →
Event reminders
Increase your event attendance rates with custom reminders
We run a lot of events at Circle, and know how crucial reminders are to marketing your virtual or in-person events. That’s why we’re giving you more options for event reminders, starting today.
Now you can set the desired send time for your event reminder emails, schedule as many reminders as necessary, and take full control of the email subject and body.
To customize your event reminders, just go to the Reminders tab after clicking Save draft when creating an event, or from the Edit event modal.
You can also add the following dynamic variables to the email subject or body:
- {{community.name}}
- {{event.name}}
- {{event.date}}
- {{event.time}}
- {{event.url}}
- {{event.location}}
When saving the reminder, you’ll have the option to send reminders to guests based on their RSVP status: Going, Not going, or All invitees.
By giving you even more flexibility with promoting your events, you’ll be able to reduce the chances of your members missing out on important events or information about them, ultimately boosting your event attendance rate and engagement in your community.
Learn more about event reminders →
Event topics
Organize your event spaces with topics
Remember when we introduced topics for post spaces back in April? Well, we’re thrilled to share that we’ve expanded topics to event spaces too!
Now you can use topics to make it even easier and more intuitive for your members to browse your events.
Similar to how topics work on post spaces, you can add up to 20 topics per event space and assign 5 topics per individual event.
Admins can customize which topics are visible to members and which are admin only. They can also require events to have at least one topic assigned.
Here are some topic ideas for structuring your event spaces to get you started:
- Office hours
- Q&A
- Show & tells
- Workshops
- Socials
- Orientations
To add topics to your event space, navigate to Customize in the ellipsis dropdown menu, scroll to Topic navigation, and enter your topics.
Once your topics are created, you can assign them to each individual event by navigating to the Edit event modal and selecting the appropriate topic in the Basic info tab.
Alternatively, you can manage your topics from the Content > Topics tab in the admin dropdown in your community.
Digital wallets
Boost your Circle paywall conversions with Apple Pay and Google Pay
Circle paywalls are now even more optimized for conversions with the addition of Apple Pay and Google Pay, enabled by default for all communities.
These digital wallets are among the most widely used and trusted payment options globally, and are proven to boost checkout conversion rates.
When purchasing your paywall, your members will be able to checkout with a digital wallet instead of using a credit card. Once a payment is made, you can see which payment method was used to make the purchase from the Paywalls > Transactions / Subscriptions tab.
Additionally, we now integrate with Stripe Link, which means your members can securely use their saved Stripe payment information when checking out with your paywalls, reducing cart abandonment.
You may also notice that we’ve made some minor layout adjustments to the paywall checkout experience to make it more intuitive and user friendly. These adjustments include adding section headers for easier navigation, making the Sign in button more prominent, and adding the ability for users to logout.
Note: If you’d like to disable digital wallets, you can do so by going to Paywalls > Settings.
Learn more about digital wallets →
Post bulk actions: Add topic, Change space
To make it easier for you to manage your posts, we’ve added two new bulk actions: Add topics and Change space.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what each action does:
- Add topic: Assigns topics to your selected posts if the post space supports it.
- Change space: Moves your selected posts to a specified space.
To apply a bulk action, go to Content > Posts in the admin area. Here, you can use the Title, Author, and Spaces filters to filter your post content, and select an action from the Bulk actions dropdown.
Once selected, a confirmation modal will pop up informing you of the number of affected posts and prompting you to confirm your intent to run the action.
When you’ve confirmed, you’ll be able to see the real-time progress of changes to your selected posts. You can find a record of real-time progress reports of bulk actions performed on the Posts admin section under Bulk logs, where you can also download a CSV file with a detailed log.
Paywall conversion dashboard
We’ve added a new conversion dashboard to paywall analytics, giving you more insights to help optimize your revenue streams. To access this dashboard, click on Analytics in the admin area and go to the Paywalls tab.
With the new conversion dashboard, you can easily monitor your paywall conversion rates, bounce rates, and visitor behavior.
For accounts on Enterprise plans and up, you’ll also have access to filtering options that let you customize your results by paywall or by profile field, giving you deeper insights at the paywall level.
Note: Our dashboard is brand new and only began tracking your conversions as of June 1, 2024, providing you with the latest information on your paywall performance.
Calendar layout for event spaces
In April, we introduced the community calendar to the Events directory tab. We’ve now brought this over as a space layout option for individual event spaces with the calendar layout.
To change the layout of an event space, click on Customize in the ellipsis dropdown menu in your event space, scroll down to Layout, and select Calendar.
Apply or remove coupons from paywall subscriptions
Admins can now manage coupons at the subscriber level using the Subscriptions tab on the paywalls admin menu.
To add or remove a coupon from an individual subscription, navigate to Paywalls > Subscriptions on your community’s admin dropdown menu. Find the subscription you’d like to update, click on the ellipsis dropdown menu and select either Apply coupon or Remove coupon.
Learn more about paywall coupons →
Track new members by links used on the invitations links page
We’ve made it more intuitive and efficient to track which members were added by an invitation link on the Invitation links page.
To see which members used a specific invitation link, navigate to Members > Invitation links on your community’s admin dropdown menu.
You can now click on the Members joined count which will redirect you to the Members page with your invitation link applied as a filter. You’ll be able to see which members successfully joined using that link.
Note: The count on the Invitation links page may differ from the number of members shown on the Members page. The invitation link counts all clicks on the link, while the members page tracks members who’ve successfully completed their profiles.
Learn more about invitation links →
Other improvements
Notifications enabled by default: To boost member engagement, we’ve made all notifications (email, in-app, and mobile) enabled by default when you create a new space. Your existing spaces won’t be affected, and you can always toggle this setting off when you’re making a new space.
Workflows speed improvements: Our team has been focused on speeding up bulk action workflows. We’re pleased to share that bulk actions should now be much faster for large audiences or workflows with multiple actions, in some cases up to 3x faster.
Workflows shortcuts: We’ve also integrated workflows with other parts of Circle, such as member onboarding, space settings, and paywall settings. You’ll now find the shortcuts to your workflows from:
- Members > Onboarding > Workflows
- Edit space > Workflows
- Edit paywall > Workflows
Pin direct messages: To help you find important messages faster, you can now pin DMs to the top of your inbox by selecting Pin in the ellipsis dropdown menu beside your chosen conversation thread.
iOS improvements
We also shipped a few improvements to Circle’s iOS app:
- Support for bookmarks in chat messages
- Improved chat creation functionality
- Improved thumbnail display in spaces using card layouts
- Moved bookmarks to the member profile screen
- Improved Portuguese localization
- Performance, reliability, and UI/UX improvements
Android improvements
Plus, here are some improvements on Circle’s Android and Circle Plus branded apps:
- Support for chat messaging
- Support for welcome banner
- Performance, reliability, and UI/UX improvements
RSVP for the next Product with Pedro
Pedro Hernandes will walk you through the latest features and improvements to the Circle platform. He’ll cover:
- This month’s top features
- Where to access them and how to set them up in your community
- Use case examples to better serve your needs
Plus, you’ll get a chance to ask any questions live!