Release notes
What we have shipped
One note a week, published on Friday, covering everything that shipped. Each carries a version number so your change-advisory process has something to point at. First Six is currently on 2026.9, released 4 September 2026.
2026
9 releases
Faster, safer sign-in, and an Australian backup copy
Signing in is quicker and stricter about who gets in while signed out, your nightly backup now keeps a copy in Australia, and two small console fixes land, source pages for the writing assistant and hover explanations that no longer get cut off.
Your roster, your own pages, and running more than one intake
Four things this week. Groups can be filled from your student system with a consent gate on the sensitive ones, the writing assistant can draft Ask Anything answers from your real service pages, a term's content can be copied into a later intake, and a staff member is emailed when a student is assigned to them.
Your help buttons, in your words
The categories a student chooses between when they ask for help are now yours to name. Rename the five that come with First Six, retire the ones you do not staff, or add your own.
Send each kind of help request to the team that owns it
The helpdesk mirror can now route each of the four help categories to its own queue, so a financial hardship request and a wellbeing one no longer have to land in the same system.
Connect First Six to your help desk
Mirror student help requests into the help desk your staff already watch, or subscribe your own systems to signed events, so First Six isn't another platform to monitor.
The wellbeing pulse, after the six weeks
A gentle fortnightly check-in for students who've finished the arc, and a staff aggregate that folds it into the morale report.
The why behind the mood. Reasons in Insights
The weekly check-in now captures what's weighing on a struggling student, and Insights shows it as an aggregate reason breakdown and a week-by-week concern timeline.
Before and after the six weeks
First Six now spans the whole journey. A pre-arrival companion before Week 1 and an always-on companion after the arc ends.
Knowledge base launch
The First Six knowledge base went live with documentation across all four audiences.
What is not here
Only changes worth a university’s attention get a release note. Everything else, the internal work, the refactors, the things nobody outside this office would notice, ships without one, and a week with none of the first kind gets no note at all. The product still ships continuously; Friday is when we write it up, not when it reaches you. If you want to know what is coming rather than what has landed, that is the roadmap. If you want to know whether the product is up right now, that is status.
The labels above: New something the product could not do before; Improved something that already worked, working better; Fixed something that was not behaving as described; Security a control, a permission, or a privacy safeguard; Accessibility meeting wcag 2.2 aa, or going past it; Students changes a student sees; Staff console changes your team sees; Administration settings, permissions and set-up; Content writing and publishing the six weeks; Help and crisis the help flow and the crisis pathway; Integrations identity, student records and help desks; Insights reporting and the evidence a board asks for; Documentation the knowledge base and the guides.