TaxFolder’s Third Year: Technology Upgrades and French Language Support

TaxFolder’s third year was a big one! Armed with your feedback, we built even more value into TaxFolder. In case you missed reading the release notes, here’s a full list highlighting the milestones for the year. 

Technology Upgrades

Beyond the list of changes you can see, we worked hard this season to make TaxFolder’s underlying technology more effective. This included:

• Significant performance improvements to resolve processing delays and the intermittent outages that occurred earlier in the year. With your feedback and patience, we were able to implement these changes to resolve the service interruptions. 
• Improved error handling and added a way for preparers and their clients to send error reports to TaxFolder support when necessary.
• Updated the document links in all emails to show as from mailing.taxfolder.com instead of from sendgrid.com.
• New process for inviting clients or team members to TaxFolder, laying the groundwork for single sign-on (SSO) from other services. 
• Support for multiple client portals or firms.
• Performance updates to improve the speed of page loading in the Preparer Dashboard.
• Improved SMS error handling where additional Knowledge Based Authentication (KBA) is selected.
• Improved the reliability of signature request document processing and added additional retries where there was a timeout during signature processing.
• Improved the firm creation workflow. 

French Language Support

• French E-signatures and Approvals
• Added French client notifications. Email notifications respect the client and preparer's language preference, and include the preferred language from TaxCycle templates and for the body of the email notification.
• If you invite a client to TaxFolder to access the Client Portal, they will receive an invitation in French and can proceed through the connection process in French. See Connecter votre compte à TaxFolder for more information.
• Support for signing and approving documents in French. Signature requests sent from TaxCycle to clients with French as their language of correspondence will receive a signature request email in French and can complete the signature process entirely in French. 
• For French instructions on signing documents, see Comment signer un document dans TaxFolder.
• New French Help Topics for End-Users

New TaxFolder Website

We redesigned and expanded the TaxFolder website to make it more client-centric and to allow for improved delivery of dynamic content:

• Added a news feed to address timely communication of client-facing news.
• Published new and updated help topics directed specifically at clients accessing and using TaxFolder.
• Support for French content and switching between those pages.
• Improved the signed-out pages for clients of firms by removing references to ProTaxCommunity and TaxCycle. 

Signature Requests

• Added a new Undo button below the signature box to allow clients to undo the last part of the signature they wrote. The client does not have to redraw the whole signature if they make a mistake—just the last portion drawn.
• Made improvements to SMS delivery for specific use cases, for example by adding a delay to prevent users from repeatedly clicking the resend button. Also added a pop-up for in-progress signatures to alert clients when TaxFolder is in maintenance mode.

Preparer Dashboard

• Added a new History tab so you can view and filter TaxFolder events related to your firm.
• Added the option to delete a client from the client list or from the client engagement page.
• Added an option to show or hide deleted clients in the client list in the Preparer Dashboard. 
• Added a new drop-down menu on the Client List tab next to each client name to add an engagement, resend a client invite, edit client profiles and delete or restore clients without having to navigate to the client engagement page. Also removed the engagement detail from this tab to streamline the view.
• Improved the Account Settings menu and the general onboarding experience.

Notifications

• Clients can unsubscribe from certain types of email notifications by clicking the link in the footer of the email.
• Improved the readability of client email notifications in dark mode.
• Added the Preparer name in the shared secret email notification when adding a new team member.

Client Portal

• Added a language setting so clients can update their language preference.
• Added an automatic page refresh after the client deletes a document from the Client Portal.
• Improved the Account Settings menu in the Client Portal.

Other Requests

• Expanded document states to more reliably show the state of the signature or approval request. Also added a Void state and support to void requests from TaxCycle.
• Set a default language preference for your firm and new clients/preparers on the Organization page in Account Settings.
  • Preparers can update the language preference for a client in the Client Settings, while Clients can manage their own language preference on the Settings page in the Client Portal.
  • Preparers can update their own language preference on the Preparer page in Account Settings.
• Reduced the length of time a Client File link is accessible before it expires.
• Split client name into separate columns to allow for sorting by First and Last name. 
• Added a maintenance page for the document SMS page and a pop-up for in-progress signatures to alert clients when TaxFolder is in maintenance mode.
• Resolved reported concurrency issues related to working in multiple tabs in a browser or with multiple users in the same firm.
• Reduced the overall width of the signature field to better accommodate common forms. 
• TaxFolder now automatically changes the engagement status to “In Progress” when sending new signature requests from TaxCycle to a completed engagement.

With your suggestions and feedback, we were able to resolve various customer reported issues shortly after they were reported, ensuring that they were dealt with in a timely manner.