Portico Recruit CRM Release Notes – August 2026

This month, Portico Recruit is helping teams stay responsive and move faster, with smarter out-of-office coverage, more complete conversation history, and performance improvements across key CRM workflows.

To start, we're proud to highlight Out-of-Office Call Forwarding. With this feature, Portico's Out-of-Office automation is now complete. OOO Call Forwarding means advisors can now automatically route inbound calls to a teammate or team while they’re away, so students can still reach a real person without losing context or ownership. Forwarded calls are clearly identified, fully logged, and reported back to the original advisor. You and your team can now step away without leaving students waiting.

Also new this month, we've rolled out several improvements including a complete video chat history for every participant, faster Analytics Dashboards, and a faster-loading Contact Grid for teams working at scale.

Please see the rest of this month’s updates below.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Out-of-Office Call Forwarding
• Complete Video Chat History for Every Participant
• Faster Analytics Dashboards
• Faster Contact Grid

 Out-of-Office Call Forwarding

Out-of-Office Call Forwarding

Inbound calls covered while you're away, with the record intact

What Is It

When an advisor is out of office with call handling enabled, inbound calls route to a chosen teammate or team, arrive clearly marked as forwarded, and log back to the student's Contact Hub with both users recorded.

Who It's For

Admissions Advisors, team leads, and Contact Center teams

Problem Solved

Calls to an out-of-office advisor's direct number went unanswered, and any coverage that did happen left no clear record of who the call was meant for or who handled it.

Why It Matters

Students reach a real person instead of voicemail; the covering advisor has the context to handle the call well, and the out-of-office advisor comes back to a complete picture of what happened.

Details

• Routing goes to a single selected user or broadcasts to a team; for team routing, all eligible members are alerted and the first to answer takes the call
• The incoming-call notification shows the caller, a forwarded-call indicator, and the name of the advisor the call was intended for
• Portico re-checks out-of-office status, call handling, user active status, and current team membership at the moment of each call, so routing reflects today's setup rather than a saved snapshot
• If the selected user is inactive or the team no longer exists, the call is not forwarded and stays with its original destination
• Completed forwarded calls log in the student's Contact Hub with call type, caller, timestamp, outcome, original user, and responding user, labeled so they read differently from a standard call
• The contact hub record will display the missed call activity for the user and the forwarded call that was answered by their corresponding team member
• The out-of-office advisor receives an in-app notification naming the student and the teammate who handled the call
• Record ownership does not change, and no campaign or workflow assignment logic is affected

 Out-of-Office Call Forwarding

Complete Video Chat History for Every Participant

Nothing said in a group session gets lost

What Is It:

Chat from a multi-participant video session is now saved in full to every participant's Contact Hub record, and participants can scroll back during the live video to the very first message during the live call.

Who It's For:

Admissions Advisors and staff running group video sessions, plus anyone reviewing a student’s history

Problem Solved:

Chat from group video calls was not reliably captured for every participant, so parts of the conversation were lost after the call ended.

Why It Matters:

Every student walks away with a complete record of what was said, and staff reviewing a record later see the whole conversation rather than a fragment.

Details:

• During a live call, participants can scroll back to the beginning of the chat no matter how long it runs
• When the call ends, the full transcript is written to each participant's Contact Hub under that video call entry
• Each message shows its sender and timestamp
• Works for two or more participants, including late joiners and participants who leave early
• Chat content stays within the call's participants and follows existing permissions and data-retention policy

Faster Analytics Dashboards

Reports that load instead of timing out

What Is It:

The analytics portal dashboards now load faster and more reliably at high data volumes, with each widget appearing as soon as its own data is ready.

Who It's For:

Admissions leadership, Contact Center managers, and anyone working from the team performance and call activity dashboards

Problem Solved:

At larger institutions, analytics dashboards ran long enough to hit the application timeout, producing slow loads and failed screens.

Why It Matters:

Managers get their numbers when they ask for them, including during the busiest part of the day, instead of waiting on a spinner or reloading a failed dashboard.

Details:

• The queries behind the dashboards were rewritten and re-indexed so they return substantially faster at high data volumes
• Dashboards now fill in progressively, so each widget displays the moment it is ready instead of waiting for the slowest one or timing out for larger volumes of data
• No change to what the dashboards show or how they are used

See the Analytics dashboard load with a large filtered result set

Faster Contact Grid

Large lead, employer, and student lists that hold up

What Is It:

The contact grid has been reworked behind the scenes, so it loads faster for institutions with large volumes of records.

Who It's For:

Admissions Advisors, Contact Center staff, and campaign managers working from the lead, employer, and student contact grids

Problem Solved:

For high-volume institutions, a single grid search might pull a large amount of related data at once, making the grid slow to load and, at peak hours, prone to timing out.

Why It Matters:

Staff can filter, search, and work their lists at the pace they expect, including during peak hours, and the grid keeps up as an institution’s data grows.

Details:

• Filtering, sorting, searching, and bulk actions all behave as they did before
• Improvements were measured and built with headroom for continued growth

A preview of what's on the way. Dates and details may shift as work progresses.

• Re-entry Management — Former students who come back will be recognized automatically based on client configuration. For example, when a withdrawn, dropped, or graduated student re-inquiries, Portico will surface them on the task board, route them to the right advisor or team, and place them in the matching campaign, without disturbing their enrollment record.
• Custom-branded video backgrounds — Institutions-branded backgrounds that advisors and students can select on Portico Video calls.
• Continued performance investments — Further optimizations across the contact grid, analytics dashboards, and task boards.
• AI on the way — New AI-assisted experiences are in the works to help your team work faster.
• And more — Additional enhancements across CRM, Paperless, and Communications are in active development. Watch this space.

We’d love to hear from you and your colleagues about product feedback or what you'd like to see next. Sign up to participate in future product feedback sessions or early design reviews.

Learn More (for bigger features, this will link to a Help Article / User Guide for more info)