It's been a long time coming...
Ever since we launched The Notary eJournal back in 2020, we have continually made gradual improvements to the software - making updates and new features based directly on the feedback of our users and the notary community. At the beginning of 2023, we decided it was time to start working on a much larger update in order to get the web experience up to par with the mobile experience, and lay a foundation for what will be coming in the next few years
🚀 So without any further hesitation, let's dive right in!
What is V2 of The Notary eJournal?
V2 is a large set of updates to both the mobile app as well as the web experience for users of The Notary eJournal. Many of the new features can be utilized across mobile and web.
What's new on mobile?
Since launch, we have been a mobile-first product, with users only being able to create new notary journal entries on their mobile device. The web-app provided users with the ability to manage their subscriptions and view/export their entries. V2 is changing that, but just because we focused most of our development on the web experience doesn't mean we didn't add anything new to the mobile app! Updates to the mobile app include:
⚡️ Updates to load time and performance - we restructured many foundational components of our backend to mitigate long load times for large journal entry files and dashboard views. We have notaries who regularly have 50+ documents in a single journal entry, and needed to streamline how fast their entries load
🛡️ Privacy mode - This feature comes directly from our user request channel, where notaries didn't want any wandering eyes possibly seeing the signer's names on the dashboard view of the app. Enable privacy mode to hash those names to ensure no one else can see anything they aren't supposed to!
🎫 Texas mode (name subject to change) - ID scanning is one of our user's favorite features, but certain states prohibit the collection of the serial number of the ID. Turn on Texas mode to automatically omit the serial number when scanning an ID!
🕤 Notarization date & time - You can now manually add a notarization date & time for the entry you are creating. Since we time stamp every action taken in the process of creating a new entry and provide it to you in the audit log, we initially launched without being able to manually add a date/time of the notarization itself. This prevented many people from using the journal to backlog their old entries, and adding this new time stamp will open the door for notaries who don't journal contemporaneously with the notarization itself
💰New and additional fee fields - We have added a bunch of new additional fee fields that can be added to the journal entry, such as parking fees and travel fees. This will allow you to more accurately capture the breakdown of fees within your notary journal
✋ Oath & affirmation scripts - Default oath & affirmation scripts have been added to the menu, making it even easier to perform a jurat or any other notarial duty that may require the signer to make an oath or affirmation. We provide you with a few default options, and you can make changes to the text that are automatically saved and synced across mobile and web
What's new on web?
We are VERY excited to bring so many great features to our new web app! The biggest change is being able to create new entries directly from the web, without needing to log in to the mobile app. Updates to the web experience include:
🖥️ Create new entries directly from web - Now you can create new notary journal entries directly from the website. Because you can now manually add a notarization date & time stamp, you can backlog old entries much easier now! And best of all, the audit log will remain in place to ensure that there is transparency and accuracy with all data entry
📈 Dashboard widgets - Get more insight into the data your journal holds with the new dashboard widgets! Each widget focuses on specific categories of data within your journal, and you can select different date ranges and watch the data change in real time!
📣 Feature requests - Make sure your voice is heard in our new feature request portal, where users can make new requests, view requests by other users, and vote on which ones are most impactful to them! We are only as good as our users say we are, and we take feedback and feature requests very seriously, so join the conversation today!
What's next?
Our main priority in the next 30-60 days is ensure that V2 is implemented and adopted smoothly. Our focus will be responding to bug reports and any unforeseen system issues that pop up. Once we move past that 60 day mark, we have major improvements planned that include:
Rebuilding the entry export functionality
Building a RON (remote online notarization) specific product
Building an Apostille specific product
Creating admin style accounts for team management
As always, thank you for trusting us, voting us as the highest rated digital notary journal on the market, and always providing a great sense of community to us and those around you. We are looking forward to hearing your feedback about V2!