January 2026, 2.5.8 Release Notes
Updated at August 20th, 2026
Table of Contents
This January 13th release includes the following enhancements. These updates are subject to change until the day of the release.
Happy January! 🎉 We've been working on updates to help your teams hire faster and smarter.
Here's the latest feature releases and improvements.
Admin Tools
System implementers (SIs) permissions and access to Client Setup
You can now grant strategic partner users access to your account by granting them restricted access to Client Setup and the ability to bypass SSO requirements for maintenance, no longer needing to rely solely on your Paradox Admins for account configurations or worry about third-party users having unrestricted access to high-level feature toggles.
This update is designed to empower non-Paradox users, such as System Integration (SI) Partners, with self-service capabilities for implementation and maintenance. This allows partners to manage the accounts they support directly, while high-level features remain "view-only" to protect core account integrity.
Learn more about System implementer and partner user Client Setup access (Paradox Admin and system implementer-facing). Please contact your CS Representative for a copy of this documentation.
Role impact and feature activation
- Role Impact: By default, this impacts Paradox Admins, Company/Account Admins, and Partner Users (System Integrators).
- Feature Activation: This feature is automatically available to configure in Roles and Permissions. Please contact your CS Representative for more information.
Approvals
Target your approvals by pay percentage
You can now create dynamic approval targeting rules for offers and job postings that automatically trigger based on your job’s specific compensation ranges or percentage thresholds.
We know that managing varied pay structures across thousands of jobs can be a manual headache. This feature introduces flexible, scalable targeting that allows your job and offer approvals to adapt dynamically to a job’s configured pay minimums and maximums. By allowing for percentage-based thresholds (such as trigger if pay exceeds maximum by 10%), we’re reducing administrative overhead while ensuring your jobs and offers always remain compliant with internal compensation policies.
Learn more about creating and managing approval flows.
Role impact and feature activation
- Role Impact: By default, this impacts Paradox Admins, as well as any user roles with Full Access to Approval Flows.
- Feature Activation: This feature is automatically available to use for all clients using Approvals. You can configure targeting for your job and offer approvals by using the Pay Rate or Base Pay Actual attribute.
Browser Extension
Redesign of browser extension and logic updates
You can now enjoy a unified, reliable experience in the Browser Extension, fully aligned with the CEM on the web browser, no longer needing to navigate inconsistent workflows or switch between platforms to access advanced scheduling or the redesigned Candidate Inbox.
By bringing the Browser Extension in line with the CEM, your daily workflow becomes smoother and more predictable—mirroring the mobile experience. This update also ensures that new features and enhancements will be delivered seamlessly across all platforms, reducing technical complexity and future-proofing your recruiting tools.
Learn more about the browser extension.
Role impact and feature activation
- Role Impact: This update impacts all users with access to the Browser Extension, including Basic/Limited Users with Login Access and the appropriate candidate viewing and scheduling permissions.
- Feature Activation: This feature is automatically available for all clients using the Browser Extension. Access the enhanced experience by logging into the extension in your web browser.
Campaigns
Filter candidates by employees
You can now build campaign audiences by filtering for candidates associated with specific recruiters, hiring managers, or interview owners, no longer needing to manually export candidate lists or rely on broad, non-specific filters to find candidates managed by particular team members.
Personalizing high-volume outreach is key to a great candidate experience. Because of this, we’re introducing the Candidate by Employee filter within campaigns so you can quickly target audiences tied to specific internal roles, such as the Interview Owner or Additional Hiring Team. Whether you are searching by name, employee ID, or email, these new filters ensure your communications are relevant and aligned with the specific team members managing the candidate journey.
Learn more about building an audience with campaign filters.
Role impact and feature activation
- Role Impact: This update impacts Paradox Admins and Company/Account Admins, as well as any user roles with Full Access to Campaigns.
- Feature Activation: This feature is automatically available for all clients using Campaigns and can be accessed in the Channel & Audience step of the Campaign Builder.
Candidate Inbox
Standardized search results for candidate search
We have streamlined the candidate experience by standardizing data when searching for candidates, providing a faster, more intuitive navigation journey. By intelligently grouping multiple interactions—such as applications, campaigns, and event registrations—into a single search result, we’ve eliminated duplicate entries and search clutter, allowing you to navigate directly to a unified profile. With new visibility into total conversation counts and recent activity timestamps, you can now understand a candidate’s full history and prioritize your outreach without the confusion of redundant records.
Learn more about searching and viewing candidate data in the Candidate Inbox.
Role impact and feature activation
- Role Impact: This update impacts all user roles with Full Access to the Candidate Inbox, except for Basic or Limited Users.
- Feature Activation: This feature is automatically available for all clients searching within the CEM. When a search returns multiple results for a candidate, selecting the grouped result now takes you directly to the candidate's Overview tab.
Any changes made to the data on the Candidate Inbox's left-hand navigation have been reverted for this release.
Channels
Updates to candidate resubscribe logic
We've updated our Manage preferences pages so candidates who have opted out of all communications can now easily resubscribe themselves through a secure, self-service verification process. You'll no longer needing to manually manage re-subscription requests or worry about candidates being "permanently blocked" from receiving important updates after a previous unsubscribe.
This update allows previously unsubscribed candidates to select the Manage Preferences in their previous emails and access the verification page. From there, candidates can select their preferred channel—Text, Email, or WhatsApp—to receive a one-time code and regain access to manage their preferences. This ensures your team maintains full compliance through explicit, candidate-initiated consent.
Learn more about the candidate self update via Manage Preferences page.
Role impact and feature activation
- Role Impact: This update impacts candidates who previously unsubscribed from communications and notifications.
- Feature Activation: This feature is automatically available to use for candidates who want to manage their communication and notification preferences. Additionally, candidates do not need to re-enter their full phone number or email address to receive a verification code; the system securely references their existing candidate record.
Conversational Events
Send event prep documents to your candidates and event managers
Event builder
Event prep documents on the event landing page
You can now attach essential preparation materials—like maps, dress codes, and FAQs—directly to your hiring events, ensuring they are automatically sent to both candidates and your event team. This reduces the redundant work of sending supplemental emails outside the platform or managing external links to share pre-event information.
We know that getting candidates and recruiters to the right place with the right information is important. This new feature allows you to leverage your existing interview prep documents directly within your hiring events, orientation events, and event templates. Whether it’s a PDF map of the campus or a list of what to bring, these materials are now seamlessly integrated into automated invitations and reminders. This ensures all participants have a single, centralized place to find everything they need to feel prepared and engaged.
Learn more about event prep documents.
Role impact and feature activation
- Role Impact: This update impacts Company/Account Admins, Recruiters, Supervisors, and Reporting Users, as well as any user roles with Full Access to Events.
- Feature Activation: This feature is automatically available for all clients who have Interview Prep enabled in Client Setup. You can attach Event Prep Documents in the Tools step in the Event Builder.
Event template builder redesign
You can now create event templates through a modern, visually clean, and intuitive interface designed for maximum efficiency, no longer needing to navigate through old, outdated layouts.
We have redesigned the Event Templates Builder to provide a more streamlined and efficient workspace for building your event templates. This modernization effort ensures our scheduling tools align with the latest Paradox platform standards. By migrating these pages to a modern, scalable library, we have also addressed technical debt, creating a stronger foundation that allows us to deliver new event features and improvements to you even faster.
Learn more about creating an event template.
Role impact and feature activation
- Role Impact: This update impacts Company/Account Admins, Recruiters, Supervisors, and Reporting Users, as well as any user roles with Full Access to Events.
- Feature Activation: This redesign is automatically applied to the Event Templates Builder.
Data Privacy
Terms and Conditions can now display based on the job's location
You can now choose to present candidates with Terms and Conditions (T&Cs) based on a job’s specific location rather than the candidate's physical IP address, no longer needing to worry about candidates in global regions accepting incorrect legal agreements.
For global organizations, ensuring candidates agree to the correct regional legal standards is a top priority. Previously, we showed Terms and Conditions based on where the candidate was physically located during their application, based on their candidate's physical IP address. This update ensures that candidates always agree to the legal standards of the region where the role is based, regardless of where they are applying from, providing you with jurisdictional compliance.
Learn more about this new setting in Client Setup (Paradox Admin and system implementer-facing). Please contact your CS Representative for a copy of this documentation.
Role impact and feature activation
- Role Impact: This update impacts Paradox Admins and Company/Account Admins.
- Feature Activation: This feature is automatically available to configure in the Data Privacy section of Client Setup. Please contact your CS Representative for more information.
Forms
Media display now available in forms and documents
You can now embed videos, images, and GIFs directly into your forms and guided documents to provide visual guidance, training materials, or celebratory brand content, no longer needing redirect candidates to external platforms to watch mandatory training videos or view instructional guides.
Engagement is key to a successful onboarding experience. By bringing media directly into your forms, you can ensure candidates stay within the platform while completing critical tasks. Whether you are showing a “welcome to the team” video, providing visual aids for payroll setup, or sharing culture-focused content, this feature reduces friction and increases completion rates. You can even require digital consent after a video is viewed, ensuring your team stays compliant with internal training and policy requirements.
Learn more about adding a media task to a form, a guided document, and digital consent in forms.
Role impact and feature activation
- Role Impact: This update impacts Company/Account Admins, as well as any user roles with Full Access to Forms.
- Feature Activation: This feature is automatically available for all clients using Forms and Documents. To get started, you can select the new Media Display task within the Form Builder and choose media from the CMS Media Library.
Evaluations
Updates to evaluation viewing permissions
You can now customize exactly which team members can view or edit candidate evaluations, allowing you to restrict visibility to a candidate's previous evaluation results.
Fostering an objective evaluation process is critical to fair hiring. Previously, any user with access to a candidate's profile could view all completed evaluations, creating the risk of users being influenced by the opinions of others. With this update, we’ve introduced new granular permissions that allow you to determine if a user can see evaluations completed by others or only their own. This added flexibility ensures that evaluations remain independent and objective, significantly reducing legal risk and improving the integrity of your talent review process.
Learn more about permissions for viewing completed evaluations.
Role impact and feature activation
- Role Impact: This update impacts Paradox Admins, Company/Account Admins, and Franchise Owners, as well as user roles with Full Access to evaluations. It also affects any user role that participate in candidate evaluations.
- Feature Activation: These new permission settings are automatically available to configure within Roles and Permissions. By default, all user roles are set to Full Access for the Evaluations permission, while child permissions for viewing or editing others evaluations are restricted to Company/Account Admins and Franchise Owners. Please contact your CS Representative for more information on granting or restricting these permissions.
Location Management
Updates to deactivated locations
You can now maintain full data integrity by deactivating locations while benefiting from new system-wide guardrails that protect your active conversation logic and keep your workspace organized.
With this update, the system provides stricter protection by blocking deactivation across the user interface, Data Feeds, and API if a location is currently tied to a Location Selection question condition or skip-logic criteria in the Conversation Builder. We have also optimized your workspace by ensuring deactivated locations are clearly labeled and automatically moved to the bottom of folders and selection menus, keeping your active sites front and center while preserving essential records for your workflows, tax profiles, and candidate history.
Learn more about deactivated locations in Location Management.
Role impact and feature activation
- Role Impact: This update impacts Paradox Admins, Company/Account Admins, and Franchise Owners. It also affects any user role with Full Access to Location Management.
- Feature Activation: This feature is automatically available to use for all clients using Location Management. You can access this feature by using the deactivate functionality in Location Management.
Job Management
Live Job Data for Journey Targeting
Your candidate journey logic now dynamically references the most up-to-date job information at every step, ensuring that automated actions like offer delivery always reflect live job attributes.
In dynamic hiring environments, job details often evolve while candidates are still in process. Previously, journey logic was "locked" to the data captured at the moment of application, which could lead to inconsistencies if a role changed from part-time to full-time in the middle. With this update, the system continuously evaluates the latest job data at each journey step to determine the correct path.
Learn more about Journey Targeting.
Role impact and feature activation
- Role Impact: This update impacts Paradox Admins, Company/Account Admins, and Franchise Owners. It also affects any user role with Full Access to Journey Targeting.
- Feature Activation: This feature is automatically applied for all clients using Journey Targeting. This applies to both the Paradox Job and Integrated Job type.
Scheduling
My Calendar & Calendars Page Redesign
You can now manage your schedule and organizational calendars through a modern, visually clean, and intuitive interface designed for maximum efficiency, no longer needing to navigate through old, outdated layouts.
We have redesigned the My Calendar and Calendars pages to provide a more streamlined and efficient workspace for managing your interviews. This modernization effort ensures our scheduling tools align with the latest Paradox platform standards. By migrating these pages to a modern, scalable library, we have also addressed technical debt, creating a stronger foundation that allows us to deliver new scheduling features and improvements to you even faster.
Learn more about My Calendar/Calendars.
Role impact and feature activation
- Role Impact: This update impacts all user roles except Basic/Limited Users, as well as users with Full Access to My Calendar/Calendars.
- Feature Activation: This redesign is automatically applied to My Calendar/Calendars.
New Interview debriefs
You can now schedule internal debrief sessions after your panel and sequential interviews, ensuring your hiring team has dedicated, secure time to collaborate immediately after an interview.
High-volume professional hiring requires fast decision-making, but busy calendars often prevent teams from connecting while feedback may be fresh. This new interview type allows recruiters and coordinators to add a “debrief meeting” directly within the scheduling drawer. We automatically invite all interviewers to a separate session immediately following the final interview round. For virtual meetings, Paradox generates a unique link for the debrief that is hidden from the candidate, ensuring internal discussions remain private and secure.
Learn more about panel interviews, sequential interviews, and configuring interview debrief settings in Client Setup.
Role impact and feature activation
- Role Impact: This update impacts Paradox Admins, Company/Account Admins, Franchise Owners, Full User - Edit Everythings, Power Users, Reporting Users. It also affects any user role that has Full Access to the scheduling drawer.
- Feature Activation: This feature is automatically available to use for all clients using scheduling if you have In-Person, Virtual, or Phone interview types.
Talent Community
Community management builder redesign
You can now enjoy a modern, visually clean, and intuitive interface when building and managing your Talent Communities, no longer needing to navigate through old, outdated layouts.
We have redesigned the layout of the Community Management Builder to provide a more efficient and modernized workspace. This update isn't just about a fresh look; we have migrated the builder to a modern, scalable library to address technical debt and ensure we can deliver new features to you faster than ever before. This foundational change ensures that your community management tools are as high-performing and intuitive as the rest of the Paradox platform.
Learn more about Community Management.
Role impact and feature activation
- Role Impact: This update impacts Company/Account Admins, as well as users with Full Access to Community Management.
- Feature Activation: This redesign is automatically applied to the Community Management Builder.
Depending on the Paradox products your company has purchased, not all of these updates may apply to you. If you have any questions or need further information, please reach out to your dedicated Paradox Client Success Manager.
Minor enhancements
Paradox Assist
We’ve updated Paradox Assist to provide clearer, intuitive error messaging when a user attempts to schedule an interview with an incomplete candidate profile or a candidate who has unsubscribed from all contact channels.
Candidate Inbox
We’ve updated the Internal Notes section in the candidate profile to hide the Add Note option for Paradox Admins and users with view access permissions, aligning with standard system permission constraints. Paradox Admins and users with view access permissions can only view notes.
Content Management System (CMS)
We’ve updated the default response for the multilingual intent (Olivia_Multilingual) to “I currently only speak #language. What other questions do you have for me?”, including the specific language that the AI assistant supports and providing candidates with more accurate information during non-English conversations.
Conversational ATS
We've updated advanced shifts by adding a No Availability option to the Matches dropdown for screening outcomes. This allows you to automatically disposition candidates whose schedules don't align with your advanced shifts, streamlining your configuration process.
Employee Communications
When an employee receives an email-only message, selecting the Engage with Olivia action button in the email now opens the Employee Dashboard widget to let them respond directly to the message. Paradox tracks this conversation history and allows for one-time responses to these messages without cluttering the main task list, ensuring employees can easily acknowledge communications such as birthday wishes or general announcements.
Integrations
- We’ve updated the Workday Chat to Apply integration to ensure that dynamic conversation answers are preserved for candidates who leave their applications incomplete (moving to Capture Incomplete). These answers will now be available when the candidate resumes the process.
- We’ve updated Microsoft Teams meeting link generation to support multiple service accounts/ tenants. The correct account is now selected by matching the email domains of attendees (first priority) or the scheduling owner (second priority) to a connected tenant. If no matching tenant is found, a meeting link will not be generated.
Job Management
- We’ve refined the Does not targeting logic for Job Description Sections. These targeting rules now only apply to jobs with a valid, defined attribute, preventing sections from being incorrectly assigned to jobs where the specific attribute is missing, blank, or not configured.
- We’ve updated the location search logic for accounts that have the Location Mapping setting disabled by filtering only formal location types and preventing the assignment of tentative locations to jobs.
Roles and Permissions
We’ve updated the logic for creating and updating user accounts to allow email changes if the record is not linked to an active company user, resolving the Email already Exists error.
Scheduling
- We’ve updated contextual scheduling to support date exclusions and inclusions, allowing the AI assistant to accurately handle candidate requests such as “I’m available every except this Friday” or “I’m open any day except Tuesday and Thursday this week."
- We’ve updated the Initial Interview Request: Auto-Schedule No Availability message in Assistant Messaging to support email communication, ensuring candidates with email-only preferences receive the appropriate notifications.
- We’ve updated Assistant Messaging to allow configuration for the following messages in Interview Scheduling: Custom Interview Types:
- Location Reminder Addition message in the Scheduled Interview Reminder section
- Both the Team Member Initiates Cancel messages in the Team Member Initiates Cancel section
- We’ve updated contextual scheduling on the Scheduling Site to include specific weekdays and days while also allowing the AI assistant to offer alternative times for an entire day when specific slots are unavailable.
We’ve updated the WhatsApp Onboarding page into a modern, scalable library, streamlining the building process with intuitive UI/UX improvements. As a fundamental front-end refresh, it eliminates technical debt and establishes a robust foundation for faster, more reliable product delivery.
Workflows
We’ve updated communication options to allow MS Teams to be used as a channel across all workflow stages and statuses for user audiences when the Send Communication action is available.