What's new in the OpenSSL Communities Platform? September Updates
Chris Ward Fri 18 Sep 2026 3:46PMPublicSeen by 21Communities Platform CHANGELOG — September 2026
It's a bit off-topic, but we've just gotten off the call with the Loomio dev team and we're happy to share with you a list of new features that rolled out to our community this month. Full detail (and anchor links for the bigger items) is on the official changelog.
For everyone (users)
Following & visibility
Follow a Group's updates without joining — its activity lands in your catch-up email, no membership rights included.
Recent activity on user profiles — recent discussions, comments, and polls (respecting normal permissions).
Discussions & participation
Let non-members start discussions — in Open/Closed groups where admins allow it, non-members can start a discussion from a template (e.g. self-nominating for something) without joining.
Notifications
Simpler notifications and an installable web app — one consistent scale (Catch-up only / When notified / All activity) across account, group, and thread.
Mentions follow group and thread settings — the separate "notify on mention" toggle is gone.
Catch-up includes notifications — catch-up emails now lead with your notifications first.
Reopening a poll no longer auto-announces it — coordinators now send a reminder explicitly after resetting the close time.
For admins/coordinators
User API
User API improvements — group discovery, full-text search, outgoing webhook management, tighter email/PII exposure rules, and a DEFAULT_ONBOARDING_GROUP_ID setting to auto-join new accounts to a default group.
Account management
Bulk account operations — deactivate (reversible), redact (strips PII, keeps anonymized content), destroy (full delete, for spam).
Group deletion and account-merge safeguards — 60-day auto-purge for empty accounts, safer merge rollback.
Group permissions & membership
Let non-members start discussions — new toggle, off by default.
Decline a membership request with a reason — required reason emailed to the applicant, or ignore silently.
Reporting
Delegate activity in participation reports — "Delegates only" filter, per-user voting record, Delegate badge.
Group lifecycle
If any of this changes how your group runs decisions or discussions, flag it in this thread — happy to dig into specifics or file feedback upstream to Loomio on the community's behalf. If there anything you're missing, same.
Stay tuned, we have more updates in the works. Thanks to the amazing team at Loomio for their hard work on the features we asked for directly.
-Chris
Chris WardThu 24 Sep 2026 11:57AM
If anyone has additional requests, feel free to drop them here or in DM
Chris Ward ·Wed 23 Sep 2026 8:39AM
Loomio changelog, 21–22 Sept 2026: what it means for OpenSSL Communities
Sign-in protections
Deactivated accounts can no longer use an open browser session to read or change account details, so offboarding takes effect immediately.
Failed-password limits and per-email rate limits are now enforced, which gives better protection against brute-force attacks.
Sessions from the old authentication system no longer work. Some members may be asked to sign in again, so expect a few support questions.
An SSO link can no longer be moved to another account by reusing an old sign-in request. This matters if we use SSO (e.g. GitHub).
Passkeys and private sign-in
Members can now sign in with a passkey. It's the fastest method and it resists phishing, which suits a security-minded community.
After signing in with a password or emailed code, members are offered a passkey. They can skip it, and the old methods still work.
The sign-in page no longer reveals whether an email address has an account, so people can't be looked up that way.
New members complete their name and terms acceptance after verification. Existing members can be asked to accept the terms later.