blog

Gary Spivack, Senior Product Manager
April 18, 2025

The Pro! v4.7 release brings a wave of powerful enhancements designed to enhance the item development and review experience. With a new authoring interface for Single Selection, Likert, and Passage items, faster saves, and intuitive dropdown navigation, users can work more efficiently. Accessibility takes a leap forward with ADA-compliant color item previews built right into the editor. Review workflows are more flexible, allowing project closures even with active items, complete with smart warnings and audit trails. Super Users unlock robust new controls, including submission rollbacks, passage item assignments, and full comment editing with visibility into changes. From streamlined authoring to smarter oversight, Pro! v4.7’s flexibility allows for greater alignment to meet your needs.

Experience the Pro! upgrade today.

View the Pro! v4.7 release notes for complete details

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Gary Spivack, Senior Product Manager
February 6, 2024

At Strasz Assessment Systems, we understand the importance of efficiency, precision, and seamless exam management. That’s why we’re thrilled to introduce Pro! v4.6, which includes enhancements designed to save you time. Here are some of the exciting updates in this release.

Experience the Pro! upgrade today.

View the Pro! v4.6 release notes.

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Gary Spivack, Senior Product Manager
December 27, 2024

Enhanced classification columns let you tailor item search results by adding key details like Classification Descriptions, making insights more accessible and reporting a breeze. Rationale editing during item review is now more dynamic, with seamless collaboration between Primary and Secondary reviewers and intuitive visual highlights for tracking changes. Our latest API enhancements make managing item references and user-defined fields effortless at both item and pool book levels. 

Experience the Pro! upgrade today.

View the Pro! V4.5 release notes.

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Gary Spivack, Senior Product Manager
November 5, 2024

With the Pro! v4.4 update, we’re thrilled to bring you a suite of powerful enhancements designed to make your experience smoother, more flexible, and fully accessible. Here’s what’s new:

Dive into greater accessibility with alt-text support for digital assets, ensuring ADA compliance is built right into your workflow. For those handling item reviews, our new passage-based review rounds make it easier to focus solely on the passage, streamlining your entire review process.

Need more flexibility? Pro! v4.4 now supports numeric answer keys and an expanded API, allowing you to create examination forms and pool books easily. We’ve also fine-tuned the platform with key maintenance fixes to make publishing, editing, and accessibility work seamlessly.

Experience the Pro! Upgrade today.

View the Pro! V4.4 release notes.

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Gary Spivack, Senior Product Manager
September 12, 2024

The latest Pro! Enterprise Item Banking update brings a wave of powerful enhancements centered around exam creation. With seamless Pearson VUE integration, dynamic section referencing, and customizable exam layouts, developers can craft sophisticated assessments with ease. Test materials like images and PDFs can be added effortlessly, and dynamic direction variables ensure candidates get a personalized experience. Plus, streamlined email notifications keep teams focused and inboxes clutter-free.

View the Pro! V4.3 release notes.

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Jay Myers, SR Software Engineer
August 15, 2024

Amidst a sea of turbulent AI ventures and attempts to leverage LLMs as a tool for organizations and the industry, it is worthwhile to investigate alternative focus areas. Test preparation is one such area that provides several benefits compared to more traditional areas of attention. Enabling students and candidates to understand, retain, digest, and apply information more effectively is a benefit not only to those individuals but to anyone who depends on their expertise in the future – be they a doctor, engineer, gardener, or hobbit pilot our society at large is helped when mastery is widespread.

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Rory McCorkle, PhD, VP of Business Development
July 30, 2024

While hard to believe for me, this week marks six months since I joined Strasz Assessment Systems. As I marked that milestone, I drifted toward the incredible work this organization has done over the past couple of decades and the great strides we are making this year. We often share with prospective clients how working with Strasz provides them with boutique service and attention with a larger organization’s reach, which is best reflected in our dedication to research & development. In the testing and assessment industry, having a diverse group of suppliers helps drive innovation in our service to candidates, and Strasz epitomizes this in several areas.

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Gary Spivack, Senior Product Manager
July 9, 2024

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the assessment industry, offering unparalleled efficiency, personalization, and security. Here are a couple of areas in which AI is making a difference:

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Gary Spivack, Senior Product Manager
July 2, 2024

We’re thrilled to announce an exciting release that elevates Pro! to the next level of sophistication in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Our renowned Cosign Similarity feature has been upgraded with advanced Semantic Similarity. This is the first of many planned Artificial Intelligence (AI) enhancements utilizing large language models (LLM) to assist in creating and managing items and examinations 

Here are some key enhancements in Pro! V4.2.

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Jay Myers, SR Software Engineer
June 11, 2024

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge…

Written in 1846, The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe is a short story about a man wronged. Montresor plots his revenge on Fortunato by luring him into his family vault with the promise of a rare wine, which Fortunato cannot resist.

…we will go back; your health is precious … and I cannot be responsible…

At several moments on the journey, Fortunato seems to be shown hints of the plan, though he is unable to piece them together. Had Fortunato been able to pick up on these clues, perhaps his fate would have been different. Alas, though the hints become more and more blatant as the journey progresses, he is ultimately unable to see them even at their most prominent.

…“And the motto?”

“Nemo me impune lacessit.”*

Fortunato’s fate is sealed behind a brick wall within the Montresor family vault, and with it, a warning to us all – never insult a Montresor, and pay attention!

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