Absorb 5: Release Notes 5.66

This release is planned for deployment on December 9, 2018.
Please note: all features listed here are subject to change prior to deployment. Releases are deployed at 10:00 AM Mountain Time. Users may experience errors or be logged out of their session when using the LMS at that time.

Admin,

Learner

E-Commerce Course & Curricula Extensions (New Learner Experience)

In 5.65 the main work flows for course & curriculum extensions were released. In 5.66, Absorb is adding additional workflows, initiated by an Admin or Learner, and ensuring they properly update the expiry dates on course enrollments as such.

• When adding a course, which is not already part of a curriculum, to a curriculum, then the course is associated with this curriculum, and the new course curriculum expiry dates are updated to be that of the curriculum expiry.
• When re-enrolling in an online course...
  • if a learner is not enrolled in a curriculum that contains the course, then the course expiry date is set to the course enrollment date + course expiry settings, and the course is not associated with a curriculum.
  • if a learner is enrolled in a single curriculum that contains the course, then the course expiry date is set to the course enrollment date + course expiry settings, the course curriculum expiry date is set to the same as the curriculum enrollment's expiry date, and the course is associated with this curriculum.
  • if a learner is enrolled in multiple curricula that contains the course, then the course expiry date is set to the course enrollment date + course expiry settings, the course curriculum expiry date is set to the greatest curriculum enrollment's expiry date of all the associated curricula, and the course is associated with this curriculum that has the greatest expiry date.
• When removing a course from a curriculum, if the course enrollment was previously associated with this curriculum and the course is part of other curricula, then the course and the course curriculum expiry date is associated with the next best curriculum, while preserving the original course expiry dates (in the event that the course is removed from all curricula, for example).
• When un-enrolling from a curriculum, if the course enrollment was previously associated with this curriculum and the course is part of other curricula, then the course and the course curriculum expiry date is associated with the next best curriculum, while preserving the original course expiry dates (in the event that the learner is un-enrolled from the associated curricula, for example).
• When deleting a curriculum, if the course enrollment was previously associated with this curriculum and the course is part of other curricula, then the course and the course curriculum expiry date is associated with the next best curriculum, while preserving the original course expiry dates (in the event that the course is removed from all curricula, for example).

Admin,

Learner

WCAG 2.0 AA Compliance (New Learner Experience- In Progress)

Absorb is going through the NLE on a on a page-by-page basis making the NLE WCAG 2.0 AA compliant. We will support NVDA/Firefox and JAWS/IE11.

Site-wide items added as part of this release:

• Adding page titles to the browser tab
• Adding 'skip to main content' link when navigating in to the page
• Allowing learners to control whether tab-focus items show a 'box' around them. Additionally, a new Theme color has been added so that clients can configure the color applied when the focus is visible so that it better aligns with their theme and brand colors.
• Setting the HTML lang attribute
• Allowing 'alt' tags on images so that they can be described by a screen reader
• Ensuring expand/collapse text sections only read content that's visible. This applies to areas like FAQs, News, Course descriptions, etc.

 Additional items added as part of this release:

• Improved the readability of the FAQs and News pages by explaining what actions buttons perform on the page and providing headings so that screen readers can more easily navigate to different sections of the page.
• Privacy Policy modal (and other modals) can have focus when tabbed to. 

Admin,

Learner

Default Show/Hide Categories (New Learner Experience)

Currently learners have the ability to show or hide categories in the Catalog and My Courses. The show or hide value is saved in local storage so that when the learner returns to the site it will remember what their value was. We've made an addition to this functionality where if there is no value in local storage (ex: first time visiting the site or cache has been cleared) then categories will default to on in the Catalog and My Courses. Please note:

• This only applies to clients/configurations where the Always Hide Categories toggle in Learner Management is off.
• This replaces UI3 functionality where clients could configure categories to always on for learners; the NLE implementation already included additional functionality to save a learner's preference. 

Admin,

Learner

Dashboard Configuration Updates (New Learner Experience)

Dashboard Maximum Width-Admins can now configure the maximum width for their dashboard - both the public and the private dashboard (separately). 

• Configuration is managed within the Learner Management templates area within the public and private dashboard tabs. A new section called "Advanced" has been added. 
• Options include: Standard (1280px), Widescreen (1920px), Super Widescreen (2580px), Fill/Responsive, Custom (minimum 800px)
• For a more customized look, Admins can also configure the maximum width of their dashboard on a per container basis.

Please note: The maximum width does not apply to any other areas of the NLE.

Admin

Logout Deeplink (New Learner Experience)

Absorb has added deeplink support for logout (/#/logout) so that clients can enforce a more aggressive timeout within their (3rd party) course content and log a learner out via a deeplink.

More information on Deep-Link support for NLE can be found here.

Admin

Mandatory users filter on the User Enrollments report:User Drop Down Lists

• Mandatory users filer on the User Enrollments report: Both the user's name and username are visible in the dropdown. An admin will also be able to type in the user's name, username, or email to return results.
  • This change differs slightly from the previous ones in that we won't display the learner's email in the dropdown. This is a different UI element (report filter) from the previous areas changed, and the effort of adjusting the formatting to fit all three attributes in was prohibitive. 
• When selecting a specific user for Course Approval: Admin can now search by email in addition to name and username.
• When selecting a specific user for Session Approval: Admin can now view & search by email in addition to name and username.
• When selecting a specific user for Proctoring: Admin can now view & search by email in addition to name and username.

Admin

Updated translations for all non-primary languages

Updated translations for all non-primary languages (i.e. French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish not included) for learner side and message templates.