Tahoe Release Notes (2020 onwards)

This is a new single-page treatment for Tahoe release notes. If you want to see release notes for Feb 2020 and earlier, please check out the list of pages here: https://help.appsembler.com/category/458-tahoe-release-notes

If you're looking for Figures release notes, go here: https://help.appsembler.com/article/505-figures-release-notes

July 2022

LMS and Studio

  • We’ve made improvements to course tiles in the learner Dashboard! It now displays additional course information like progress, grade, grade cutoff and certificate status, and is generally pretty. Look at it! Isn't it nice?
  • The date_of_birth field is now updated on SSO login and registrations
  • Fixed a bug which was preventing events from reaching Segment when they were generated in a Celery queue. If you’re not sure what that means, congratulations - you probably weren’t affected by this annoying issue!

June 2022

LMS and Studio

  • We've fixed a problem with Segment not receiving the edx_grades_course_grade_calculated event sometimes. Now it does. Segment may have a biscuit as a reward.

May 2022

LMS and Studio

  • We reverted a fix we made back in July 2021. We realized that our fix introduced more bugs than it fixed due to an issue with the core Open edX platform, so we've rolled it back until we can implement a better solution. This was the original fix:
    • Fixed a bug on the progress graph where scores for subsections prior to due date were showing for all sections, including those with the setting "Show assessment results when subsection is past due"
  • Add date_joined field to user listing API endpoint so that you can find out when users registered on your site

April 2022

LMS and Studio

  • Made some improvements to the frontend to improve SEO with images. You probably didn't even notice and that's OK. It's just better now.
  • Improved error messages in our user registration API endpoint so that you stand a better chance at understanding why everything has caught fire and exploded when using it.

March 2022

LMS and Studio

  • Fixed a bug with the Staff-Graded Assessments XBlock which caused the Staff Grading popup to just... not show up. Rude.
  • Fixed another bug with the Staff-Graded Assessments XBlock which prevented admins from downloading results.
  • Imagine if we had a third bug fix for the Staff-Graded Assessments XBlock here. That'd just be embarrassing. Fortunately we don't - those are the only two fixes for it... this time.
  • Security fix. One of our customers found a XSS vulnerability in an Open edX API doc page. We removed thosee public pages since we don’t offer customer access to those endpoints. No jokes here, security's a big deal.

Management Console

  • New font added: Jost, so that you can Jostify your decisions. Get it? Tough crowd.

January 2022

LMS and Studio

  • We fixed a bug that was preventing Course Access Groups to assign user to proper groups when they were being registered through SSO. Because apparently SSO users are people too, and they have rights.
  • The SCORM XBlock is now released! Go and use it to deliver training like it's 2004 all over again.

December 2021

APIs

  • We’ve fixed the registration API endpoint that was sending confirmation and password reset emails but ignoring the boolean parameter to prevent it. We narrowly avoided the singularity on this one, and in future we’ll be taking steps to make sure our API endpoints obey our instructions…
    • Please note this is on our V2 API endpoint, which you should really be using. If you're not sure, contact support!

LMS and Studio

  • We deployed a patch to mitigate the risk of logout redirect_url XSS vulnerability found by one of our vigilant customers. At the same time we are working closely with edX.org to properly fix the issue upstream. Hooray! Security!

November 2021

Management Console

  • Added some new in-app instructions for creating Course Access Groups, because who reads docs? Or release notes. I’m so lonely.

LMS and Studio

  • We’ve fixed a bug that was causing a conflict with existing usernames in SSO auto-registration. Now if the username is already taken while registering through SSO the platform adds a random number (3 digit long) to make it unique. I’m not saying your old users weren’t special, they just weren’t unique.
  • Fixed the size that videos display at when the video is made full-screen with the transcript open... during a full moon, while wearing a hat… on a tuesday.
  • Added the proper typography styling to course custom pages, because they looked a little dodgy.

October 2021

Management Console

  • Added a new site setting to set the target of the Call to Action button that appears in the Dashboard when a learner is not enrolled in any courses. So now they can go to Tracks, nowhere, or your band's MySpace page (Does MySpace still exist? I feel like it does. I wonder if Tom's doing OK.)
  • Added new signup fields to the Tahoe trial signup forms
  • Fix a bug where complex passwords could break trail signups… complex passwords are good, please keep using them. We like complex passwords.

LMS and Studio

  • Learners now emit the edx.user.account.authenticated event on successful login. This gives a shiny new event for tracking backends, in addition to the Segment-only edx.bi.user.account.authenticated. It also works for logins via third party auth (SSO)

September 2021

Management Console

  • Fixed a few internment bugs in the trial workflow, because it turns out people like finishing signing up for trials
  • We now require business emails when signing up for a Tahoe trial. We’re ✨exclusive✨.

LMS and Studio

  • Fixed a bug in LMS password reset, which breaks login for AMC admins (remember the whole endlessly spinning square thing? That.)
  • Fixed a bug in the /courses/ page when enabling Course Access Groups that made the search bar look super funky in a bad way
  • Update Support URLs listed on the login and reset password so that they go to your help page and not our support inbox. Woops.
  • Skipped loading the Google Tag Manager script if no ID is set, because let’s be honest, the internet doesn’t need more useless plugins loading on webpages.August 2021
  • Sneaky stealth release of our new shiny Prism Syntax Highlighter XBlock!
  • Added new translations for fr_CA , presumably including phrases such as 'élan', 'sirop d'érable', and 'soins de santé abordables'
    • S'il vous plaît ne soyez pas offensé, Canada, vous êtes un pays beaucoup plus agréable que les États-Unis, et je veux toujours vous rendre visite.
  • Fixed a bug in LMS password reset, which breaks login for AMC admins (remember the whole endlessly spinning square thing? That.)
  • Fixed a bug in the /courses/ page when enabling Course Access Groups that made the search bar look super funky in a bad way
  • Update Support URLs listed on the login and reset password so that they go to your help page and not our support inbox. Woops.
  • Skipped loading the Google Tag Manager script if no ID is set, because let’s be honest, the internet doesn’t need more useless plugins loading on webpages.
  • I'll be honest, a whole bunch of other bug fixes, but it's a really long list and I'm a bit sleepy. So various other bug fixes and improvements. Sorry.

July 2021

  • Fixed a bug that was preventing users created via SSO from being added to Course Access Groups
  • Created version 2 of the Appsembler Tahoe Registration API
  • Removed a trailing space in responses
  • Added more specific error messages for duplicate username, email, or both

June 2021

Management Console

  • Fixed the dropdown height for adding a course access group, because apparently you want to read options? Weird.

LMS and Studio

  • We resolved a bug in where the XBlock green image was not being displayed on the Done XBlock’s ‘Mark as Complete’ button. Here’s an extra one as compensation: ✅
  • When users delete their accounts, they are now logged out. Because things get weird.
  • Some third-party XBlocks were not showing completion green check marks on the courseware, now they do. That’s the fix.
  • Aligned grades in LMS reports with figures
  • Fixed a bug related to SSO that was preventing some users from being registered on the LMS
  • Fixed various post-upgrade styling issues
  • Fix search results so that you could actually click the ‘view in course’ button, which I think is overrated but apparently makes the search results ‘usable’ and ‘not a horrifying assault on my eyeballs’. Whatever.
  • SSO login buttons are now ✨prettier✨
  • Fixed the certificate verification URL on Tahoe certificates so that they’re actual functional URLS.
  • Stopped password resets causing 500 errors, because you would not believe what that did to our error logs
  • Fixed and improved the language used on discussion forums regarding the platform name set in the management console
  • Fixed a bug with translation and XBlocks which was causing course content to become inaccessible when navigating content in French. Désolé!
  • Fixed a bug on the progress graph where scores for subsections prior to due date were showing for all sections, including those with setting: Show assessment results when subsection is past due 
  • Reinstalled the SCORM XBlock, which isn’t quite done yet, but that didn’t stop you guys from finding it
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing instructors from being nice and generating exception certificates in the instructor dashboard

May 2021 - Major Tahoe Release

The May 2021 Tahoe upgrade marks a major upgrade in the underlying infrastructure of our platform. It advances the version of Open edX that supports Tahoe significantly, and provides the foundation for our future development roadmap. If you want to read a more easily digestible explanation of all this upgrade means for Appsembler, you can check out our blog post. Otherwise, here are the highlights. Not every change has made this list, but we’ve tried to include some of the biggest changes and improvements.

Learner Experience

  • The in-course learner viewing experience has been optimized to minimize distractions while studying, including changes such as:
    • Fading out the left-hand navigation while not actively navigating the course
    • Narrowing the content area to reduce the average length of each line of text
    • Improved text styling and spacing to improve legibility
    • A new slimmer site header, only visible within courses

  • The learner dashboard now hides the pesky “unenroll” button behind a menu in order to reduce instances of accidental enrollments:
  • XBlocks (third-party advanced components) have been updated to their latest versions to match the core platform upgrade, which will include various improvements across the board.
  • Accessibility improvements have been made across the board to improve the experience of using your site for users with vision impairments, motor difficulties, and other needs

Course Authoring Experience

  • While in Studio, you can now navigate the top horizontal navigation just like a learner, and easily add new units in the same area:
  • You can now quickly navigate to other parts of your course outline from the new Studio breadcrumb trail:
  • You can rename components from the title bar of that component:
  • Plus you can rename units from the outline without going into them - this is so useful when reviewing your course’s unit titles for consistency!
  • The problem component editor has a new layout designed to make it easier to craft problems for your learners

Instructor Experience

  • The instructor dashboard now comes with a new button that simplifies generating reports for problem components – and how your students answered them – in your course. It works by allowing instructors to generate CSV reports for either a specific problem or a group of problems within a specific section, subsection, or unit. Most importantly, the feature comes with a clickable user interface that’s easy to navigate. No more pasting problem location IDs!
  • The Teams management experience has been improved - learners can now be assigned to and removed from teams manually by instructors. This is great for pre-assigned group projects! We’ll have fresh documentation on these new tools for Teams management in the near future.

Site Admin Experience

This version adds a few quality-of-life improvements, but as previously mentioned this upgrade allows us to start working on doing so much more than that. Keep an eye out for mentions of version 2 of our management console in the future!

  • You can now change the target link for the logo in the upper left corner of your LMS. By default, the logo in your header links to your site's index (“home”) page, which in turn by default redirects to the user dashboard for authenticated users. Now, in Site Settings in the Management Console you can enter another relative path or a path to an address of your choosing.
  • You can now enable logged-in learners to access your site’s index (“home”) page. By default, the home page always redirects logged-in learners to their dashboard, but if you want the home page to be accessible, that’s now an option!
  • You can now change the page learners land on after logging in. By default, after learners are logged in, they are redirected to their dashboard. In Site Settings in the Management Console, you can now add a different “Login redirect target” so that users instead land on a page of your choosing (e.g. “/course” for your Course Catalog, or a simple “/” for your home page, provided they’re allowed to access it with the other new setting...)
  • You can now set a session inactivity limit in seconds for your learners, after which they will be logged out automatically. This is only recommended if the timeout is required for higher-security platforms, as it currently does not warn or otherwise notify the user that they will be logged out.

Nuts & Bolts

A lot changes under the hood for this version that we're not going to list here for the sake of brevity, but for those who are technically-curious:

  • Updated all code from Python 2 to Python 3
  • Upgraded Django from 1.11 to 2.2
  • Updated to a significantly more recent version of Ubuntu
  • Bug fixes and improvements (who doesn't love those in release notes?)

15 February, 2021

LMS and Studio

  • Fixed an issue for non-English customers in which translations sometimes failed to load, which broke Studio and the LMS.
    • Apparently you prefer Studio and the LMS to load properly every time. Where’s your sense of adventure?

13 January 2021

LMS and Studio

  • Updated translations to fix the translation of both “Closed” and “Finished” in Japanese
    • 私のホバークラフトは鰻でいっぱいです
  • Style fixed for heading (h2) in both LTI and Free Text Response XBlocks
    • This isn’t a true fix just yet, they’re still h2’s, but they at least look like they’re the right heading level. We’ll fix this properly later with a future update to headings.
  • Switched to the shiny new Open edX logo in the footer, isn’t it pretty?
  • Added new /tracks page as a lightweight course tracks guide
    • This means you can build whatever you want on that page, whether it’s learning tracks or… other tracks. Train tracks? Probably not. Your recommended Spotify studying playlists? That'd be cool.

26 November 2020

LMS and Studio

  • Fixed an interesting bug in Studio which broke the course File Upload page if a file with Unicode letters was uploaded.
    • はい、それは日本の名前のファイルがすべてを壊すことはないことを意味します

24 November 2020

LMS and Studio

  • It’s now possible to turn off the “Extensions” tab on the Instructor Dashboard. This will make the instructor dashboard load more quickly on large courses. It’s also just a way to be mean to people and never give anyone a due date extension.
    • This is a temporary fix to improve load times while we work on a better solution than just being mean to learners, even if it’s fun. If you want us to enable this on your site because your instructor dashboard load times are unbearable, reach out to support.
  • The Intercom widget now displays in Studio, because our Support team had extra time on their hands. We can’t have them getting bored, after all. Who knows what they’ll do…
  • Courses with long names should now stick to one page when printed. Remember printing?
  • Course images are now locked at a 4:3 aspect ratio across the site so that they’re never cropped or otherwise funky-looking on mobile devices.
  • We’ve improved the LinkedIn sharing preview for course about pages. Spread the word.
  • Fixed an error that occurred when adding an author to a library in Studio. Now you can engage in jolly cooperation by working together on your content libraries.

AMC

  • Nothing this time, but we still love you, AMC.

16 November 2020

LMS

  • Nothing this time, but soon... soon.

AMC

  • We’ve fixed the default margin values on login/registration forms to avoid them wandering over to the left of the screen for no reason. Sit, form. Stay… good form.
  • We still like you a lot, but we’ll now send only one welcome email to new site admins instead of the two we sent previously.
  • The save button in the management console will now show up above the Intercom button by 2,147,483,101 layers. You might think this is a joke number, but I’ve seen the code. Better to be safe than sorry?
  • We’ve added more Tahoe branding and less Open edX in our emails to admin users, in case you forgot whose platform you’re using.
  • We’ve removed some incorrect Unicode symbols from the homepages of new sites. Which you probably aren’t, but at least you know they’re gone for other people. A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in and all that.
  • Activation emails can now be resent more easily by our team for new admin users who let their links expire. Nobody is more pleased about this than we are.

27 October 2020

LMS

  • We’ve fixed a bug in Enrollment API in which providing a username was occasionally breaking the API and preventing the enrollment. It turns out that’s a bad thing, and not a feature.
  • Added a tool for our support team to disable users more quickly. Go on, ask us to use it. I dare you.
  • Activation emails are now sent in the selected user language, rather than English.
  • Los correos electrónicos de activación ahora se envían en el idioma del usuario seleccionado, en lugar de en inglés.
  • Les e-mails d'activation sont désormais envoyés dans la langue de l'utilisateur sélectionnée, plutôt qu'en anglais.

AMC

  • New SEO options added:
    • You can now set a global og:image to make your shares on social media prettier
    • You can also set whether that global og:image will be used for Course About pages, or the course image. Because we felt like spoiling you.

30 September 2020

LMS

  • With this release, we addressed a lot of accessibility issues. We’ll be releasing an accessibility statement, once we make it accessible.
  • This release upgrades Figures to 0.3.16. Read more about the release in the Figures release notes.This release upgrades Figures to 0.3.15. Read all about it in the Figures release notes.

AMC

  • Roboto Slab font is now available on AMC. No robots or slabs were harmed in the rollout of this font.
  • New trial site experience and revamped default theme. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably completed your trial, but if you feeling becoming a customer all over again, you’re in for a quite a trial. Wait, no, that sounds bad.

16 September 2020

LMS

  • This release upgrades Figures to 0.3.15. Read all about it in the Figures release notes.
  • Fixed a bug with Studio login which was preventing course staff from logging in. No more special knock and secret passphrase required.

AMC

  • We’ve added a Session Inactivity Timeout setting to enhance security for customers needing it. This feature allows user sessions to auto-expire after N seconds of inactivity. If a request comes in for a user after N seconds have elapsed, the user is logged out and the user is redirected to the default login page. The value entered in this setting (N) is in seconds. For all values of N.
  • You can now select the page to which the learner is redirected after logging in. By default the destination is the Dashboard page. Just don’t point them back at the login page, lest they end up in an infinite loop.
  • It’s now possible to enable/disable the index page for logged-in learners. The previous behavior was to make the index page inaccessible for logged-in learners, instead redirecting them to the Dashboard. However, a number of customers requested that this be optional. The previous behavior (disable index page) remains the default, but you can enable it to let learners in…dex.

26 August 2020

LMS

  • Our Google Tag Manager integration is now available on Tahoe Pro and Premium! Great news for people who like managing tags, I guess… (just kidding, GTM is extremely powerful and I definitely recommend you check it out and tell your Marketing team at the very least, they’ll be pumped)
  • You can now override all sorts of certificate information on a per course basis. Want to offer a course that mentions that it’s also from the University of Smartsville rather than just your site for just that one course? You can do that, and it’s nice of you to give them the credit. You’re a good person, and I like you.

AMC

  • Fixed some wrapping issues with the custom domain UI, because they’ve got bars (get it? wrapping? I’m wasted on release notes I swear).
  • By popular demand, we’ve added the ‘Poppins’ font as a new option for your site.

29 July 2020

LMS

  • Staff Graded Assignment XBlocks now count towards course outline completion checkmarks, because they probably should, even if they don’t want to.
  • Added a shiny new Appsembler sample course to every new trial signup, to tell trialers how lovely we are. If you’re an older customer who feels left out, just let us know and you can have it too!

22 July 2020

LMS

  • Told more XBlocks to contribute toward course completion checkmarks. Previously they were too lazy to do so.

Studio

  • Bugfix: Raw HTML components should now scroll properly while you’re editing. Apparently you frequently need to see past line 25 - who knew?

AMC

  • You can now hide the registration form, but still have the page active in order to display SSO registration buttons. At this point we’ve got so many registration and sign-in visibility options that I’m close to losing track of them.

30 June 2020

LMS

  • Completion aggregator is installed on Tahoe.
  • Bugfix: Fixed exception in VisibleBlocks.bulk_create due to incorrect argument passed
  • New Site expired page added (more work needed to start using it)
  • Start supporting S3 buckets signature v4 (London specifically)

Studio

  • Bugfix: We fixed a bug that was preventing course admins to rerun courses in Studio. Previously, this was allowed only for Instructors, which is a lower role in the permission structure. No offense to Instructors.

Event Tracking

  • We rolled out a feature that allows copying of attributes to the top level in Segment events, to make it compatible with platforms like Marketo. In order to activate it we must set the attribute COPY_SEGMENT_EVENT_PROPERTIES_TO_TOP_LEVEL in the Site Configuration object. (This is something Appsembler needs to do for you, because mumblemumbleSiteConfigurationJSONStoreEditingmumblemumble…

AMC

  • Fix Signup button when is staging
  • Remove spot beacon and Appsembler help from sidebar.

22 May 2020

AMC

  • NEW FEATURE RELEASE! Add Course Access Groups to feature matrix.
  • Remove obsolete “Help Center“ link from main nav. You can still get help. Just not this way.
  • Content changes to Tahoe welcome email. If you’re already a customer, you’ll have to subscribe again to see it.
  • Add Google Analytics tracking events to Course Access Groups views, so we can see how people are using the feature. 

8 April 2020

Studio

  • We fixed a bug in the course export functionality. In some browsers like Google Chrome, the course download was in tar format instead of tar.gz, which the required format for Open edX course import. This bug was introduced in March 26, 2020, our prior release. The offending code has been tarred.

Internal

  • Course import automatically on site creation during signup. The code is still deactivated by settings, but this release includes the core platform code.

26 March 2020

LMS

  • We’ve removed the live chat widget from beta tester users. They’re not special enough to deserve it.

16 March 2020

AMC

  • We fixed a bug in the footer menu editor that was preventing users from being able to make changes. Its demands were $2m and a helicopter, but we refuse to negotiate with footers.