Release Schedule

Open LMS EDU 4.1 Maintenance Pack 3

• Sandbox Upgrade: Thursday, November 30, 2023, 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM EDT

• Production Upgrade: Thursday, December 28, 2023, 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM local data center time

Release Date

December 28, 2023

• North America, Central America, South America (Virginia, USA datacenter): Clients will be upgraded according to their timezone:

  • Eastern, Amazon, and Newfoundland-Labrador Timezones: December 28, 2023, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM EDT

  • Central Timezone: December 28, 2023,  at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM CDT

  • Mountain and Pacific Timezones: December 28, 2023, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM PDT

• South America (Sao Paulo, Brazil datacenter): December 28, 2023, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM BRT

• EMEA (Frankfurt datacenter): December 28, 2023, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM CEST

• APAC excluding Australia and New Zealand (Singapore datacenter): December 28, 2023, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM SGT

• Australia and New Zealand (Sydney, AU datacenter): December 28, 2023, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM AEDT

 

Non-Production Sites Upgrade Schedule
To improve the quality of the upgrade process and shorten the production upgrade window, non-production (sandbox) sites will be upgraded on Thursday, November 30, 2023, between 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM EDT.

Downtime will be required for your production and non-production sites during this window.

 

Major Features

Upgrade to  Core 4.1.6

As part of this minor release, the team in Open LMS upgraded the platforms and reviewed the code of version 4.1.6, adding the corresponding fixes, improvements, security patches, and important backports.

 

Release Notes

For the full releases notes from Moodle.org, please see:

Moodle™ 4.1.6 | Moodle™ Developer Resources

 

Open LMS Mobile App version upgrade

We have updated our mobile App from Moodle™ version 4.2.0 for 4.3.0 on iOS and Android devices. You can find it in the Android and Apple stores available for download.

You also can find the next set of improvements for the mobile app listed below:

 

Notifications

The latest release has a more efficient and user-friendly notification system, you can now find notification timestamps organized chronologically for effortless tracking, as well as streamlined notification management with the "Mark as read" button.

 

Styles (look and feel)

You can find now in the app a refreshed look and feel, featuring updates to buttons, colors, letter fonts, and logos. Users can now experience an enhanced interface in the access page views.

Dashboard page view	My courses page view	Log in

 

 

Splash screen and icon update

In this app version, you can find an updated splash screen and app icon for a refreshed visual experience. 

New mobile app icon	New mobile app splash screen

 

 

Open LMS Highlights

Release video

 

Snap My Courses new design

The My Courses page has a new design in Snap with several modifications to enhance the page layout and navigation experience.

 

Course overview and Snap feeds block design

A new improved layout includes the Course Overview section and the Snap feeds block in the My Courses page view for the Snap theme.

 

 

By default, clicking the 'My Courses' link will redirect you to the 'My Courses' page within the Snap theme. However, admins have the option to configure this behavior of the new Personal menu and Snap feeds in the Snap theme settings section.

 

Personal menu and Snap feeds settings

The personal menu settings page was graphically improved and separated into sections to differentiate between the personal menu info and the new information on the new My Courses page.

You can access this page view through the site administration menu, in the appearance option, and by entering the Snap settings section.

 

Please consider that for the correct behavior of this view, the courses information on the “My Courses” page, the block “block-myoverview” needs to be active. We have made this block enabled by default.

 

OpenAI Chat Block

This block allows your Moodle™ users to get 24/7 chat support via Open AI's GPT AI. The block offers multiple options for customizing the persona of the AI and the prompt it is given. The plugin is not on by default for all sites. To activate this plugin, please request it via an Open LMS support ticket.

 

 

 

PLD Redesign Phase 1

We are currently in the process of enhancing the PLD design to elevate the user experience of the tool, this involves optimizing performance and crafting a more intuitive user interface. Starting with this release, you now have the opportunity to access and use the first version of the redesigned PLD, as we actively work on building the full version.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can access both the traditional PLD and the redesigned / New PLD, through the Site Admin Menu and the Course Dashboard:

 

 

Check below the events, conditions, and actions currently available in this first version.

 

Open Report Engine plugin integration

For this release, we have added the Report Builder, our Open LMS reporting solution that allows users to create reports from a list of available sources. Reports and graphs can be embedded in blocks and can also be used to create reporting dashboards

You can access this tool in the site administration menu in the Reports option.

Please note that this plugin is off by default, you need to request its activation via a support ticket.

 

 

 

Snap setting to personalize the footer

We have created a new section in the Snap settings for the footer customization. This will include the existing Site footer settings and two additional color pickers for the background color and the text color.

 

 

Expanding the use of
"Delete assignfeedback_editpdf files" scheduled task

We have been testing this scheduled task for several months with a few institutions.  The results have been very favorable and we are now looking to expand its benefits to all institutions.

The annotated assignment grader allows for graders to make comments, marks, and other feedback inline with a student's submission.  To prepare the student's submission for grading, submitted files undergo a conversion process that generates an image (.png format) for each page of the submission and then also combines those images into a PDF file.  If a student submits a five-page document, after the conversion process there will be seven files associated with the student’s submission–the original file, five images, and the PDF.  Once the instructor marks the submission, the feedback is saved in an additional PDF file.  The images and the combined PDF files are only needed while using the annotated grader.  Once grading is complete, the files are no longer needed for students to view their feedback.  These extra files can accumulate and consume a significant amount of storage.  

The "Delete assignfeedback_editpdf files" scheduled task is designed to remove images and combined PDF files that are more than 6 months old to reduce the storage impact of these files which serve only a temporary purpose.  The 6-month threshold is a default value but can be adjusted per institution if required.  Simply enter a support ticket with your request.  An additional advantage of this solution is that if the files were to be deleted and the instructor later opens the submission for re-grading, the files will simply be re-generated automatically.  The only impact is that it may take a few seconds longer to load the submission as the submission files are re-converted. 

The task will be enabled gradually across all institutions during January 2024. 

 

PHP 8.1 upgrade

Finally, we're excited to announce the migration from PHP 7.4 to the latest PHP 8.1 for our Open LMS platforms. This upgrade brings more robust support, ensuring better code quality, reduced errors, and improved overall code maintainability, giving a smoother and more efficient experience for users.

 

New plugins

Name	Component	Version
Open AI	block_openai_chat	2023031500
Report Builder	local_reportbuilder	2022021013
Intellicart	availability_intellicart	2023013000

Name	Component	Old Version	New Version
ILP Integration	block_intelligent_learning	2023060701	2023090401
Products Catalog	block_products_catalog	2023082100	2023100500
Grid Format	format_grid	2022112605	2022112607
IntelliBoard	local_intelliboard	2023092500	2023110204
IntelliCart	local_intellicart	2023092002	2023101800
	auth_intellicart	2023050900	2023100500
Intellidata	local_intellidata	2023082201	2023101200
Personalized Learning Designer	local_pld	2023100400	2023100401
Mahara	Mahara	22.04	23.04.2
Completion Progress	block_completion_progress	2022112800	2023110100
Reports	block_reports	2022060601	2023110700
Level up! - Gamification 🏅	block_xp	2023042403	2023100802
Tool Workplace certificate manager 4.0	certificateelement_border	2023042500	2023101000
-	certificateelement_code	2023042500	2023101000
-	certificateelement_date	2023042500	2023101000
-	certificateelement_digitalsignature	2023042500	2023101000
-	certificateelement_image	2023042500	2023101000
-	certificateelement_program	2023042500	2023101000
-	certificateelement_text	2023042500	2023101000
-	certificateelement_userfield	2023042500	2023101000
-	certificateelement_userpicture	2023042500	2023101000
IntelliCart enrollments	enrol_intellicart	2023060601	2023101800
Collapsed Topics	format_topcoll	2022112601	2022112602
Checklist	gradeexport_checklist	2023041400	2023100200
	mod_checklist	2023041400	2023100200
	block_checklist	2023041400	2023100200
Microsoft 365 Integration	local_o365	2022041910	2022112815
Microsoft 365 Integration (shell plugin)	local_office365	2022041910	2022112815
Microsoft 365 Repository	repository_office365	2022041910	2022112800
Microsoft 365 Teams Theme	theme_boost_o365teams	2022041900	2022112810
Microsoft OneNote	local_onenote	2022041910	2022112800
Microsoft Block	block_microsoft	2022041900	2022112800
OneNote Feedback	assignfeedback_onenote	2022041910	2022112800
OneNote submissions	assignsubmission_onenote	2022041910	2022112800
OpenID Connect	auth_oidc	2022041910	2022112815
Interactive Content – H5P	mod_hvp	2023052600	2023061200
Journal	mod_journal	2023042400	2023091500
Lightbox Gallery	mod_lightboxgallery	2023031000	2023080200
Questionnaire	mod_questionnaire	2022092201	2022092202
Respondus 4.0 Web Services	mod_respondusws	2023060800	2023092500
Workplace certificate manager	tool_certificate	2023042500	2023101000
Migrate content from mod_hvp to mod_h5pactivity	tool_migratehvp2h5p	2021020400	2022112900

 

End of life of plugins

As mentioned in our previous 4.1 MP2 release notes, for this 4.1 MP3 release we are planning to deactivate the next set of plugins, listed below:

 

Security fixes

• MSA-23-0031 - Authenticated remote code execution risk in Lesson

• MSA-23-0032 - Authenticated remote code execution risk in IMSCP

• MSA-23-0033 - XSS risk when using CSV grade import method

• MSA-23-0035 - Duplicating a BigBlueButton activity assigns the same meeting ID

• MSA-23-0036 - Stored XSS and potential IDOR risk in Wiki comments

• MSA-23-0037 - Auto-populated H5P author name causes a potential information leak

• MSA-23-0038 - Stored XSS in quiz grading report via user ID number

• MSA-23-0039 - XSS risk when previewing data in course upload tool

• MSA-23-0040 - Make file serving endpoints revision control stricter

• MSA-23-0041 - Insufficient capability checks when updating the parent of a course category

• MSA-23-0042 - RCE due to LFI risk in some misconfigured shared hosting environments

• MSA-23-0043 - Forum summary report shows students from other groups when in Separate Groups mode

 

Bug Fixes and Minor Enhancements