Release Schedule
Open LMS EDU 4.3 Maintenance Pack 2
- Sandbox Upgrade: Thursday, October 3, 2023, 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM EDT
- Production Upgrade: Thursday, October 17, 2024, 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM local data center time
Release Date
October 17, 2023
- North America, Central America, South America (Virginia, USA datacenter): Clients will be upgraded according to their timezone:
- Eastern, Amazon, and Newfoundland-Labrador Timezones: October 17, 2024, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM EDT
- Central Timezone: October 17, 2024, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM CDT
- Mountain and Pacific Timezones: October 17, 2024, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM PDT
- South America (Sao Paulo, Brazil datacenter): October 17, 2024, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM BRT
- EMEA (Frankfurt datacenter): October 17, 2024, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM CEST
- APAC excluding Australia and New Zealand (Singapore datacenter): October 17, 2024, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM SGT
- Australia and New Zealand (Sydney, AU datacenter): October 17, 2024, 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, October 3, 2024, 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 4.3.6
As part of this minor release, the team in Open LMS has upgraded its platforms and reviewed the code of versions 4.3.5 and 4.3.6, adding the corresponding fixes, improvements, security patches, and important backports.
Release Notes
For the full releases notes from Moodle.org, please see:
Open LMS Highlights
Snap Improvements
We have enhanced the 'Enrolled Courses' section on the Snap home page to offer a better organized and more uniform appearance. The course list is now displayed in a card format, ensuring consistency in layout regardless of image size or description length.
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Before |
After |
Building on the concept of ‘Featured Courses’, we have introduced a new 'Featured Categories' section on the Snap home page. This feature highlights up to eight categories, each displayed as a card with a description and cover image. Users can easily browse the courses within each category by clicking on the corresponding card. Additionally, admins can access category details and editing options directly from this section.
New Grade Recovery Control in Conduit
We have introduced new functionality to Conduit, allowing admins to manage grade recovery more effectively. A new ‘Recover Grades’" setting has been added (Conduit > Settings > General > Enrollments) with options ‘Yes’ (default) or ‘No.’
This setting will determine whether grade recovery is performed for all enrollments, maintaining the current behavior of always attempting recovery by default.
This enhancement is particularly beneficial for new enrollments or cases where grade history is not pertinent, as it helps avoid unnecessary processing. The grade recovery routine can significantly increase the time required to create an enrollment, especially in courses with many grade items.
To ensure the new feature functions as intended, please verify that the ‘disablegradehistory’ capability is not enabled for the site.
New Feature: AI-Assisted Editor for Tiny in Open LMS
We’re thrilled to introduce an AI-powered editor plugin for Tiny in Open LMS, designed to revolutionize the way you create and manage content across the platform. Whether you're drafting a post, composing an announcement, or editing course materials, this AI-driven tool makes content creation smoother and more intuitive.
In addition to generating text based on user input, the editor comes packed with smart features to enhance your workflow:
- Summarize complex information into concise, digestible content
- Create dynamic tables from existing text with ease
- Expand content to add depth and detail in a click
- Generate bullet points to organize ideas quickly
- Review grammar for error-free writing
- Change the tone to suit different audiences, from formal to casual
- Adjust the style to match your content needs
- Translate your text into 13 different languages to achieve global reach
This powerful plugin empowers users to elevate their content effortlessly, while maintaining flexibility and creativity.
Note: The plugin requires OpenAI API keys to function, ensuring you have access to the latest in AI technology.
To know more about this new feature, please visit this Link.
User Development Plans (UDP)
Use development plans is a feature that allows mentors or managers to guide the development of users by assigning courses, programs, and milestones. When creating a plan, you can set a start date, due date, and end date for the entire plan, as well as individual due dates for each item.
UDP creation and management are governed by frameworks, which define who can create plans and whether plans are restricted to specific tenants or cohorts on the site.
Administrators can always create plans for any user (provided a valid framework is available) and assign any mentor they choose. When a user requests a plan, the request is automatically routed to their assigned mentor/manager, as listed in their Related Users section. Mentors/managers can view their users by navigating to the "Child users" section in their profile, which can also be accessed through a user report in the Report Builder. Users can view their own development plans by clicking the "Development plans" link in the Miscellaneous section of their profile.
More information about this feature is available here.
Transition to SHA-512 Password Hashing and Removal of MD5/BCRYPT Support
From version 4.3 onwards, the Moodle™ LMS will adopt the SHA-512 algorithm for hashing user passwords. SHA-512 is a hashing algorithm recognized and approved by various government agencies and standards organizations. This change enhances the security of user data by leveraging a modern, widely trusted cryptographic method.
In alignment with this update, we are incorporating support for SHA-512 in Conduit and will discontinue support for older hashing algorithms, specifically MD5 and BCRYPT, in the upcoming Open LMS EDU 4.4 release scheduled for December 2024.
We strongly encourage all users to transition to SHA-512. If you have any questions or need assistance with this transition, please refer to our support documentation or contact our Open LMS support team.
New Plugins
|
Name |
Component |
Description |
|
Tiny font color |
tiny_fontcolor |
The plugin provides two buttons in the TinyMCE editor to set a text- and a background color. Colors can be defined by the site admin, so that the user may be limited to the predefined colors. In addition the color picker can be enabled or disabled. Settings are separate for text color and background color. |
|
Lock Correct |
qbehaviour_lockcorrect |
This plugin enhances the quiz functionality in Moodle™ by locking previously correct answers in subsequent quiz attempts. It ensures a smoother and more intuitive experience for students retaking quiz |
|
Vault |
tool_vault |
Vault allows you to make a full backup of the site, push it to the cloud and then restore on any Moodle site. |
|
OLMS AI Assistant |
tiny_ai_assistant |
Whether you're drafting a post, composing an announcement, or editing course materials, this AI-driven tool makes content creation smoother and more intuitive by generating text based on user input. |
Updated plugins
|
Name |
Component |
Version |
|
SAML2 Auth |
auth_saml2 |
2024071101 |
|
Custom certificate |
mod_customcert |
2023100901 |
|
Intellicart |
local_intellicart |
2024090400 |
|
Inteliboard pro |
local_intellidata |
2024090600 |
End of life of plugins
We have removed the following list of plugins from the code:
|
Name |
Component |
|
Microsoft® Live Services |
block_live_services |
|
Windows Live ID |
auth_liveid |
|
Banner/Luminis Message Broker |
enrol_lmb |
|
LTI Provider |
local_ltiprovider |
|
Microsoft Services |
local_microsoftservices |
|
Microsoft Account |
local_msaccount |
|
RecordingsBN |
mod_recordingsbn |
|
Office 365 Connection |
profilefield_o365 |
|
OpenIDConnect Management |
profilefield_oidc |
|
Microsoft OneNote |
repository_onenote |
|
Import competency framework from RDF |
tool_lpimportrdf |
|
tinymce_dragmath |
tinymce_dragmath |
|
Auth Gsaml |
auth_gsaml |
Bug Fixes and Minor Enhancements
| Fix Version | Issues |
| 4.2 MP2 |
|
| 4.3 MP1 HFx |
|