Release Schedule

Open LMS EDU 4.5 Maintenance Pack 2

• Sandbox Upgrade: Thursday, October 2, 2025, 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM EDT

• Production Upgrade: Thursday, October 16, 2025, 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM local data center time

Release Date

October 16, 2025

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

  • Eastern, Amazon, and Newfoundland-Labrador Timezones: October 16, 2025, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM EDT

  • Central Timezone: October 16, 2025,  at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM CDT

  • Mountain and Pacific Timezones: October 16, 2025, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM PDT

• South America (Sao Paulo, Brazil datacenter): October 16, 2025, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM BRT

• EMEA (Frankfurt datacenter): October 16, 2025, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM CEST

• APAC excluding Australia and New Zealand (Singapore datacenter): October 16, 2025, at 12:30 AM - 4:30 AM SGT

• Australia and New Zealand (Sydney, AU datacenter): October 16, 2025, 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 2 2025, between 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM EDT.

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

Release Video

Major Features

Upgrade to  Core 4.5.6

As part of this minor release, the team in Open LMS upgraded the platforms and reviewed the code of version 4.5.6, adding the corresponding fixes, improvements, security patches, and important backports.

Release Notes

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

• Moodle 4.5.6 Release Notes

New Personalized Learning Designer (PLD) Module Now Available

We’re excited to announce that a new version of the Personalized Learning Designer (PLD) is now available as an activity module: mod_pld!

This new module retains the same user-friendly experience for creating automation rules based on events, filtered by conditions, and executed through actions—just like the original PLD.

🔄 What’s New?

By making PLD a module, you gain new flexibility and reusability:

• 📦 Reusable Rules
  You can now back up and restore PLD as an activity, making it easy to reutilize rules across courses by including the PLD module in course backups.

• 🏠 Site-Level Rule Automation
  mod_pld can be added to the site homepage, allowing for rules to be triggered at a site-wide level.

• 🎯 Familiar User Experience
  For those who have used the legacy PLD (local_pld), the interface and logic remain the same—so there’s no learning curve.

⚙️ Setup Requirement

PLD depends on the block_collect plugin to capture Moodle events.
Please ensure event collection is enabled via:
Site administration → Blocks → Block Collect → Settings

Without this, PLD rules will not trigger as expected.

🔁 Migrating from Legacy PLD (local_pld)

If you are currently using the older local_pld plugin and have existing rules you wish to migrate:

• When you add a mod_pld activity to a course that already contains non-disabled local_pld rules, a migration link will appear in the header of the mod_pld view page.

• Clicking this will show you a list of existing rules and their current state (active/disabled).

• You can choose which mod_pld instance in the course to import them into.

• After importing, the original rules will be automatically disabled (but not deleted), so you retain a backup.

This new modular version of PLD gives you more control, better portability, and the ability to automate at scale, all while keeping the familiar experience you've relied on.

To learn more about how PLD Works visit this link: PLD Overview and Introduction

Forum Activity Now Supported in Centralized Content Management (CCM)

The Forum activity is now supported in Centralized Content Management (CCM), enabling administrators and instructors to create, manage, and distribute forums across multiple courses with ease and consistency.

Key Capabilities:
✅ Create a Master Forum – Set up a single forum to use as a template across multiple courses.
✅ Deploy Replica Forums – Distribute copies of the Master Forum to various courses while ensuring uniform settings and structure.
✅ Easily Update Forums – Make changes to the Master Forum and apply updates automatically to all linked Replicas.

Accessibility plugin now enabled by default

The Accessibility plugin (local_accessibility) is now enabled by default on your site. This plugin allows users to customize the visual appearance of your site according to their individual preferences.

• In most themes, the plugin appears as an accessibility symbol button in the lower-right corner of every page (including the login page).

• In the Snap theme, the plugin is located in the Navigation bar for easier access.

Clicking on the accessibility button opens a panel with widgets that help improve readability and usability. The base widget pack includes options for:

• Text colour

• Background colour

• Font face

• Font size

• Kerning

• Letter spacing

• Line height

• Link highlighting

• Image visibility

The color-related widgets allow users to select their own preferred colours instead of being limited to predefined palettes.

New AI Provider: DeepSeek

We’ve added DeepSeek as a new AI provider option in Open LMS, giving you greater flexibility when choosing the service that best fits your needs. With this addition, Open LMS now supports four AI providers:

• OpenAI

• Anthropic

• Gemini

• DeepSeek

These providers can be used with Open LMS AI-powered features such as:

• AI Text-to-Questions

• AI Tiny Editor Assistant

To configure your preferred provider(s):

1. Log in to your Open LMS site as an administrator.

2. Navigate to:
   Site administration > Open LMS > Open LMS AI
   Or go to:
   <your site>local/olms_ai/admin/configure.php

3. In this settings page, you can:

   • Select the AI provider(s) you want to use.

   • Paste the corresponding API key(s) into the provided fields.

   • Enable AI-powered features such as the Tiny AI Editor.

4. Save your changes to activate AI functionality across your platform.

User Count Reports – New Alerts and Chart Display

We’ve added new alert banners to improve visibility in the User Count Reports and the Storage Usage Report.

• Alerts now appear at the top of the reports, making it easier for administrators to spot important information.

• Alerts use consistent colors for clarity:

  • Blue (Info): General information

  • Yellow (Warning): Approaching limits

  • Red (Danger): Limits reached or exceeded

These alerts are now available in:

• Annual Unique Users Report

• Monthly Flex Seats Report

• Monthly Unique Logins Report

• Storage Usage Report

Chart Display (Monthly Flex Seats Report)

• A new line chart has been added below the Monthly Flex Seats summary (replacing the static number).

• The chart makes it easier to track trends over time:

  • X-axis: Calendar months within the contract year.

  • Y-axis:

    • Monthly Peak (Max) values.

    • Monthly Average values.

    • Contracted Seats displayed as a static threshold line across all months.

This update provides clearer visibility into seat usage and makes it easier to compare actual usage against contracted limits.

👉 Note: These reports are enabled on demand. If you don’t see them on your site, please reach out to your Account Manager or raise a support ticket.

New Plugins