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      SparkLearn® 2.7 Release Notes

      Release Notes: September 2021

      Overview

      The SparkLearn 2.7 release proves user-centric design is how we do digital learning differently. With a sleeker, more refined dashboard and an add-on video feature, our platform continues to provide beautiful, useful elements for you and your team.

      In-application webinars and conferences expand your reach through our new Vidyo Integration providing your teams access to video based real-time learning. 

      For Content Managers and Owners

      •  Vidyo Integration does more than house webinars. We’ve made it easy to create and schedule Events within this feature.  Contact your Account Manager to learn about pricing options.

      For Learners

      • Redesigned but still intuitive, users have more of what they need up front with subtle changes. Tags and Groups help visually direct where they go most giving them even quicker access to your content. Contact your Account Manager to enable the new enhanced dashboard feature.  

      New Features

      Enhanced Dashboard

      A key aspect of SparkLearn is the control you, the Owner, have to enable or disable feature enhancements. The new enhanced dashboard will expand the Learner experience when launching the SparkLearn desktop or mobile application. We’ve updated this dashboard to provide quicker access to content that is relevant to the user via their personal recommendations, the tags they're following, and their groups.  

      What’s new with dashboards:

      • A new My Groups section has been added listing the groups you belong to. From here, selection of any group will still direct you to the Group Topics page that displays content by topics for that group. 
      •  We kept the For You, New and Trending tabs to help you easily access your relevant content. As a reminder, the following criteria are used to populate these sections.
        • For You displays content that is recommended for you based on your interests, history and your organizations content importance.   
        • New displays content that has recently been published to the application. 
        • Trending displays content that is popular within your organization.
      • The tags you are following have been moved from the For You, New, Trending section into a new Following section. This section shows recently updated tags that you are following.  
      • The new Recently Viewed section displays content that you have completed or explored recently. Selecting the view more card directs you to your complete history.   
      • A new Bookmarks section displays content that you have bookmarked. The most recent content that you have bookmarked will display.

      To learn more about how to navigate the enhanced dashboard see the Use the Enhanced Dashboard knowledge base article.

      Note: This feature is only available on SparkLearn. Please contact your Account Manager to enable the new enhanced dashboard feature.

      Vidyo Integration 

      SparkLearn’s in application webinars and conferences are now a reality with our new Vidyo integration.  Our partners at Vidyo provide state-of-the-art technology for real-time video interactions. This integration lets your users attend events within your application, allows content managers ease of meeting creation and provides xAPI based participation analytics for your events. This premium feature is available for SparkLearn users; please contact your Account Manager to learn about pricing options.

      • Events for Users
        • Your Users will view Events like any piece of content within SparkLearn. They will display as a user discovers new content and these events are highlighted on the dashboard in For You, New and Trending in addition to being searchable.
        • Once a learner selects an event they will be provided the Event Page which contains the event name, description, scheduled date and time information and a button to Join Room. When a user joins the room, their SparkLearn application credentials are used to sign them in and initiate event specific xAPI and analytics tracking.
        • Once the user is in the Vidyo room they will be in a preview screen and have the option to adjust meeting inputs like camera and microphone before selecting the green phone icon to connect into the meeting room. When in the Vidyo meeting room, basic meeting features and functions are available. 
      • Events for Content Managers

        • With the SparkLearn Vidyo integration for Content Managers comes a new content menu for Events.  The Events content page is similar to other content items within the SparkLearn application, allowing Content Managers to create new events or manage existing events. On this page you can view Most Recent and All Events while maintaining the ability to search for and take actions on existing events. 

        • An Event is considered a new content type. This can be created to stand alone or it can be added into a course. Based on the timing of your events, once created, they can be promoted within the application as well as being in published or unpublished status based on your business needs. 

        • As a Content Manager you will also see Event information displayed on the Content Management System (CMS) Dashboard in Summary statistics, What You’ve Been Working On and the Library statistics.  

      • Create an Event

        • Get started by selecting Create New Event. This takes you to the Create Event page. where you will provide all of the content information that you are familiar with like topic, title, feature image, description, tags and related content groups. You will also see familiar content information like status, revision history, promotion options and learner notification options. New details and new fields specific to Create Event include Scheduler, Virtual Meeting Room type, RoomName, and Offline message options for when the room is unavailable.

        • The next step is to Schedule the event. A dropdown menu allows you to choose how often your event should be scheduled (once, multiple days, weekly, fortnightly, monthly). The Start Date and End Date specify the duration of a single event.

        • If you choose a weekly, fortnightly, or monthly event schedule, you will need to choose which day(s) of the week the event should take place on. You can then choose for the event to Reoccur continuously, for a specified number of occurrences, or until a specified date.

        • The Virtual Meeting Room is used to enable or disable Vidyo as the meeting and conference service that is being engaged and is enabled. Disabling will allow Content Manager to create a scheduled event that is not tied to Vidyo.

        •  The Room Name is what the meeting will be called. Selecting the Display Title checkbox adds the title to the SparkLearn Event Page above the Join Room button.

        • Room Availability allows the Content Manager to select the times at which users will be allowed into the room. By default, users will only be allowed into the room once it has been unlocked by a content manager. The other options allow users to always have access to the room or only be allowed in when somebody else (i.e. a moderator) is already in the room.

        • The Offline Message is what gets displayed to the user when the meeting room is unavailable. It defaults to “Sorry, this room is unavailable right now.” but can be updated to something more specific based on the context of the meeting or business information. Some possible examples are, “This meeting will begin at 2pm CST, please be sure your timezone is correct.” or “When the meeting starts we will ask for introductions so please be prepared to share your name, job role, and most recent accomplishment.”

        • Once all the Event information has been entered, select the Save button.

      • Moderate an Event

        • After a Content Manager selects an event they will be taken to the Events Page which contains a section for event details and a Manage Room section.  The event details are what is provided to the user and include the event name, description, scheduled date and time information and a button to Join Room. 

        • The Manage Room section allows the Content Manager to moderate the room and access specific event details. Selecting the Open Moderation button opens a new window for controlling the room participants.  Content Managers will still need to connect to the Vidyo meeting room in a separate window. 

        • The second item within Manage Room is the Room Status. Room status impacts who can access the meeting. In Lock, people who are in the room remain and people who try to join after the meeting has begun are locked out. In Unlock, anyone with the meeting information can join the room at any time. 

        • The Room URL and Access Code are provided to allow the Content Manager to share the meeting details with non SparkLearn users who may need to join a meeting. These users can join via the Vidyo native app. Keep in mind that users who join with this information will not generate xAPI analytics for tracking purposes so when possible, have users join with the Join Room button within the application to utilize their system credentials.
        • From the Vidyo meeting room, Content Managers will have access to basic meeting features and functions. As participants join the room they will be visible in the meeting room and the moderator has the ability to manage participants. Within the room there are Group and Presenter modes  in the upper left hand corner that can be leveraged. In Group mode, all participants can contribute and collaborate. In Presenter mode there is control over participants to prevent unmuting and accidental screen sharing.

      Enhancements and Bug Fixes

      Web App

      • Adds the ability to schedule Events (this feature must be enabled by your account manager)
      • Adds the ability to integrate with Vidyo for scheduling video calls (this feature must be enabled by your account manager)
      • Introduces a new dashboard experience (this feature must be enabled by your account manager)
      • Adds new optional SSO parameters that allows for the customization of actor information reported to xAPI
      • Shows promoted content in recommendations and sticky content in trending
      • Adds ability to automatically approve an account if a user's email address ends in a specific domain
      • Adds total number of comments to View comments button
      • Adds a new content management screen for managing tests
      • Adds Unsplash support to image fields on Learning objects
      • Adds Unsplash support to topics
      • Fixes a bug where a content manager or owner could not select all users for sending a push notification
      • Improves how tests count total available test questions
      • Improves how images are cropped for the feature image on learning objects
      • Removes the "Feedback" heading from articles and hides the required indicator
      • Adds back button to quiz, flash cards, and tips
      • Clicking the title of a learning object while editing a course no longer leaves the current page
      • Hides the remove button on the on the form for editing an uploaded image
      • Resolves an error that could occur when a user earns a certificate
      • Resolves an error message that could occur when loading more results from Unsplash
      • Updates underlying frameworks and dependencies

      Mobile App

      • Adds a new dashboard experience to provide learners quicker access to their groups, bookmarks, recommendations, and other relevant content; this feature is disabled by default, but you can contact your Account Manager if you'd like to preview the new experience
      • Resolved an issue that could prevent successful login
      • Improved download management for documents
      • Reduced refresh time when returning to content
      • Improved navigation on the settings screen
      • Refreshed appearance of tiles
      • Addressed a crash that could occur when opening a push notification
      • Fixed an issue causing multiple loading indicators on launch
      • Resolved an issue when deleting annotations while offline
      • Resolved an issue preventing the proper appearance of public comment pages
      • Resolved issues when opening documents from the search page
      • Resolved issues when leaving application in the background for long periods
      • Improved user experience for onboarding
      • Improved user experience when browsing topics for a group
      • Improved user experience when attempting to log in while offline
      • Fixed a rare crash and error that could occur when logging out
      • Fixed a minor visual error that may occur when viewing downloads
      • Fixed an issue that prevented cards from closing when viewing tags
      • Fixed an issue that could prevent viewing user settings
      • Resolved a crash on launch
      • Fixed onboarding images

      Known Issues / Limitations

      Web App

      • After reverting a revision on a piece of content, the revision log (only visible to content managers and owners) shows some HTML markup
      • When an article has public comments enabled and a content manager or owner unpublishes another user's comment, it may cause problems loading the comment stream 
      • In some cases, adding extremely long words to an article will cause page layout problems 
      • The two-column layout is not display content side-by-side on the desktop 
      • As a content manager, when bulk adding content to a course, changing pages in the content browser will lose the selection from the previous page

      Mobile App

      • App may crash when resumed from running in the background for a long time
      • Only up to 50 bookmarks will show
      • Large accessibility text sizes may cause overlapping text 
      • In rare cases, some video content may fail to play
      • Logging out of the mobile app does not trigger an xAPI statement 
      • For customers using the enhanced dashboard, some users may see an empty screen when launching in offline mode 
      • For customers using the enhanced dashboard, duplicate rows may show on the dashboard when logging in for the first time 
      • For customers using the enhanced dashboard, a "view more" button may appear for an empty section of the dashboard 
      • For customers using the enhanced dashboard, incorrect messages may display for empty states on the dashboard
      • iOS-specific
        • When sharing a certificate for the first time, the share sheet may dismiss automatically
        • A podcast cannot be replayed immediately after it finishes
          • Workaround: exit and return to the podcast to restart playback
      • Android Specific
        • Searching within a tag may display a loading indicator in the wrong place

      Tips for Updating

      To ensure that your application is kept up to date, make sure your iOS & Android auto-updates are turned on. We have provided links below to assist you with turning on this feature. There is no need to update the CMS, as that is done automatically. If you have a customized SparkLearn® instance and need help with anything, don’t hesitate to reach out to our Customer Support team.

      Apple iOS iPhone Help

      Android Phone Help

      For Tips & Tricks

      Visit our Knowledge Base 

       

      For help with anything don't hesitate to reach out support@gowithsparklearn.com