Brightspace Platform 10.7.6

Release Notes

1

© 2017 by D2L Corporation. All rights reserved.

Contents

Features

Brightspace Learning Environment

Activity Feed - Scheduled posts available - AWSEnabled | New

Assignments - Default state of new assignment submission folders | New

Brightspace Assignment Grader – Update Notification | New

Brightspace for Parents - Usability improvements - AWSEnabled | New

Brightspace for Parents - Limited Availability in Ireland, Australia, and Singapore - AWSenabled | New

Brightspace Portfolio- Service now available in EU and Asia Pacific - AWSenabled | Updated

Content & HTML Editor - Google Drive and One Drive available - AWSEnabled | New

Data Export - Customization to standard data exports | Updated

Data Hub - Hourly data access for Brightspace Data Sets - AWS Enabled | Updated

Daylight – Auto-pin future courses in the My Courses widget | New

Daylight – Use the curated Image Library to change course images from the Course banner | Updated

Grades - Launch the Bulk edit exemptions page from the gradebook | Updated

Lessons - Linking options available | New

Lessons - Create, edit, and delete documents from HTML editor - AWSEnabled | New

Integrations

Critique^It Assignments Tool - Limited availability - AWSEnabled | New

Fixed Issues

Activity Feed

PRB0055834

PRB0055828

Announcements

PRB0047499

Assignments

PRB0055719

PRB0055713

PRB0055929

Brightspace for Parents

PRB0055449

PRB0055581

Brightspace Learning Environment

PRB0055375

PRB0055663

PRB0055775

Data Exports

PRB0055721

PRB0055764

PRB0055779

PRB0055776

Discussions

PRB0055323

Email

PRB0054491

PRB0055803

Grades

PRB0055651

HTML Editor

PRB0055302

Import/Export/Copy Components

PRB0054806

IPSIS

PRB0055468

Navigation and Themes

PRB0053475

Portfolio

PRB0055908

Quizzes

PRB0049172

PRB0055710 (Daylight)

PRB0055715

SCORM

PRB0054567

PRB0055753

Surveys

PRB0054906 (Daylight)

Widgets

PRB0055690

PRB0055716

Known Issues

Activity Feed

PRB0055727

PRB0055669

PRB0055828

PRB0055834

PRB0055884

Brightspace Data Sets

PRB0055565

PRB0055567

PRB0055499

Classlist

PRB0055996

Content

PRB0055090

PRB0054998

Discussions

PRB0054992

Lessons

PRB0055006

Quizzes

PRB0055757

About D2L

1

© 2017 by D2L Corporation. All rights reserved.

Features

Brightspace Learning Environment

Activity Feed - Scheduled posts available - AWSEnabled | New

Scheduled posts allow users to create a post in advance, and set it to appear on activity feed at a future date and time. This allows instructors to create posts at convenient times to better manage and control their feed.

Figure: Select Post Later to schedule the post to appear at a future date and time

Figure: Set the date and time and click Schedule Post

Impact of Change / Technical Details / Next Steps
Slight impact to instructors due to additional options available when creating activity feed posts. / Availability: This feature is available to all clients in the US and Canada.
To enable: N/A
Microservices dependencies: This service depends on the Authentication service, Landlord service, and the Reflex service.
Microservices location(s): Authentication and Landlord are services in the following Amazon Web Services™ (AWS) location: U.S. East (N. Virginia). The Reflex service is only available to clients in the US and Canada.
Client regions are determined by D2L and routed accordingly.
A planned post can take up to two minutes to appear in the feed from the scheduled time. Planned assignments are hidden from users and automatically become visible once they appear in the feed. / N/A

Assignments - Default state of new assignment submission folders | New

This feature introduces the organization level configuration variable, d2l.Tools.Dropbox.NewFolderVisibility, which enables administrators to set the default state of new assignment submission folders created in the Assignments tool, the Course Builder tool, or through the Assignments API to either Hidden (current default state) or Visible.

This feature implements PIEitem D4080.

Impact of Change / Technical Details / Next Steps
Slight impact to administrators due to the new organization level configuration variable, d2l.Tools.Dropbox.
NewFolderVisibility. / Availability: This feature is available to all clients.
To enable: Set the d2l.Tools.Dropbox.
NewFolderVisibility configuration variable to Visible.
Microservices dependencies: N/A
Microservices locations: N/A / N/A
Slight impact to instructors who can create new assignment submission folders in the Assignments tool, the Course Builder tool, or through the Assignments API and have them visible, by default, to learners. / Availability: This feature is available to all clients.
To enable: N/A
Microservices dependencies: N/A
Microservices locations: N/A / To ensure that newly created assignment submission folders are visible by default, request your Administrator to set the d2l.Tools.Dropbox.
NewFolderVisibility configuration variable to Visible.
Slight impact to learners who can, by default, view new assignment submission folders that are created in the Assignments tool, the Course Builder tool, or through the Assignments API. / Availability: This feature is available to all clients.
To enable: N/A
Microservices dependencies: N/A
Microservices locations: N/A / N/A

Brightspace Assignment Grader – Update Notification | New

A new version detection notification is available for Instructors using Brightspace Assignment Grader with Android or Apple devices. Previously, users were not notified when a new version of the Assignment Grader application became available. Users are now notified when a new version of the Assignment Grader application becomes available in Google Play or Apple Store. The update notification is compatible with Brightspace Learning Environment version 10.7 or later.

Figure: When the Brightspace Assignment Grader update required notification appears, users will be prompted to download the update from Google Play or the App Store, depending on user device

Figure: When the Brightspace Assignment Grader update available notification appears, users will be able to continue using the app and download the update at a later time

Impact of Change / Technical Details / Next Steps
Slight impact to administrators and instructors due to the notification when a new version of Brightspace Assignment Grader is available. / Availability: This feature is available to all instructors that have the appropriate permissions. The update notification is available in the following languages:
  • English
  • French
  • Brazilian
  • Portuguese
  • Spanish
  • Finnish
To enable: N/A
Microservices dependencies: N/A
Microservices location(s): N/A / N/A

Brightspace for Parents - Usability improvements - AWSEnabled | New

To keep parents better informed about upcoming work, this release of Brightspace for Parents includes the following usability improvements:

  • The Upcoming assignments widget is renamed the Upcoming work widget.
  • The Upcoming work widget now displays upcoming quizzes that have an end date.

Figure:The renamed Upcoming Work widget, displaying upcoming quizzes.

Impact of Change / Technical Details / Next Steps
This feature does not impact administrators. / Availability: Limited Availability to K-12 clients in the US, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and Singapore.
To Enable: Brightspace for Parents is enabled by default for all existing K-12 clients.
Microservices Dependencies: This service depends on the Authentication Service, Landlord Service, Parents Service, Activity Feed Service, Portfolio Service, and Microservice used by OneRoster.
Microservices Location(s): Parents Service is located in the following D2L Amazon Web Services™ (AWS) locations:
  • U.S. East (N. Virginia)
  • Canada Central (Montreal)
  • EU (Ireland)
  • Asia Pacific (Sydney)
  • Asia Pacific (Singapore)
Client regions are determined by D2L and routed accordingly.
Parent-child relationships in Brightspace Learning Environment cannot be created using D2L Standard CSV or APIs at this time. / Brightspace for Parents must be turned on in Org Tools.
Contact your D2L Account Manager to inquire about using Brightspace for Parents with your Holding Tank IPSIS LIS 2.0, or OneRoster* SIS integration.
Ensure that you have the appropriate permissions to use this product by checking your organization’s policies regarding data residency, and by consulting with your legal advisors.
D2L recommends that only authorized parents and guardians be allowed to access Brightspace for Parents.
Slight impact to parents due to the renamed Upcoming Assessments widget and upcoming quizzes that now display in the widget. / The Upcoming work widget always displays and cannot be disabled. It displays assignments that have a due date or end date, and quizzes that have an end date. /
  1. From the Brightspace for Parents main page, select the learner you want to view.
  2. Observe the Upcoming work widget.

Brightspace for Parents - Limited Availability in Ireland, Australia, and Singapore - AWSenabled | New

Brightspace for Parents is releasing with limited availability to clients in Ireland, Australia, and Singapore. This solution is targeted towards the K-12 segment. Brightspace for Parents uses the Holding Tank, IPSIS LIS 2.0, or OneRoster* SIS integration to create parent-child relationships in Brightspace Learning Environment. This allows authorized parents and guardians to view their child's class activity feed, shared portfolio items, and upcoming assignments and quizzes, from their own parent account. Instructors can use this to increase parent engagement, and improve learner success.

Impact of Change / Technical Details / Next Steps
Slight impact to administrators due to new options when configuring Holding Tank, IPSIS LIS 2.0, or OneRoster* integrations. / Availability: Limited Availability to K-12 clients in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Australia, and Singapore.
To Enable: Brightspace for Parents is enabled by default for all existing K-12 clients.
Microservices Dependencies: This service depends on the Authentication Service, Landlord Service, Parents Service, Activity Feed Service, Portfolio Service, and Microservice used by OneRoster.
Microservices Location(s): Parents Service is located in the following D2L Amazon Web Services™ (AWS) locations:
  • U.S. East (N. Virginia)
  • Canada Central (Montreal)
  • EU (Ireland)
  • Asia Pacific (Sydney)
  • Asia Pacific (Singapore)
Client regions are determined by D2L and routed accordingly.
Parent-child relationships in Brightspace Learning Environment cannot be created using D2L Standard CSV or APIs at this time. / Brightspace for Parents must be turned on in Org Tools.
Contact your D2L Account Manager to inquire about using Brightspace for Parents with your Holding Tank, IPSIS LIS 2.0, or OneRoster* SIS integration.
Ensure that you have the appropriate permissions to use this product by checking your organization’s policies regarding data residency, and by consulting with your legal advisors.
D2L recommends that only authorized parents and guardians be allowed to access Brightspace for Parents.

*OneRoster is currently only available in the US, Australia, and Ireland and is dependent on the IPSISservice.

Brightspace Portfolio- Service now available in EU and Asia Pacific - AWSenabled | Updated

Brightspace Portfolio is now available in AWSEU(Ireland) and AWSAsia Pacific(Sydney).

Brightspace Portfolio is intended to replace Brightspace ePortfolio for our Kindergarten to Grade 12 customers. It is not recommended that clients use both tools concurrently.

Impact of Change / Technical Details / Next Steps
Slight impact to administrators due to the Brighspace Portfolio being deployed to a new AWS region.
There is no migration from the existing Brightspace ePortfolio tool to the new Brightspace Portfolio. / Availability: Brightspace Portfolio is available to clients in the US, Canada, Central America, South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, China, India, and Asia.
To Enable: When an Instructor accesses a classroom in the Portfolio tool of the Brightspace Learning Environment for the first time, a unique classroom QR code and a list of unique learner QR codes are created.
Microservices Dependencies: This feature depends on the following:
  • Content service
  • Auth service
  • Landlord service
  • Brightspace Event Framework
Microservices Location(s): The Content Service is located in the following AWS locations:
  • U.S. East (N. Virginia)
  • EU (Ireland)
  • Asia Pacific (Sydney)
  • Canada Central (Montreal)
Client regions are determined by D2L to provide the best user experience and in accordance with data residency requirements. The learning environment instance automatically knows the region from which to get its micro-services. If an administrator changes the region, the data previously stored is no longer available. / The Portfolio tool must be turned on in Org Tools.
The following configuration and permissions must be set up before you can use Brightspace Portfolio:
The configuration variable d2l.Tools.Folio.Endpoint must point to the appropriate AWS region microservice endpoint. This is automatically set by the Brightspace Learning Environment
Instructors must have View User Enrollments (User Permissions), and Can Access the Portfolio Instructor View (Portfolio Permissions).
Learners must have Can Access the Portfolio Student View (Organization permissions)
Administrators or Instructors who intend to add category tags must have Can Add Portfolio Tags (Organization permissions)
If you intend to use Brightspace for Parents to share evidence, it must be configured and turned on in Brightspace Learning Environment under Org ToolsBrightspace for Parents.
For detailed information on data transmission for Brightspace Portfolio, refer to the Microservices in the Brightspace Cloud guide at release.

Content & HTML Editor - Google Drive and One Drive available - AWSEnabled | New

In Content, Google Drive and One Drive options can be added to the Existing Activities menu. The quicklinks picker in the HTML Editor can also include Google Drive and One Drive options. Private items that are shared to Brightspace Learning Environment from your Google or OneDrive account automatically have their permission updated to View Only so they can be accessed by other users. The Google Drive and One Drive options are available for Activity Feed, Portfolio, Assignments, Lessons, Content, and in the quicklinks picker. Configuration variables have been added to allow administrators to prevent Google Drive and One Drive options from displaying, to ensure that an institution's policies are adhered to.

Figure: Select Google Drive or One Drive from the Existing Activities menu

Figure: Select Google Drive or One Drive from the quicklink picker in the HTML editor

Impact of Change / Technical Details / Next Steps
Slight impact to instructors due to additional options available when adding materials to Content or inserting quicklinks into the HTML editor. / Availability: Available to all clients.
To enable: Ensure that the following configuration variables are turned on:
  • d2l.3rdParty.GoogleDrive.EnableGooglePicker
  • d2l.3rdParty.OneDrive.EnableOneDrivePicker
Microservices dependencies: Authentication service and Landlord service.
Microservices location(s): Authentication and Landlord are services in the following Amazon Web Services™ (AWS) location: U.S. East (N. Virginia)
Note: If your institution is using the existing Google Apps integration, and the new Google Drive option, users may encounter inconsistencies when accessing Google Drive files. Depending on which method is used to attach files, users may be asked to log in to their Google account manually. Unlike the Google Apps integration, the new Google Drive option allows users to attach files from any Google account, not just accounts created by your institution for use with the Google Apps integration. / N/A

Data Export - Customization to standard data exports | Updated

This customization updates the existing Learner Usage / Progress, Instructor Usage, Content Progress, and Rubric Outcomes standard data exports to only include section enrollment information and not the group enrollment information.

Impact of Change / Technical Details / Next Steps
Slight impact to administrators due to the change to the Learner Usage / Progress, Instructor Usage, Content Progress, and Rubric Outcomes standard data exports. / Availability: This customization is available to all clients.
To enable: N/A.
Microservices dependencies: N/A
Microservices locations: N/A / N/A
Slight impact to instructors due to the change to the Learner Usage / Progress, Instructor Usage, Content Progress, and Rubric Outcomes standard data exports. / Availability: This customization is available to all clients.
To enable: N/A.
Microservices dependencies: N/A
Microservices locations: N/A / N/A

Data Hub - Hourly data access for Brightspace Data Sets - AWS Enabled | Updated

Brightspace platform 10.7.4 introduced an add-on for the Data Hub tool that generates Brightspace Data Sets on an hourly basis. This feature is intended for administrators with high-frequency reporting needs.

The 10.7.6 release enables hourly data freshness for the following additional Brightspace Data Sets:

  • Competency Activity Results
  • Rubric Assessment Criteria
  • Attendance Details
  • Attendance Summary
  • Announcements
  • Checklist completions
  • Chat Session Log

In addition, this release includes the following user interface improvements to the Data Hub tool:

  • From the Data Sets tab, use the Search field to search for a specific data set, or click the Category column to sort data sets by category.
  • Downloadable CSVfiles for each Brightspace Data Set (full and differentials) now display on a single drill-down page per data set.

Figure: The new Search field and Category column in the Data Hub tool

Figure: Downloadable CSVfiles for full and differential Brightspace Data Sets

Impact of Change / Technical Details / Next Steps
Slight impact to administrators because of additional Brightspace Data Sets that can be updated on an hourly basis and user interface changes to the Data Hub tool. / Availability: AWS-hosted Brightspace Insights and Brightspace Core clients in the following regions:
  • North America
  • EMEA
  • APAC
The add-on for the Data Hub tool must be purchased.
To enable: N/A
Microservices dependencies: Authentication Service and Landlord Service.
Microservices location(s): Authentication and Landlord are services in the following Amazon Web Services™ (AWS) location: U.S. East (N. Virginia)
For each Brightspace Data Set, the full CSV continues to generate on a daily basis. The add-on provides additional CSV updates, produced on an hourly basis, containing the differences (diffs) of the data that has been updated or inserted in the previous hour. Each diff is designed to keep the data set up-to-date with minimal overhead, and reduce the time it takes to produce an up-to-date extract to maintain hourly data freshness (depending on the data freshness level the client's package entitles them to).
To address gaps in how data is generated for certain fields in Brightspace Data Sets, this release also introduces the ObjectId field to the Quiz Questions and Survey Questions data sets in the 1.3 release of the Brightspace Data Sets.
In addition, this release introduces Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERD) to the documentation. ERDs are a graphical representation of the relationships of entities stored in a database.
For more information, refer to the updated Brightspace Analytics - Administrator Guide and Data Hub - Administrator Guide when they are released. / To purchase and enable the add-on for the Data Hub tool, contact your D2L Account Manager.

Daylight – Auto-pin future courses in the My Courses widget | New