Totara Release Notes

Totara 2.9.3, 2.7.11, 2.6.28, 2.5.35, and 2.4.38 released 18th January 2016

 
Sam Hemelryk
Totara 2.9.3, 2.7.11, 2.6.28, 2.5.35, and 2.4.38 released 18th January 2016
by Sam Hemelryk - Sunday, 17 January 2016, 6:28 PM
Group Totara

Hello everyone,

The following versions of Totara have now been released:

  • 2.9.3
  • 2.7.11
  • 2.6.28
  • 2.5.35
  • 2.4.38

Please note that these releases do not contain any security fixes, however two important bugs have been fixed that may lead to changes in audience membership. Please review the changelogs for details.

Thanks to the following people for their contributions to this release:

  • Pavel Tsakalidis from Kineo UK - TL-7560
  • Russell England from Kineo USA - TL-8191

Kind regards
Sam Hemelryk

Release 2.9.3 (18th January 2016):

Important:

    TL-7896        Fixed dynamic audience rules that reference an organisation menu type custom field

                   Dynamic audience rules for Organisation menu custom fields can have one of
                   two operators, "Equal to" and "Not equal to".
                   Prior to this fix these operators functioned in reverse. "Equal to" would
                   lead to users within an organisation for which the custom field did NOT
                   include the selected options.
                   Likewise if "Not equal to" was used users within organisations for which
                   the selected value was used would be included as audience members.
                   After this fix the operators are applied correctly.
                   
                   If you have dynamic audiences with rules based upon organisation menu
                   custom fields then we strongly recommend you review these dynamic audience
                   rules and the associated audience memberships.
                   During upgrade these rules will be corrected and audience memberships may
                   change.
                   If you have affected audiences, you can fix them without incurring
                   membership changes by following these steps:
                   
                   1. Disable cron prior to your upgrade.
                   2. Upgrade your site.
                   3. Review the dynamic audiences that are affected. If you need memberships
                   to stay exactly the same then changing the condition on the rule from
                   "Equals to" to "Not equals to" (or vice-versa) will ensure that audience
                   memberships stay as they were prior to this version.
                   4. Approve your changes and review the audience memberships.
                   5. Re-enable and run the cron.

    TL-8047        Fixed a bug found within SQL search routines used by both dialog searches and dynamic audience rules.

                   Prior to this fix if you had a dynamic audience with two or more rules in a
                   single ruleset, where the rules have comma separated values specified in
                   conjunction with any of the following conditions "Contains", "Is equal to",
                   "Starts with", "Ends with" then membership may be incorrect.
                   The bug is due to multiple value search SQL not being correctly wrapped in
                   brackets.
                   
                   After this fix comma separated values are correctly applied when
                   determining dynamic audience membership.
                   
                   Depending upon the order of the rules and how they apply to the users
                   currently in the audience, membership may or may not change.
                   If you have an audience you believe is affected we strongly urge that you
                   first test this version on a copy of your site and after upgrading, closely
                   review audience membership.
                   You will need to review and amend the audience rules if users are removed
                   and you require them to still be included.
                   
                   This bug may also have affected dialog searches when multiple values were
                   being used. Searching in dialogs now correctly handles multiple search
                   values.


Improvements:

    TL-7560        Added missing foreign key to the type field in the pos_assignment table
    TL-7816        Time can now be set when assigning due dates for programs

                   Previously when setting fixed due dates for a program or certification,
                   only the date could be set but not the time, which would fall at the
                   beginning of the day for the person setting it. Now the time can also be
                   set which means less ambiguity for when a due date will expire,
                   particularly for sites where users are in different timezones from each
                   other. 
                   
                   If a user is requesting an extension of their due date in a program, they
                   can also specify the time.
                   
                   If a manager's team members have pending extension requests, the manager
                   can now navigate to the page where these requests are updated via the 'My
                   Team' page. Previously they could only get to the page by a link in an
                   email or typing in the url. 

    TL-7973        Added a warning for Report builder when internally required columns break custom aggregations
    TL-8133        Renamed the Position and Organisation Report builder filters to be more consistent
    TL-8144        Improved the multi-lang support for Appraisal management pages
    TL-8155        Improved compatibility with PostgreSQL 9.5
    TL-8166        Added a new column 'Course Completions as Evidence' to the My Team embedded report
    TL-8183        Improved the Face-to-face session room filter
    TL-8210        Replaced the logos in the standardtotararesponsive theme with SVG equivalents.
    TL-8228        Improved the multi-lang support for Questions in Appraisals and Feedback360

Bug fixes:

    TL-7012        Fixed the course completion progress bar for courses within a completed learning plan

                   The course completion progress bar was not being correctly displayed in the
                   Record of Learning for course that are part of an already completed
                   learning plan

    TL-7527        Fixed the default settings for the example appraisal 

                   The example appraisal previously required some of the question content to
                   be opened and saved via the interface before goals or competencies could be
                   selected by learners. On a new install of Totara, example appraisals can
                   now be assigned and activated without having to open the question settings
                   beforehand. This also fixes certain instances where a manager could not
                   review goals after they had been reviewed by the learner. 

    TL-7608        Increased the maximum character length to 255 for various user fields in HR Import

                   The maximum character length of the institution, department, address and
                   password fields have been increased to 255 to match those allowed through
                   the user interface.

    TL-7809        Updated the language strings for the learning plans "objectives approval" and "status" columns
    TL-7826        Course completions stats on the My Team report now include RPL completions

                   Switched the Course Completion statistics on the My Team embedded report to
                   use course_completion records instead of block_totara_stats.

    TL-7946        Removed the link from progress icon if the user is not enrolled in the course

                   If a user is enrolled in a program but not yet enrolled in a course within
                   that program (e.g. they have not yet launched the course), the progress
                   icon included a link to their completion status. Clicking on this would
                   take that user to a page with an error saying they are not yet enrolled.
                   The progress icon now only acts as a link if they are enrolled or already
                   have a completion status by some other means. 

    TL-7978        Fixed the layout of strings in the Completion status block

                   A couple of strings in the completion status block were appended together
                   and were missing spaces. The second part of the string is now passed into
                   the language string which fixes the layout and also allow the string to be
                   translated correctly which previously was not possible.

    TL-8041        Fixed access controls when adding and removing audiences while editing courses

                   When adding audiences via the course edit page, the checks are now ensuring
                   that the cohort enrolment plugin is enabled and that the logged in user has
                   the capabilities 'moodle/course:enrolconfig' and 'enrol/cohort:config' in
                   the course or higher context. Also the audience selector now only displays
                   audiences that the user can view (with 'moodle/cohort:view' in the
                   necessary context).

    TL-8049        Fixed an error when hiding blocks on learning plan pages

                   Previously when trying to hide a block in a learning plan page
                   (totara/plan/component.php) an error would be displayed and the block would
                   not be hidden.

    TL-8056        Fixed styles for the assignment marking guide criterion form section
    TL-8083        Removed dashboards associated with deleted audiences
    TL-8124        Fixed error when deleting course with Face-to-face activities
    TL-8127        Fixed filters requiring javascript in embedded Audience Member reports
    TL-8128        Fixed the link edit current user profile in the navigation block
    TL-8129        Fixed the homepage redirect when a dashboard is set to be the default homepage
    TL-8135        Fixed the risk displayed for the totara/program:markstaffcoursecomplete capability
    TL-8160        HR Import now correctly sets the default language when creating users
    TL-8167        The Graphical report block now uses the default sort order of the report
    TL-8173        Fixed HTML validation error due to missing closing div tag on the program assignments page
    TL-8184        Stopped timezones being displayed in Face-to-face reports when they are disabled in the plugin settings
    TL-8185        Fixed the pagination on the "Manage programs" and "Manage certifications" pages
    TL-8191        Fixed the validation of Report builder date filters using number of days selectors
    TL-8197        Fixed text placement for RTL graphical reports in Internet Explorer and Edge
    TL-8207        Fixed notice when editing pages with custom block regions without JavaScript
    TL-8221        Course icons are now shown in all circumstances

                   With the enhanced course catalogue disabled, the course icons previously
                   had an incorrect URL causing them to not be displayed. We now validate the
                   URL to ensure it is correct.

    TL-8229        Changed the required learning page to show user's program details even if complete

                   Previously, if a manager tried to view a learner's program or certification
                   and it was complete, the manager would instead see their own status in the
                   program or the learner's Required Learning page, rather than their
                   student's.

    TL-8231        Switched the Face-to-face edit attendees from sending GET params to POST params

                   Prior to this change when editing the attendees of a Face-to-face session
                   the dialog would submit any changes made as GET params.
                   If the session had hundreds or thousands of attendees this could lead to an
                   exceptionally long URL.
                   The length of the URL may then cause problems on some systems, particularly
                   IIS and any site running Suhosin.

    TL-8245        Fixed cohort log data in site logs
    TL-8251        Fixed an error with updating competency properties in a learning plan with JavaScript disabled

                   When updating either priority or status for a competency in a Learning Plan
                   with JavaScript turned off there was a error message thrown. The update was
                   saved but an message was displayed every time there was an update.

    TL-8263        Fixed room validation during Face-to-face session creation when the datetime is not known

                   Prior to this fix when creating a Face-to-face sessions, if a room is
                   selected then a date is selected which causes a resource conflict when
                   saving. If the user then sets "date/time known" to "No" the validation
                   would still fail and stop the session from being saved.


Contributions:

    * Pavel Tsakalidis from Kineo UK - TL-7560
    * Russell England from Kineo USA - TL-8191

Release 2.7.11 (18th January 2016):

Important:

    TL-7896        Fixed dynamic audience rules that reference an organisation menu type custom field

                   Dynamic audience rules for Organisation menu custom fields can have one of
                   two operators, "Equal to" and "Not equal to".
                   Prior to this fix these operators functioned in reverse. "Equal to" would
                   lead to users within an organisation for which the custom field did NOT
                   include the selected options.
                   Likewise if "Not equal to" was used users within organisations for which
                   the selected value was used would be included as audience members.
                   After this fix the operators are applied correctly.
                   
                   If you have dynamic audiences with rules based upon organisation menu
                   custom fields then we strongly recommend you review these dynamic audience
                   rules and the associated audience memberships.
                   During upgrade these rules will be corrected and audience memberships may
                   change.
                   If you have affected audiences, you can fix them without incurring
                   membership changes by following these steps:
                   
                   1. Disable cron prior to your upgrade.
                   2. Upgrade your site.
                   3. Review the dynamic audiences that are affected. If you need memberships
                   to stay exactly the same then changing the condition on the rule from
                   "Equals to" to "Not equals to" (or vice-versa) will ensure that audience
                   memberships stay as they were prior to this version.
                   4. Approve your changes and review the audience memberships.
                   5. Re-enable and run the cron.

    TL-8047        Fixed a bug found within SQL search routines used by both dialog searches and dynamic audience rules.

                   Prior to this fix if you had a dynamic audience with two or more rules in a
                   single ruleset, where the rules have comma separated values specified in
                   conjunction with any of the following conditions "Contains", "Is equal to",
                   "Starts with", "Ends with" then membership may be incorrect.
                   The bug is due to multiple value search SQL not being correctly wrapped in
                   brackets.
                   
                   After this fix comma separated values are correctly applied when
                   determining dynamic audience membership.
                   
                   Depending upon the order of the rules and how they apply to the users
                   currently in the audience, membership may or may not change.
                   If you have an audience you believe is affected we strongly urge that you
                   first test this version on a copy of your site and after upgrading, closely
                   review audience membership.
                   You will need to review and amend the audience rules if users are removed
                   and you require them to still be included.
                   
                   This bug may also have affected dialog searches when multiple values were
                   being used. Searching in dialogs now correctly handles multiple search
                   values.


Improvements:

    TL-7560        Added missing foreign key to the type field in the pos_assignment table
    TL-7816        Time can now be set when assigning due dates for programs

                   Previously when setting fixed due dates for a program or certification,
                   only the date could be set but not the time, which would fall at the
                   beginning of the day for the person setting it. Now the time can also be
                   set which means less ambiguity for when a due date will expire,
                   particularly for sites where users are in different timezones from each
                   other. 
                   
                   If a user is requesting an extension of their due date in a program, they
                   can also specify the time.
                   
                   If a manager's team members have pending extension requests, the manager
                   can now navigate to the page where these requests are updated via the 'My
                   Team' page. Previously they could only get to the page by a link in an
                   email or typing in the url. 

    TL-7973        Added a warning for Report builder when internally required columns break custom aggregations
    TL-8133        Renamed the Position and Organisation Report builder filters to be more consistent
    TL-8144        Improved the multi-lang support for Appraisal management pages
    TL-8153        Backported support for MySQL 5.7
    TL-8155        Improved compatibility with PostgreSQL 9.5
    TL-8166        Added a new column 'Course Completions as Evidence' to the My Team embedded report
    TL-8183        Improved the Face-to-face session room filter
    TL-8210        Replaced the logos in the standardtotararesponsive theme with SVG equivalents.
    TL-8228        Improved the multi-lang support for Questions in Appraisals and Feedback360
    TL-8254        Backported grunt support for building of JS and CSS

Bug fixes:

    TL-7012        Fixed the course completion progress bar for courses within a completed learning plan

                   The course completion progress bar was not being correctly displayed in the
                   Record of Learning for course that are part of an already completed
                   learning plan

    TL-7527        Fixed the default settings for the example appraisal 

                   The example appraisal previously required some of the question content to
                   be opened and saved via the interface before goals or competencies could be
                   selected by learners. On a new install of Totara, example appraisals can
                   now be assigned and activated without having to open the question settings
                   beforehand. This also fixes certain instances where a manager could not
                   review goals after they had been reviewed by the learner. 

    TL-7608        Increased the maximum character length to 255 for various user fields in HR Import

                   The maximum character length of the institution, department, address and
                   password fields have been increased to 255 to match those allowed through
                   the user interface.

    TL-7809        Updated the language strings for the learning plans "objectives approval" and "status" columns
    TL-7826        Course completions stats on the My Team report now include RPL completions

                   Switched the Course Completion statistics on the My Team embedded report to
                   use course_completion records instead of block_totara_stats.

    TL-7946        Removed the link from progress icon if the user is not enrolled in the course

                   If a user is enrolled in a program but not yet enrolled in a course within
                   that program (e.g. they have not yet launched the course), the progress
                   icon included a link to their completion status. Clicking on this would
                   take that user to a page with an error saying they are not yet enrolled.
                   The progress icon now only acts as a link if they are enrolled or already
                   have a completion status by some other means. 

    TL-7978        Fixed the layout of strings in the Completion status block

                   A couple of strings in the completion status block were appended together
                   and were missing spaces. The second part of the string is now passed into
                   the language string which fixes the layout and also allow the string to be
                   translated correctly which previously was not possible.

    TL-8041        Fixed access controls when adding and removing audiences while editing courses

                   When adding audiences via the course edit page, the checks are now ensuring
                   that the cohort enrolment plugin is enabled and that the logged in user has
                   the capabilities 'moodle/course:enrolconfig' and 'enrol/cohort:config' in
                   the course or higher context. Also the audience selector now only displays
                   audiences that the user can view (with 'moodle/cohort:view' in the
                   necessary context).

    TL-8049        Fixed an error when hiding blocks on learning plan pages

                   Previously when trying to hide a block in a learning plan page
                   (totara/plan/component.php) an error would be displayed and the block would
                   not be hidden.

    TL-8056        Fixed styles for the assignment marking guide criterion form section
    TL-8083        Removed dashboards associated with deleted audiences
    TL-8088        Fixed regression when displaying Face to face attendees
    TL-8124        Fixed error when deleting course with Face-to-face activities
    TL-8127        Fixed filters requiring javascript in embedded Audience Member reports
    TL-8135        Fixed the risk displayed for the totara/program:markstaffcoursecomplete capability
    TL-8160        HR Import now correctly sets the default language when creating users
    TL-8167        The Graphical report block now uses the default sort order of the report
    TL-8173        Fixed HTML validation error due to missing closing div tag on the program assignments page
    TL-8184        Stopped timezones being displayed in Face-to-face reports when they are disabled in the plugin settings
    TL-8185        Fixed the pagination on the "Manage programs" and "Manage certifications" pages
    TL-8191        Fixed the validation of Report builder date filters using number of days selectors
    TL-8197        Fixed text placement for RTL graphical reports in Internet Explorer and Edge
    TL-8207        Fixed notice when editing pages with custom block regions without JavaScript
    TL-8221        Course icons are now shown in all circumstances

                   With the enhanced course catalogue disabled, the course icons previously
                   had an incorrect URL causing them to not be displayed. We now validate the
                   URL to ensure it is correct.

    TL-8231        Switched the Face-to-face edit attendees from sending GET params to POST params

                   Prior to this change when editing the attendees of a Face-to-face session
                   the dialog would submit any changes made as GET params.
                   If the session had hundreds or thousands of attendees this could lead to an
                   exceptionally long URL.
                   The length of the URL may then cause problems on some systems, particularly
                   IIS and any site running Suhosin.

    TL-8245        Fixed cohort log data in site logs
    TL-8251        Fixed an error with updating competency properties in a learning plan with JavaScript disabled

                   When updating either priority or status for a competency in a Learning Plan
                   with JavaScript turned off there was a error message thrown. The update was
                   saved but an message was displayed every time there was an update.

    TL-8263        Fixed room validation during Face-to-face session creation when the datetime is not known

                   Prior to this fix when creating a Face-to-face sessions, if a room is
                   selected then a date is selected which causes a resource conflict when
                   saving. If the user then sets "date/time known" to "No" the validation
                   would still fail and stop the session from being saved.


Contributions:

    * Pavel Tsakalidis from Kineo UK - TL-7560
    * Russell England from Kineo USA - TL-8191

Release 2.6.28 (18th January 2016):

Important:

    TL-7896        Fixed dynamic audience rules that reference an organisation menu type custom field

                   Dynamic audience rules for Organisation menu custom fields can have one of
                   two operators, "Equal to" and "Not equal to".
                   Prior to this fix these operators functioned in reverse. "Equal to" would
                   lead to users within an organisation for which the custom field did NOT
                   include the selected options.
                   Likewise if "Not equal to" was used users within organisations for which
                   the selected value was used would be included as audience members.
                   After this fix the operators are applied correctly.
                   
                   If you have dynamic audiences with rules based upon organisation menu
                   custom fields then we strongly recommend you review these dynamic audience
                   rules and the associated audience memberships.
                   During upgrade these rules will be corrected and audience memberships may
                   change.
                   If you have affected audiences, you can fix them without incurring
                   membership changes by following these steps:
                   
                   1. Disable cron prior to your upgrade.
                   2. Upgrade your site.
                   3. Review the dynamic audiences that are affected. If you need memberships
                   to stay exactly the same then changing the condition on the rule from
                   "Equals to" to "Not equals to" (or vice-versa) will ensure that audience
                   memberships stay as they were prior to this version.
                   4. Approve your changes and review the audience memberships.
                   5. Re-enable and run the cron.

    TL-8047        Fixed a bug found within SQL search routines used by both dialog searches and dynamic audience rules.

                   Prior to this fix if you had a dynamic audience with two or more rules in a
                   single ruleset, where the rules have comma separated values specified in
                   conjunction with any of the following conditions "Contains", "Is equal to",
                   "Starts with", "Ends with" then membership may be incorrect.
                   The bug is due to multiple value search SQL not being correctly wrapped in
                   brackets.
                   
                   After this fix comma separated values are correctly applied when
                   determining dynamic audience membership.
                   
                   Depending upon the order of the rules and how they apply to the users
                   currently in the audience, membership may or may not change.
                   If you have an audience you believe is affected we strongly urge that you
                   first test this version on a copy of your site and after upgrading, closely
                   review audience membership.
                   You will need to review and amend the audience rules if users are removed
                   and you require them to still be included.
                   
                   This bug may also have affected dialog searches when multiple values were
                   being used. Searching in dialogs now correctly handles multiple search
                   values.


Improvements:

    TL-8166        Added a new column 'Course Completions as Evidence' to the My Team embedded report

Bug fixes:

    TL-7012        Fixed the course completion progress bar for courses within a completed learning plan

                   The course completion progress bar was not being correctly displayed in the
                   Record of Learning for course that are part of an already completed
                   learning plan

    TL-7826        Course completions stats on the My Team report now include RPL completions

                   Switched the Course Completion statistics on the My Team embedded report to
                   use course_completion records instead of block_totara_stats.

    TL-8124        Fixed error when deleting course with Face-to-face activities
    TL-8135        Fixed the risk displayed for the totara/program:markstaffcoursecomplete capability
    TL-8191        Fixed the validation of Report builder date filters using number of days selectors
    TL-8231        Switched the Face-to-face edit attendees from sending GET params to POST params

                   Prior to this change when editing the attendees of a Face-to-face session
                   the dialog would submit any changes made as GET params.
                   If the session had hundreds or thousands of attendees this could lead to an
                   exceptionally long URL.
                   The length of the URL may then cause problems on some systems, particularly
                   IIS and any site running Suhosin.

    TL-8245        Fixed cohort log data in site logs

Contributions:

    * Russell England from Kineo USA - TL-8191

Release 2.5.35 (18th January 2016):

Important:

    TL-8047        Fixed a bug found within SQL search routines used by both dialog searches and dynamic audience rules.

                   Prior to this fix if you had a dynamic audience with two or more rules in a
                   single ruleset, where the rules have comma separated values specified in
                   conjunction with any of the following conditions "Contains", "Is equal to",
                   "Starts with", "Ends with" then membership may be incorrect.
                   The bug is due to multiple value search SQL not being correctly wrapped in
                   brackets.
                   
                   After this fix comma separated values are correctly applied when
                   determining dynamic audience membership.
                   
                   Depending upon the order of the rules and how they apply to the users
                   currently in the audience, membership may or may not change.
                   If you have an audience you believe is affected we strongly urge that you
                   first test this version on a copy of your site and after upgrading, closely
                   review audience membership.
                   You will need to review and amend the audience rules if users are removed
                   and you require them to still be included.
                   
                   This bug may also have affected dialog searches when multiple values were
                   being used. Searching in dialogs now correctly handles multiple search
                   values.


Improvements:

    TL-8166        Added a new column 'Course Completions as Evidence' to the My Team embedded report

Bug fixes:

    TL-7012        Fixed the course completion progress bar for courses within a completed learning plan

                   The course completion progress bar was not being correctly displayed in the
                   Record of Learning for course that are part of an already completed
                   learning plan

    TL-7826        Course completions stats on the My Team report now include RPL completions

                   Switched the Course Completion statistics on the My Team embedded report to
                   use course_completion records instead of block_totara_stats.

    TL-8135        Fixed the risk displayed for the totara/program:markstaffcoursecomplete capability
    TL-8231        Switched the Face-to-face edit attendees from sending GET params to POST params

                   Prior to this change when editing the attendees of a Face-to-face session
                   the dialog would submit any changes made as GET params.
                   If the session had hundreds or thousands of attendees this could lead to an
                   exceptionally long URL.
                   The length of the URL may then cause problems on some systems, particularly
                   IIS and any site running Suhosin.


Release 2.4.38 (18th January 2016):

Bug fixes:

    TL-8231        Switched the Face-to-face edit attendees from sending GET params to POST params

                   Prior to this change when editing the attendees of a Face-to-face session
                   the dialog would submit any changes made as GET params.
                   If the session had hundreds or thousands of attendees this could lead to an
                   exceptionally long URL.
                   The length of the URL may then cause problems on some systems, particularly
                   IIS and any site running Suhosin.