Hi everyone!
We are pleased to announce the release of Totara Social 2.0 today!
This release contains improvements to existing functionality and new features such as Totara Connect, social networks integrations, support for SVG graphs, access control system, and others.
Please note that this release also introduces some changes to the minimum system requirements. We recommend that you test the upgrade first on a COPY of your production site, to make sure that everything works as you expect.
Here is a changelog for Totara Social 2.0:
Release 2.0 (6th October 2015):
==================================================
Changes to minimum system requirements:
Language:
* PHP version must be 5.4.4 or greater
* Additional recommended extension:
- enchant or pspell (for TinyMCE spellchecker)
Database server:
* PostgreSQL version must be 9.1 or greater
* MySQL version must be 5.5.8 or greater
New features:
TS-522 New auth plugin (Totara Connect) for integration with Totara LMS
TS-196 New fully rewritten access control system
TS-418 Integration with social networks including Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Facebook
TS-580 New site configuration setting to clean up old activities
Improvements:
TS-409 Integrated SVGGraph library (version 2.19.1) for generating site statistics
TS-175 Replaced PNG custom page layout previews with SVG images to remove the need for
storing layout images on server
TS-52 Integrated files, blogs, questions, ideas, and status updates with Elasticsearch.
In earlier Totara Social versions, these items were available to search only if they
were shared through pages
TS-568 Switched calendar form element to jQuery datepicker to support calendar localisations
TS-669 Incorporated "Secret URL" generation into "Edit access" page
TS-615 Added interaction sideblock to the group area. This block displays quick links to the
group's forums and discussions
TS-545 Improved session handling in chat. Session transition no longer uses cookies
TS-610 Improved layout of an email digest
TS-597 Improved random string generator
Feature details
===============
== New Totara Connect auth plugin (TS-522) ==
1. Totara Connect provides a way to link multiple Totara LMS and Totara Social instances
so that they can be used together in a seamless way.
2. Totara Connect can be added in "Authentication plugin" section of the Tenant configuration
settings page.
3. Current implementation allows to configure single sign-on between systems as well as user
and group sync.
4. This plugin provides several CLI scripts that administrators can run to manually perform
user and group sync and user migration.
== New access control system (TS-196) ==
1. Completely re-worked the way permissions work in Totara Social.
2. Added implementation of contexts classes which use an acyclic directed graph to build
a hierarchy of content and check access to the items.
3. Based on performance tests the new access control system is considerably faster than the
permission checks in Totara Social 1.0 series.
== Social networks integration (TS-418) ==
1. Users can now share their files, questions, pages, and other items on social networks
like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
2. Added new controls for social sharing from Activity Stream and well as from the item's
page.
3. Social networks sharing can be enabled/disabled on a site, tenant, and user levels
== New site configuration setting to control activity expiry date (TS-580) ==
A new site setting allows administrator to set up a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly scheduled
task for cleaning up old activities. By default, the "activity expiry" setting is set to
"No end date". It is recommended to use this setting on websites where a large number of
activities can impact the overall performance of the Activity Stream.
Database schema changes
=======================
New tables:
Bug ID New table name
-----------------------------
TS-418 access_token
TS-522 auth_connect_servers
TS-522 auth_connect_sso_requests
TS-522 auth_connect_sso_sessions
TS-522 auth_connect_users
TS-196 context
TS-196 context_access
TS-196 context_relation
New fields:
Bug ID Table name New field name
-----------------------------------------------------
TS-418 institution allowinstitutionsocialsharing
TS-418 artefact allowsocialsharing
TS-418 view allowsocialsharing
Dropped tables:
Bug ID Table name
-------------------------
TS-196 artefact_access
TS-583 artefact_access_usr
TS-515 favorite
TS-515 favorite_usr
TS-196 view_access
Dropped fields:
Bug ID Table name Field name
----------------------------------------------
TS-571 artefact_access_role can_view
API changes
===========
TS-535 Removed deprecated watchlist notifications code:
- removed function watchlist_block_deleted()
- removed function watchlist_record_changes()
- removed function install_watchlist_notification()
TS-564 Refactored archive creation in data export/import:
- added function create_zip_archive() for archive creation
- added class FlxZipArchive for handling recursive adding of directories to archives
TS-509 Refactored get_my_tags() function to remove IN-clause form the SQL statement:
- $data parameter is no longer used
TS-52 Integrated plugin types 'artefact' with Elasticsearch:
- refactored view_access_records() function and renamed it to artefact_access_records()
in search/elasticsearch/type/ElasticsearchType_artefact.php
- removed unused function group_artefact_access_records()
Third party libraries updates
=============================
Updated PDF.js library to version 1.1.215
Updated HTMLPurifier to version 4.7.0
Updated Fileupload plugin to version 9.11.2
Updated Elastica to version 2.2.1
Updated TinyMCE to version 4.2.2
Updated Mobile Detect to version 2.8.15
Updated PHPMailer to version 5.2.9
Updated Select2 plugin to version 3.5.2
Updated Modernizr to version 2.8.3
Updated jQuery UI to version 1.11.4
Other notable changes
=====================
TS-617 Removed "Small page headers" setting to simplify theme design.
Admin setting 'viewmicroheaders' is no longer available
TS-595 For security reasons switched CRON to run from command line interface only.
Executing CRON through web page is no longer available
(Edited by Jenny Huang - original submission Wednesday, 7 October 2015, 2:09 AM)
