Hello,
I have a question regarding the use of backpacks. I see that I can download badges to add to an external backpack or to LinkedIn (as an example).
And is appears that at one point Totara allowed you to connect to an external backpack (Mozilla only). That was discontinued in August of 2019.
Does that mean that the Backpack Settings screen is unusable? Please see attached screenshot.
Thanks,
Ian
Hi Ian,
Since Mozilla retired its Open Badges Backpack platform in August 2019, users attempting a connection to the backpack from Totara experience a connection time out.
We have now made a recent fix (TL- 22122) which will be included in the upcoming releases ( 2.4.74, 2.5.78, 2.6.72, 2.7.55, 2.9.48, 9.38, 10.27, 11.21, 12.12 and Evergreen). This notifies the user about the backpack's end-of-service and no longer tries to connect to the backpack.
Also, on new installations, the 'Enable connection to external backpacks' is now disabled by default, since no other external backpacks are currently supported.
We considering collaborating on a project which will support Open Badges 2.0 and Badgr.io, however development of these improvements is currently not a top priority for us in the short term, however it is in the medium term.We first need to consider what we want to achieve with implementing Open Badges 2.0/2.1 and support for Badgr and other backpacks, and we're not at a place to start this currently.
In short, we've have implemented a replacement for Open Badges - but we are looking at what options are available.
regards,
George.
Thank you George for the quick response all of those details!