PeopleFluent Learning 21.11 Release Notes
The features and enhancements described in this documentation apply to PeopleFluent Learning and will be available when the customer is upgraded to this version.
Because PeopleFluent Learning is configurable per customer, new features may affect each customer's individual implementation differently. For more information about any new feature, and how it can be used in specific implementations, contact your PeopleFluent representative.
This guide is not a tutorial, although some background explanation is provided for each of the key features to better appreciate how these might affect your organization.
The following new features are included in PeopleFluent Learning 21.11:
- Performance enhancements:
- Database query optimization for hosted sites
- Database connection and secondary connection pool checks
- Database table clean-up
- User experience and user interface enhancements:
- New External Courses page
- Additional branding capability for new UI pages
- Updated WYSIWYG editor
- Wider use of WYSIWYG editor
- Rustici Engine:
- Support for multiple domains
- New configurable player interface settings
- Microsoft Teams integration for on-premises and partner-hosted customers
- Select All option when adding questions to an exam from a question pool
- Automatic grading for variations in fill-in-the-blank questions
Performance Enhancements
Database Query Optimization for Hosted Sites
Summary
Database queries have been optimized to improve LMS performance.
Details
The PeopleFluent Hosting Operations team have identified database performance issues that affected hosted sites, causing deadlocks within the database or other problems. The issues caused by these queries are often customer-specific, so they do not necessarily affect all customers. The database optimizations are included in the PeopleFluent Learning 21.11 Resolved Issues Report.
Database Connection and Secondary Connection Pool Checks
Summary
Optimized secondary connection pool status check. Improved native course player connection maintenance.
Details
Internal performance testing identified a number of changes to improve system performance. In PeopleFluent Learning 21.11 the hourly status check for the secondary connection pool has been optimized, as previously it could cause delays due to resource contention in the pool. Additionally, the way courses using the native player maintain their database connection has been improved.
Database Table Clean-up
Summary
A new property has been added to ekp.properties to specify the frequency for removing old data from the messages, auditlogins, and auditobjects tables.
Details
The LMS includes a weekly background task that removes old data from the messages, auditlogins, and auditobjects tables in the database. It was hardcoded to remove data older than six months from the date it is run; deleting one week of data at a time. It is now controlled by a new property in ekp.properties:
task.tableCleanUp.retentionPeriodDays=180
The default value is 180 days, but it can be scheduled to run more frequently.
New External Courses Page
Summary
PeopleFluent Learning 21.11 includes a new External Courses page redesigned to be responsive to different devices, where learners can view and create their external training records.
Details
The External Courses page is available when the new user interface (UI) is enabled. It replaces the External Training Records page in the legacy UI and provides the same functionality.
In the External Courses page learners can create records of training completed outside of the LMS, and request approval for the training record from their direct appraiser. To facilitate the approval process, the LMS automatically sends the following emails as long as the email templates have been specified in System Configuration:
- External training record approval request
- External training record approved
- External training record approval denied
You can enable the new UI pages, including External Courses, for users individually or in bulk. To configure the primary navigation to point to the new External Courses, the Enable new UI setting in the user's profile must be set to Yes, and their skin should be set to PeopleFluent_LMS_Default to prevent inconsistent navigation styles between new and legacy UI pages. If the Enable new UI setting is set to No for a user, the primary navigation points to the legacy External Training Records page.
To enable the new External Courses page for a targeted group of users in bulk
- Export the users to a CSV file.
- Update the EnableNewUI column to Y.
- Update the Skin column values to PeopleFluent_LMS_Default. (Recommended but optional.)
- Re-import the users via the User Data Loader.
Additional Branding Capability for New UI Pages
Summary
PeopleFluent Learning 21.11 enables customers to more fully brand the new UI pages.
Details
In addition to changing the organization logo in the header, it is now possible to change the header bottom-border color, button colors and the navigation menu hover colors. The branding colors can be specified in the PeopleFluent_Default_LMS skin used for the new UI. When updating the primary and secondary colors for the new UI pages, you will also need to update them for pages that use the legacy UI.
The primary navigation text color is automatically switched between black and white depending on the color specified for the hover state.
To update the branding colors
- Export the PeopleFluent_Default_LMS skin from the Screen Layout Manager.
- Add the following properties to the skin.properties file:
skin.primary_color=#HEXCODE
skin.secondary_color=#HEXCODE
where:
- primary_color is used for the header bottom-border and button color.
- secondary_color is used for the primary_navigation menu hover color.
- HEXCODE is the six-character hexadecimal code for the color. For example, #0080F0.
To update the primary and secondary colors for legacy UI pages
- Open the main.css file in a text editor.
- Find and replace #1565c0 with the #HEXCODE for your primary color.
- Find and replace rgba(0,0,0,.9) with the #HEXCODE for your secondary color.
- Save the CSS file.
- Repeat steps 1 to 4 for forum.css, notes.css, and report.css.
- Upload the skin back into the LMS via the Screen Layout Manager.
WYSIWYG Editor Update
Summary
The WYSIWYG editor, which can be enabled in a number of forms in the user interface to allow for HTML formatted content, has been updated to a new version and has been added to more pages, replacing plain text boxes.
Details
The updated WYSIWYG editor corrects some formatting issues in the previous version, and has replaced text boxes in the following pages to enable HTML formatted input:
- Catalog Editor > Module Properties: Support Contact field
- Knowledge Center > Personal Notebook
- Question Editor > Details tab > additional comments fields: Hints, Pre-Comment, Explanation
- Question Editor > Media tab: Other (HTML) field
The following issues will be resolved in a later release:
- You cannot upload an image file from your local machine, you can only load an image into the Repository Manager and copy its URL into the WYSIWYG editor.
- The new WYSIWYG editor cannot display emojis on Windows computers.
Rustici Engine Support for Multiple Domains
Summary
Courses imported into the Rustici Engine player can now be launched from a different domain than the one from which they were imported.
Details
Previously, courses imported into Rustici Engine were required to launch from the domain from which the administrator imported the content package. This is because the actual course files are stored on the PeopleFluent Learning server not the Rustici Engine server. PeopleFluent Learning previously included the domain in the WebPath for the content, but now sends a relative path (without the domain). To cater for customers who use multiple domains to access PeopleFluent Learning, the course URL can be a different domain. This can be applied to previously imported courses by importing a new course revision.
New Configurable Rustici Engine Player Interface Settings
Summary
Some of the launch and navigation settings for courses imported into Rustici Engine are now configurable.
Details
Some courses imported into Rustici Engine may require launch and navigation settings that are different from the default settings. In PeopleFluent Learning 21.11, the following properties are configurable in the Catalog Editor > Define Launch Properties page.
Table: Configurable Launch Properties for Rustici Engine
| Property | Description |
| PlayerScoLaunchType | Specifies how to launch the individual parts of the course. |
| PlayerLaunchType | Specifies how the player as a whole is launched for the course. |
| PlayerShowFinishButton | Specifies whether the interface shows a button that allows the learner to return to the LMS. |
| PlayerShowNavBar | Specifies whether the interface shows the navigation bar containing buttons like Prev, Next, and Exit. |
| PlayerWrapScoWindowWithApi | When a sharable content object (SCO) is launched in a new window, this specifies whether the window is wrapped with a shell window containing a copy of the SCORM API. This setting allows content with errors in the use of its API finder algorithm to still be delivered in a new window. Essentially, this mimics the structure of the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Test Suite. |
| PlayerFinishCausesImmediateCommit | This property forces data to be sent to the server immediately when the SCO calls LMSFinish or Terminate. This can be useful for SCOs that do not complete because of timing issues related to window closing. |
| PlayerValidateInteractionResponses | Specifies whether the interaction responses are validated for expected SCORM format. Use this setting when you want to include descriptive text in addition to the single number or character allowed by SCORM 1.2. This affects both the user response and the correct response. |
| PlayerScoreOverridesStatus | Specifies whether or not the status derived from a score should override the actual status. |
| PlayerScaleRawScore | In SCORM 2004 content, if an SCO sets a raw score but not a scaled score, this property specifies whether the raw score counts as the normative score for the SCO. |
| PlayerRollupEmptySetToUnknown | In SCORM 2004, this specifies whether a set of child activities in an unknown state roll up to unknown or complete/satisfied. |
| PlayerReturnToLmsAction | Specifies what happens when participants click Return To LMS. |
| PlayerRollupRuntimeAtScoUnload | Initiates roll-up and transfer of runtime data at ScoUnload for all SCOs. |
| PlayerForceObjectiveCompletionSetByContent | Overrides the manifest settings for Objective Set By Content and Completion Set By Content with true values. |
| PlayerInvokeRollupAtSuspendAll | Initiates roll-up when SuspendAll is invoked. |
| PlayerSuspendDataMaxLength | Specifies the maximum suspend data length in bytes. |
Microsoft Teams Integration
Summary
Microsoft Teams can be integrated with PeopleFluent Learning 21.11 for customers who host the LMS on-premises or who are hosted by a partner organization. This enhancement adds Microsoft Teams to the choice of virtual instructor-led training integrations available with the Learning license. Previously, Microsoft Teams integration was available only to PeopleFluent Learning SaaS customers.
Details
This enhancement enables course administrators to create meetings from the LMS and allow learners to register for and launch meetings from the LMS.
To provide Microsoft Teams integration on partner-hosted or on-premises customers, PeopleFluent Learning includes an API Gateway through which they can connect their LMS instance to the middleware application (called Gravitee on the PeopleFluent Platform).
To implement this, the following new parameters are required in the ekp.properties file:
- pf.api.token.client_id
This can be obtained from PeopleFluent's platform team via a Customer Support ticket. - pf.api.token.client_secret
This can be obtained from PeopleFluent's platform team via a Customer Support ticket. - pf.api.token.url
This is one URL in the API Gateway necessary to obtain a token for the customer using the client_id and client_secret. - vms.endpoint
This is a second URL in the API Gateway through which the actual request to Microsoft Teams will be passed.
The Virtual Meeting Service is merely a pass-through, no data from are stored. Additionally, using tokens as shown above means no personally identifiable information is passed from the customer's LMS to PeopleFluent’s API Gateway.
To configure a Teams virtual classroom account, your organization must have an account and credentials with Microsoft Teams in order to host virtual classroom training sessions with them.
To configure a course to launch using Teams, the Launch Interface options for Virtual Classroom learning modules has been updated to include Microsoft Teams. The organizer for the meeting will be the administrator creating the session. Meetings created by the API are not visible in Teams, as this is a limitation of the Microsoft Graph API.
When learners enroll in a Virtual Classroom, they will be able to launch the meeting from the Knowledge Center and Current Courses page.
For more information, see the Microsoft Teams Integration Guide.
Select All Option for Selection Questions in a Pool
Summary
A Select All option has been added to the Exam Editor to select all questions in a pool when adding questions to an exam.
Details
A Select All option will be shown in the Exam Editor to select all questions in the selected pool when the Display Questions button is clicked. To select all of the questions in a pool, select the Question ID check box in the table heading row.
Figure: Exam Editor—Selecting Questions from a Pool
Automatic Grading for Variations in Fill-in-the-Blank Questions
Summary
Automatic grading for fill-in-the-blank questions can allow for multiple variations.
Details
Automatic grading for fill-in-the-blank questions can allow for multiple variations, providing allowance for different spelling, capitalization, word or phrasing. This can be useful where different words are used in different countries, regions or cultures to mean the same thing.
To enter more than one correct answer in the Correct Answer box, separate them with the | character.
For example:
Specialized|Specialised