Moodle Workplace 4.0 release notes

This is part of Moodle Workplace, which is available through Moodle Partners.

4.0

See our Moodle Workplace 4.0 new features page in the user documentation for an introduction to Moodle Workplace 4.0 with screenshots.

Major features

New Workplace UI

• We have brought to the Workplace theme all the great UX improvements in Moodle LMS 4.0: the new navigation, footer, styles and course format.
• All Workplace admin pages have a new look with more actions available from inside the individual entities.
• Login page has been redesigned in line with the new Moodle LMS login page.
• Workplace launcher is now more scalable and now plugins can add their items

New Dashboard

• A new default dashboard configuration to make it easier for learners to prioritise their learning.
• In progress courses block shows courses the learner has started already so it is easy for them to continue where they left off.
• New available courses block shows courses that are available for the learner, so they can start working on them right away!

New Learner journey

• New redesigned and extended “My Courses” page in LMS 4.0 to include Programs and Certifications.
• Programs and sets have their independent pages now. This makes the process much easier to understand for learners.
• Program cover page. Allows the learner to see the relevant information about the program before getting started. Later on, this information is available in the “Information tab”.
• Course cover page. Similar to Programs, we have also added a cover page to courses. This page shows relevant information about the course to the learner before they get into it, in addition to being available in the “Information tab”

New Custom Pages feature

• Allows site administrators to create both global and tenant-only pages for different audiences and customise them using the same blocks available for dashboard customisation.

New My Teams page

• My Teams is now a custom page created by default on installation
• We have redesigned the Team overview block to focus on tracking team learning progress and overdue learning
• New progress reports for Certifications, Programs and Courses to make the reporting more consistent.
• New program progress overview report, in line with the new program page.

Multi-tenancy

• Now it is possible to have branded apps per tenant.
• Individual domains per tenant (experimental). With this feature, it is possible to define custom URLs for individual tenants with some limitations. Note this is an experimental feature.

Report Builder

• Moodle Workplace now uses core Moodle LMS Report Builder. As part of this upgrade, we have converted all system reports and almost all Custom Reports data sources (see upgrade notes)
• Core reports are supported in the Reports block
• Implemented automatic conversion of legacy reports to core Report Builder
• Manual conversion is available as well, including the editing of legacy reports with the previous version of Report Builder.

Other interesting features and fixes

• Course format "WPList" is no longer part of Moodle Workplace. This plugin will still be available for partners but it won’t be part of the official distribution (see upgrade notes).
• Block “My Learning” is no longer part of Moodle Workplace. This plugin will still be available for partners but it won’t be part of the official distribution (see upgrade notes).
• Implemented thorough report source testing in Moodle LMS and added tests for Workplace report sources
• Support certificate reissue upon course re-completion on course certificate activity
• Fixed a bug on tenant archiving that caused users were not moved to the default tenant under some circumstances.
• Notification dynamic rules to allow placeholder to refer to tenant login URL

Upgrading Workplace to 4.0

There are several upgrade steps that were added just before 4.0 release that may not apply if you were already on 4.0beta. We recommend that you do the test upgrades 3.11->4.0 rather than 3.11->4.0beta->4.0.

Moodle Workplace 4.0 has a lot of changes compared to Moodle Workplace 3.11. Some of the changes could not be automated during the upgrade process so you might need to perform manual steps depending on your requirements.

Course format “WPList”

Format "WPList is no longer part of Moodle Workplace. The new design of the "Topics" course format in Moodle LMS 4.0 looks very good and has even more features than WPList. It does not make much sense to maintain two very similar plugins.

If you were using WPList course format and want to switch to the Topics format - do nothing. After the upgrade, the format_wplist will be automatically removed and all courses converted to the topics format.

If you want to keep using WPList course format after the upgrade you need to do the following:

1. Put your site in maintenance mode
2. Update your Workplace code and all add-on plugins code like you would normally do following the https://docs.moodle.org/400/en/Upgrading documentation (i.e. remove all code, put it new code, add back add-ons)
3. Add source code for the format_wplist plugin from https://github.com/moodleworkplace/moodle-format_wplist
4. Run upgrade script

Block “My Learning”

Block "My learning" has been removed from the Moodle Workplace code. It is now replaced with the "My courses" page with a completely different design. This block was disabled by default in Workplace 3.11 and will be automatically removed during the upgrade to Workplace 4.0.

However, if you used it and you want to continue to use it you need to add the plugin https://github.com/moodleworkplace/moodle-block_mylearning  during the upgrade the same way as with the WPList course format (add the plugin code before running the upgrade script!)

Report Builder upgrade

Custom reports created in tool_reportbuilder will be automatically converted to reports under the core_reportbuilder. The reports that can not be converted automatically (see below) will remain in the "Report builder - outdated version" and will still be accessible. If for some reason you do not want to automatically convert reports during the upgrade, you can add to config.php $CFG->enablecustomreport=false;

You need to add it BEFORE the upgrade and you will need to remove it after the upgrade or otherwise you will not be able to access reports.

Custom reports conversion

Some custom reports created in "Report builder outdated version" (tool_reportbuilder) may not be automatically converted to the "Report Builder" (core_reportbuilder). The reasons can be:

• Developer did not specify the mapping between the data sources. This can happen to the 3rd party reports, developers need to refer to admin/tool/reportbuilder/README.md
• "Course participants" report from the tool_reportbuilder. This report has user enrolments pre-aggregation that turned out to be very inefficient performance-wise.  We added a new data source "Course enrollments" in Workplace 3.11 and that one can be converted to the report with a similar structure that is called "Course participants" in  Moodle Workplace 4.0. We will aim to create a conversion for some simple cases of the old "Course participants" report but some configurations will still be not possible to convert.
• Report contains columns or filters that do not have equivalents in the new data sources. One of the examples is the "Time created" column of a program set that does not make much sense and we did not add it.

If you run manual conversion you may receive an error explaining what exactly could not be converted. You may modify the original report and repeat the conversion process or you may re-create the same report in the core Report Builder.

My Teams

A custom page "My teams" will be automatically created during the upgrade. The block "Team overview" will be enabled if it was disabled. If you had "My teams" tab disabled on the 3.11 dashboard and the block added manually, you will need to remove either the old block from the dashboard or the custom page "My teams", otherwise your org managers will see two of them.

Branding

If you had a "custom navigation bar colour" in any tenant branding or "custom button colour", these variables no longer exist in Boost and in the Workplace theme. During upgrade Workplace will insert CSS to substitute old settings in the "Custom SCSS" section of the Branding page.

Workplace App

"Site home" is disabled for the mobile app during Workplace installation but not during upgrade. If you are upgrading from 3.11 we recommend setting it in "Site administration > Mobile app > Mobile features > Disabled features"

During installation Workplace sets the minimum mobile app version requirement to 4.0 but not during the upgrade. If you are upgrading from 3.11 you will need to set it manually in "Site administration>Mobile app>Mobile authentication>Minimum app version required" (note older versions of Workplace App will not work with Workplace 4)

Modal Launcher (experimental)

A setting to display Workplace launcher in a modal has been removed.

For developers

The most notable deprecation is the "Tabs" component from  tool_wp. For other changes in APIs consult with CHANGELOG.md in the individual Workplace plugins.

The settings $CFG->tool_reportbuilder_limitsenabled, $CFG->tool_reportbuilder_sitelimit, $CFG->tool_reportbuilder_tenantlimit from Workplace 3.11 will only apply to the outdated reports from the tool_reportbuilder.

If you want to set the similar settings for the Custom reports from the core report builder, you can set it either in "Site administration>Reports>Report builder>Custom reports settings'' or in the config.php using $CFG->customreportslimit and $CFG->customreportsliveediting.

To completely disable custom reports you can uncheck "Site administration>Advanced features>Enable custom reports" or set $CFG->enablecustomreports=0; in config.php.