Moodle Workplace 4.0 release notes

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

• With Custom pages, site administrators can 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

Upgrade notes for 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.

My Courses

The new My Courses page makes the course information more visible for the learners.

Courses end dates are shown more distinctively than before. If you have not been paying much attention to the end date, and have active courses with the end date in the past, they will appear as "Overdue".

Course cover pop-ups will now be shown to learners on the first visit to each course. Again, if you have not been paying attention to "Course summary" field because you did not have a course catalogue, for example, these pop-ups will be half-empty and not so attractive. Consider adding summaries to your courses or disabling the Course cover if it is not needed.

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 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
• 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

4.0.5

See our Moodle Workplace 4.0.5 new features page in the user documentation for an introduction to Moodle Workplace 4.0.5 with screenshots.

Major features

• New Dynamic Rules action to remove people from the cohort
• New “Default sort order” setting for My Courses page

Other interesting features and fixes

• UI improvements for the Audience tab on Custom Pages
• Added exporting options to My Teams full reports
• Improved empty states for Program structure in the Program Cover page
• Fixed a bug in causing course automatic enrolment on the Workplace app
• Fixed string concatenation on course cover modal
• Dynamic Rules Cohort conditions now listen to "remove" event
• Fixed a bug in Appointments about session deletion resulting in removed user calendar entries for other sessions
• Fixed permissions in Custom Pages to avoid Tenant admin could duplicate a global page
• Fixed incorrect course dates in the Course cover modal date when a course is opened for the first time after the upgrade
• “My Courses” page now doesn’t show the completion percentage for courses without completion
• “Program allocation and completion” now can be converted to core_reportbuilder
• Filter and Sort order in My Courses page are now saved in user preferences
• Removed unnecessary sorting form reports block

4.0.6

Moodle Workplace 4.0.6 is based on top of Moodle LMS 4.0.6 and has all the new features of the core version. In addition, it contains all exclusive features from Moodle Workplace:

Major features

• Migration of core_reportbuilder custom reports. Migration feature now supports import and export of Custom Reports using Moodle LMS native report sources.
• Improved My Teams support in the Workplace App. The new My Teams page now includes information about learning and tracking in the Workplace App.

Other interesting features and fixes

• Improved how hidden courses are displayed in the My Courses and Program pages
• Added "department" to User profile field condition in Dynamic Rules
• New setting to disable Program Cover page
• New setting to hide "Dates" section in the course information popup
• Fixed bug with deleted appointments being listed in user calendar
• Archive course certificates during program reset
• Display a warning when changing a tab without saving a form
• Allow tenant admin to edit locked profile fields for users in their tenant
• Fixed a bug causing an exception when viewing program progress report as an organisation manager after program import

4.0.7

Moodle Workplace 4.0.7 is based on top of Moodle LMS 4.0.7 and has all the new features of the core version. In addition, it contains all exclusive features from Moodle Workplace:

Major features

• Apply only allowed filters in Certificates: new feature for users to define allowed filters for certificates, so that only the ones specified by the user are applied to the PDF content.

Other interesting features and fixes

• Add the possibility for Certificate element plugins to have their own settings page
• Add course name to “My Certificates” list
• Fixed a bug that prevented the import of positions and departments into existing frameworks, preserving the hierarchy
• Fixed a bug where the completion status for courses was not displaying correctly on the Program Page
• Fixed a bug that prevented tenant administrators from viewing hidden user fields
• Legacy custom reports can no longer be created if custom reports are disabled site wide

4.0.8

Moodle Workplace 4.0.8 is based on top of Moodle LMS 4.0.8 and has all the new features of the core version. In addition, it contains all exclusive features from Moodle Workplace:

Interesting features and fixes

• Fixed a bug causing appointment sessions being deleted after deleting another session.
• Fixed a bug that prevented assigning jobs in the upload user tool when using positions with duplicated idnumbers
• Fixed a bug in causing ad-hoc reports scheduled to be stuck endlessly

Upgrade notes for 4.0.8

Due to a fixed bug, the reports generated in the scheduled reports may now contain more data than they did before. We recommend reviewing your schedules and make sure that "View report as" is correct. For example, if the "View report as" is a global admin, the reports may contain cross-tenant data and they will be sent to all users in the schedules audiences, even those who do not normally have access to cross-tenant data.

4.0.9

Moodle Workplace 4.0.9 is based on top of Moodle LMS 4.0.9 and has all the new features of the core version. In addition, it contains all exclusive features from Moodle Workplace:

Interesting features and fixes

• Fixed a bug where the 'reset program' option was incorrectly displayed for dynamic allocation
• Fixed a bug in the 'Access' tab on tenant page where some users might have been incorrectly displayed.
• Fixed a bug during the installation process that caused blocks in the dashboard to be copied multiple times under certain circumstances.
• Fixed a bug in tenant archiving that was granting tenant administration permissions from the default tenant to the tenant administrator of the archived tenant

4.0.10

Moodle Workplace 4.0.10 is based on top of Moodle LMS 4.0.10 and has all security fixes of the core version.

Highlights

• Changed report data source "Issued certificates" removing a very strict capability check. Now it is possible to create reports such as "My certificates" or "My team's certificates" that can be accessed by users who can not view the templates list.
  • Upgrade notes: To prevent accidental disclosure of new data to people who already have reports using the "Issued certificates" datasource, we have added a new condition that mimics the previous hardcoded restriction. This condition (called "Permission to access templates") is automatically added during upgrade to all existing reports from this datasource. It can be removed if necessary. This condition will not be automatically added to the newly created reports but can be added manually if needed.

In addition, this version contains a fix for a security issue in Moodle Workplace, the details will be communicated to the Moodle Partners on the day of release and disclosed here later.

4.0.11

Moodle Workplace 4.0.11 is based on top of Moodle LMS 4.0.11 and has all security fixes of the core version.

In addition, this version contains a fix for a security issue in Moodle Workplace, the details will be communicated to the Moodle Partners on the day of release and disclosed here later.