Tuesday 9 December 2014

RESOLVED: Interact Service Outage -- Dec 8, 2014

1:05 PM PST: The underlying issue that caused this morning's Interact outage has been resolved. Interact service should be back up and running normally for all users.

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9:17 AM PST: We have implemented a workaround for this issue, so that student tabs and screens can display on Interact. Teachers should now be able to use Interact successfully.

Important note: As a result of this workaround, students who are not online will display a spinning wheel in their tile on Interact. This is expected, and will occur until we have a long-term solution in place.

We will continue to work with Pusher on the core issue, and will provide additional updates later today with the status of the permanent fix. If you notice additional problems connecting to student devices, please submit a request to support.hapara.com and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

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8:40 AM PST: The issue has been isolated as a problem with Pusher, third-party infrastructure we utilize for making connections to student devices. Student device connections are not being recognized when Teacher Dashboard is loaded, preventing the display of tabs and screens. However, connections are recognized individually, so screenshots and messages should be unaffected.

We are working with Pusher support to resolve this issue now, and will continue to provide updates as we receive additional information.

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8:10 AM PST: We are continuing to investigate issues with Interact, and have escalated the outage with the third-party service we utilize for the tool. We will send another update by 9:00 AM PST.

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7:10 AM PST: We are currently experiencing a global service outage with Interact. The Browser Tabs and Current Screen pages are not displaying any data from student devices, though the screenshot and message features should still function normally.

We have all hands on deck to investigate and resolve this issue as quickly as possible. We will send another update by 9AM PST.

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Best regards,
Hapara Support

Sunday 7 December 2014

New Release: Teacher Dashboard 2 - Open Beta

Hapara customers are welcomed to try our new-look interface, designed to be cleaner and easier to use.


Improvements

  • SmartShare can copy/share up to 5 documents at once.  This was the most-requested feature from teacher feedback.
  • SmartShare lets you copy/share to multiple classes at once (“I want all my English students to get this rubric”).  This was the second-most-requested feature.
  • We’ve added a progress bar so you can see how your SmartShare is going.
  • Students can belong to multiple groups.  (As a consequence, “sort students by group” doesn’t make sense when the students are in multiple groups, so that option has been removed)
  • Drive, Interact, Portfolio, Sites, Sharing, Class Info are all in this new interface.

Caveats

  • Major functional areas yet to be added: Picasa, G+, Teacher Notes, Calendars, Blogger, Audits, Top Link.
  • We’ve improved the startup and display times from the closed beta period, but there’s more work to do here.

Known problems

  • Schools where students are in multiple domains cannot use the new Teacher Dashboard yet.
  • French translation is incomplete.
  • Mobile support is incomplete (in particular, Google’s file picker does not work well on very small devices).
  • Safari users cannot change the order in which students are displayed.
  • Some content may not load if user is logged into multiple accounts and their teacher account is not the most recent login.

General Improvements

  • SmartShare reliability and performance have been improved.

Tuesday 28 October 2014

RESOLVED: Google Drive Service Disruption Affecting Teacher Dashboard

At 8:20AM PST this morning, Google reported a service disruption in Drive, which is causing system errors when accessing folders and documents. This may be impacting your ability to access Teacher Dashboard, view classes and students, and load data. Google's message about the issue is below:
We're investigating reports of an issue with Google Drive. We will provide more information shortly.
Affected users will notice 500 errors and latency.
You can find updates from Google on the problem at their Apps Status Dashboard. We are doing everything we can to escalate this issue with Google and resolve it as quickly as possible. We will post an additional update on this post by 11AM PST.

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UPDATE 9:30AM PST: Below is the latest message from Google:
We are continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by 10/27/14 11:30 AM detailing when we expect to resolve the problem.
We are noticing some improvement in the error rates for Teacher Dashboard, but will continue to monitor and provide updates when we have more information.

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UPDATE 11:30AM PST: Below is the latest message from Google, posted at 11:18 PST:
Our team is continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by 10/27/14 1:30 PM with more information about this problem. Thank you for your patience.
While Google works on resolving this issue with Drive, we are advising against running additional data uploads, as there may be errors in creating class or student folders.

Our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience. We will send another update this afternoon.

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UPDATE 2:10PM PST: Today's Google Drive service disruption has been resolved as of 1:50 PM. Below is the latest update from Google:
The problem with Google Drive should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.
If you continue to notice any problems with Teacher Dashboard or TD Admin, please submit a request at support.hapara.com, and we will investigate promptly.

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Best regards,
Hapara Support

Thursday 2 October 2014

FIXED - Temporary Data Load Issues


04:00 PDT (4am - Pacific time) Hapara engineers are currently working to address an issue that is slowing down data loads for some customers. These loads will eventually complete, but are taking longer than usual. We have traced the issue to a processing limit being placed on the Google services that we call during a data load.

We have raised this issue with Google and are working with them to resolve it as quickly as possible. We will notify all customers of either a resolution or an ETA once this is available.

We sincerely apologize for any impact that this is having on you and the teachers we serve together. We are committed to providing all help necessary to load data once this issue has been addressed. If you have any questions, please email support@hapara.com.


Best Regards,
Hapara Support

Thursday 18 September 2014

FIXED: Google Drive Service Disruption

UPDATE - 11pm PDT (23:00 Pacific Time) Google have update the 'Google Drive - Service Details' with the following;

The problem with Google Drive should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better. If you are still experiencing an issue, please contact us via the Google Help Center.

9pm PDT (21:00 Pacific Time) Please be aware that Google Drive are currently experiencing a service disruption. This may affect some Teacher Dashboard users, as class and individual student folders may not always be available. We will update this post as soon as more information becomes available. 

Our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience associated with this.

Best Regards,
Hapara Support

Wednesday 23 July 2014

New Release: Hapara Interact Extension

We are excited to announce the release and re-branding of Hapara Interact's new, improved Chrome extension. Formerly Remote Control, Hapara Interact's new name comes hand in hand with this latest version of the Hapara Interact Extension, which also includes a couple of new key features: our extension now provides a new default jSocks HTTP fallback for connections where WebSockets are not supported, as well as a new diagnostics module to assist in the troubleshooting of connectivity issues. This latest release is available now in Chrome Web Store, and can found here, or by searching the web store for 'Hapara Interact'.

Wednesday 18 June 2014

FIXED: Google outage affecting Teacher Dashboard

This morning from 4:15am to 7:00am PST, there was a service disruption in Google's URLFetch service, which affected certain Teacher Dashboard services for some users. Google's latest message regarding the disruption is below:
The problem with Google App Engine UrlFetch service was resolved as of 07:00 Pacific. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.
As the above message indicates, the disruption has been resolved, so Teacher Dashboard should now be running smoothly. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Best regards,
Hapara Support

Thursday 12 June 2014

FIXED: Google service outage impacting Teacher Dashboard

UPDATE - 10pm PST (22:00 Pacific time). Google have updated the 'Google App Engine Downtime Notify' Forum with the following:

The problem with Google App Engine UrlFetch service was resolved as of 21:56 Pacific. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support

UPDATE - 9pm PST (21:00 Pacific time). Google have updated the 'Google App Engine Downtime Notify' Forum with the following:

We have identified the issue affecting Google App Engine UrlFetch service and latency is returning to normal. We will provide another update by 22:00 Pacific.

UPDATE - 8pm PST (20:00 Pacific time). Google have updated the 'Google App Engine Downtime Notify' Forum of the following:

"We are currently experiencing a network issue with Google App Engine UrlFetch API. For everyone who is affected, we apologize for any inconvenience you may be experiencing. We will provide an update by 21:00 Pacific Time with current details."

Google App Engine is currently experiencing elevated error rates on some services that are essential to the performance of Teacher Dashboard. Google Engineering has confirmed that they are aware of this issue and are investigating it now. As a result of this problem, calls to Google from Teacher Dashboard are failing, which means that most to all Teacher Dashboard functions are currently unavailable.

This outage is affecting Teacher Dashboard as well as the Teacher Dashboard Admin Console.

We will update this post as new information becomes available.

Our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience associated with this.

Best regards,
Hapara Support

Wednesday 4 June 2014

FIXED: Service Disruption for Smart Copy and Remote Control

UPDATE 10:15am PST: The issues with Remote Control have been resolved, so teachers should now be able to see student tabs and screens normally. If you do notice any problems with Remote Control or Smart Copy, or have any other questions, please contact support.

UPDATE 9:10am PST: Smart Copy should now be working as expected. We will provide an update on the Remote Control disruption as soon as possible.

9:00am PST: We are currently experiencing a service disruption for the Smart Copy and Remote Control tools. Our development team is doing everything they can to resolve the issues as quickly as possible, and we will provide further updates with the status of the outage and resolution on this post. Our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience this has caused.

Thanks,
Hapara Support

Tuesday 3 June 2014

Remote Control Extension Update: Version 1.5.5

Last week, you may have noticed a new version for the Hapara Remote Control Teacher Dashboard Extension, version 1.5.5, on student devices. This new version makes the following improvements to the Remote Control tool:
  • When teachers send messages to students through Remote Control, the messages now appear on the side of the student device, rather than as pop-ups. This will allow multiple messages to appear at the same time, and will prevent students from "disabling" the pop-ups. The messages will also be stored as "notifications" if they are not acknowledged by the student.
  • Opening tabs and sending messages will no longer complete for students who are outside of the IP or time restriction settings.
  • Better handling of connection errors, for more stable and reliable performance of Remote Control.
  • Various other bug fixes and performance improvements.
This update should occur automatically for domains that are pushing out the extension through the Google Chrome Management console. Keep in mind that there can occasionally be delays in the update of Chrome extensions; if you notice this on a student device, try logging out and restarting the device then logging back in. Alternatively, you can force the extension update by going to the Extensions menu > Click "Developer Mode" on the top right of the page > Click "Update Extensions". If you are still seeing the old version of the extension after taking these steps, please contact support.

Friday 11 April 2014

Fixed: Important notice for SIS Integration Users

Google recently released an update to Chrome, version 34, which is incompatible with the SIS Integration tab on TD Admin (displays a blank page). If you use SIS Integration, please do not update Chrome to version 34 for the time being. If you have already updated Chrome, you can access SIS Integration by using a different browser, such as Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer. Our development team is working on a fix for this issue, and an update will be provided when that fix is available.

UPDATE 8:00am PST 4/11/14:
This issue has now been resolved. Feel free to upgrade Chrome to the latest version.

Thursday 10 April 2014

UPDATE: Service Disruption for Remote Control

We are currently experiencing performance issues on the Remote Control tool for Teacher Dashboard. This is caused by a failure in an important component of Google App Engine, the foundation on which Teacher Dashboard resides. We have escalated the issue with the Google Engineering team, and our development team is working on an update to Remote Control that will reduce the incidence and impact of this problem going forward. We will provide another status update later today.

UPDATE 10:30am PST:
The performance of Remote Control should now be much more stable. We will continue to monitor its status throughout the day.

UPDATE 4/10/2014:
We have a released a fix for the issue yesterday which improves the performance of Remote Control and better handles failures in the service mentioned above.

Tuesday 25 March 2014

Release Notes — March 25, 2014

What's New - 
  • Multiple teacher domains. 
    • TD Admins can now specify multiple domains in the Configuration > Logins. This is primarily for districts in which teachers at different schools log in to different domains, but all students log in to a single domain.
Other changes and bug fixes -
  • Improved data load performance. 
    • Some customers had reported delays between when a data load was started and when processing began. This has been fixed by improving our queuing process, which should also improve overall speed and performance of the Data Loader. 
  • Improved Smart Copy performance. 
    • Due to Google API limits, some large domains had experienced performance issues with Smart Copy. Now, Smart Copy jobs will be distributed more evenly in the backend to avoid reaching these limits and streamline performance. 
    • Other changes to the Smart Copy backend processing should improve the overall speed of Smart Copy, particularly for read-only, read-comment, and read-share. 
  • The "any" option for student sites will now work when student site URLs are anonymized
  • Fixed a bug in which certain student folders would not open from Teacher Dashboard. 
  • Fixed a bug in which load reports were sometimes generated multiple times. 
  • The "Docs to display" filter on Teacher Dashboard will now display "items" instead of "docs" when on the Sites page. 

Thursday 13 March 2014

New home for Release Notes

Release Notes are migrating from their old home in our Knowledgebase to their new home here on our Support blog. This category will be removed from our homepage but you can still stay up to date with the latest releases and bug fixes via the feed on our homepage, by visiting us here, or by subscribing to our blog.

Support Community Forums are coming soon!

Keep an eye out on the Support homepage for our new Community forums - which are coming very soon! We look forward to answering more of your questions, hearing your tips and suggestions, and hearing more of your feature requests and ideas too!

Welcome, and watch this space!

Welcome to our new Support blog! And thanks for visiting our first post. Watch this space to stay current with updates and announcements, release notes, new features and fixes, as well as any other news from our Support team.

Thursday 20 February 2014

Release Notes — Feb 20, 2014

What's New - 
  • New user interface for CSV uploads. 
    • You can now load both classes and students with a CSV file, both manually or with a cURL script. The Data Loader within TD Admin has been updated to reflect this change. You can find this menu under Data Loader => Load Data via CSV File.
  • Email report for data loads. 
    • When you kick off a data load, you will now receive an email when the load has completed, including a summary of the successful and failed processes.
  • Parent Portal allows Date of Birth entry. 
    • Previously, parents had to log in to Parent Portal using a student ID (UID or NID). Now, you can include a column named "DOB" in the TD Students spreadsheet, and choose to have parents use this DOB value to log in to Parent Portal.
Other changes and bug fixes 
  • The "Remote Control enabled class groups" setting now fits more text, as well as handles unexpected text more cleanly.
  • Fixed a bug where invalid class email errors displayed incorrect on the load details view.

Friday 7 February 2014

Release Notes — Feb 7, 2014

What's New - 
  • View multiple student sites!
    • If students already have existing sites with no naming pattern, you no longer have to worry about making copies or changing the URL. By entering "any" into the Student Site column of the TD Classes spreadsheet, all student sites to which the teacher has edit access will display on Teacher Dashboard.
  • Automated class upload via cURL
    • Previously, TD Admin offered the ability to load student CSV files via a URL request tool like cURL. Now, the same can be done with classes. Simply replace the student file location in the cURL script with the class file location. More instructions can be found here.
Other changes and bug Fixes
  • Students can now be loaded into more than 20 classes at a time, and more than 30 teachers can be added to a single class.
  • Performance improvements for data loads.

Wednesday 22 January 2014

Release Notes — Jan 21, 2014

What's New - 
  • The Class Info tab now displays the total number of students in the class.
  • The document popup preview on Teacher Dashboard now displays the default permission setting (e.g. "Anyone with the link can view").
  • Classes can now be mapped across schools with SIS Integration.

Tuesday 14 January 2014

Release Notes — Jan 13, 2014

What's New - 
  • Class Info tab available in classes with no students
    • In classes that have no students, the Class Info tab on Teacher Dashboard will now appear normally.
    • Because of this, teachers can now add students to empty classes, as long as the students are members of the td.students group.
  • Classes that are in My Classes now have a grayed-out checkbox.
  • Students can now be added to an unlimited number of classes.
  • Improved performance and stability for class and student spreadsheet loads.

Monday 6 January 2014

Release Notes — Jan 5, 2014

What's New - 
  • Smart Copy Picker Update.
    • On the Smart Copy Wizard, if you click "Select existing document", you can now choose documents that you have recently selected. This is especially helpful for sharing the same document with multiple classes.
    • Improved performance and stability.