Showing posts with label Teacher Dashboard 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teacher Dashboard 2. Show all posts

Friday, 2 October 2015

Email Auditing Deprecation

In Teacher Dashboard Classic, the Email Auditing feature let users forward students’ emails to teachers and administrators for special attention. (If you’re curious, you can learn more about that here.) Due to a lack of interest in the feature compared to many competing priorities, we chose not to put Email Auditing in Teacher Dashboard 2.

In the months since releasing TD2, we have received very few requests for Email Auditing’s return. As a result, we’ve decided to remove the feature indefinitely. If you’re an administrator at a school that used Email Auditing, you may notice that we’ve suspended an account named audit@your_domain.org. That account was responsible for forwarding students’ emails, so it no longer needs to be active.

Of course, it’s always possible that we’ll bring back Email Auditing in the future. If you would like to see its return, don’t hesitate to let us know through the “How can we improve this page?” bar at the bottom of every page in Dashboard. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.

Friday, 18 September 2015

Smartshare Improvements

In response to customer feedback, the Hapara dev team have been working on ways to improve the speed and reliability of Smart Share.


After a period of investigation, we have implemented a number of changes to the way that documents are copied.  Our testing of these changes show a reduced number of errors, which in turn reduces reduces the issues that impact customers.


This reduction includes fewer:
- duplicate documents being created,
- ‘temp’ files being left behind and remaining visible to teachers and learner, and
- Smart Share jobs either taking longer than expected, or resulting in some of the students not receiving their copy of the document.  


Working in partnership with a number of customers, we have trialled the new Smart Share release and have been able to monitor this in production.  We have realized marked improvements.

As a result of these positive results, the new Smart Share version was released to all customers at 2pm NZT Friday 18 Sept / 7pm PDT 17 Sept.

Tuesday, 15 September 2015

Improvements to Smart Share

Smart Share has shown a decrease in performance.  Customer feedback and testing confirms the following issues due to failed or delayed processes:
  • Standard practice creates a ‘temp’ file and are produced in Hapara Dashboard folders.  However, they should not be visible to the student or teachers.  Currently, an error is occurring during the sharing process where these files have been left behind and causing duplicate files and confusion.
  • Documents are being duplicated during the sharing process.  These duplicates remain in the learner’s folder.
  • As a teacher initiates a Smart Share request, the process starts as expected.  However, the processing may delay or fail which results in the incomplete job and therefore all or some of the students do not receive their copy of the document.  

Our developers have investigated the root cause of these issues as well as options for quick resolution. As a result of this work, key areas for improvement have been identified and are ready for release. These Smart Smart improvements will be rolled out in a phased approach to ensure consistency and speed.

Phase one of the Smart Share release completed Friday, September 11 to a small group of customers. Upon success, Phase two will begin.

The new Smart Share release should be completed by September 18, with a majority of the customers rolled over prior to that date.  We will update our Support Blog regarding the progress and/or any changes.  We thank you for your patience and time in sending us your feedback, and truly apologize for the impact this makes in the classroom.

Monday, 22 June 2015

Release Notes - June 22, 2015

Improvements



Sorted student lists on the Class Info tab
The student lists in the Class Info tab are now sorted alphabetically by students’ last names.


Speed improvements for large classes and slower computers
We upgraded how Teacher Dashboard’s interface stores data, decreasing the time it takes to open classes. These improvements are most apparent when opening very large classes (100+ students) on relatively slow devices, such as Chromebooks. The time it takes to open smaller classes on faster devices like MacBooks has also improved, but these improvements are less pronounced.


Bug Fixes



Switching subject folders when filtering students by colour group
If a teacher filtered students by colour group in one subject folder and then navigated to another subject folder, the student panels disappeared. Now, student panels stay visible when a teacher switches to another subject folder.

Thursday, 18 June 2015

A Note From Our Founder

Our goal at Hapara is to equip educators with tools to open up the digital world to the classroom. We strive to make the 21st century teacher’s role as empowering and user-friendly as possible. We’re genuinely passionate about helping educators.
Recently we released Teacher Dashboard 2 - an upgrade featuring an improved interface and set of enhancements we developed in consultation with teachers.  Regrettably, a number of customers encountered performance problems with this upgrade. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused; it has been a top priority for our team.
To address these issues, we have undertaken a thorough review of the system, focused on:
  • improving the application responsiveness,
  • increasing our visibility to performance issues, and
  • streamlining our interactions with the new Google APIs.  

This is a significant and continuing program of work, resulting in improved performance and greater stability nearly every week.  For more information regarding these fixes, please refer to our Release Notes.   
Moving forward, we are are actively monitoring performance and refining our systems to improve speed and reliability. Your ongoing feedback is invaluable as we improve our systems; thank you in advance for your continued partnership.  We encourage you to subscribe to this blog and watch our Release Notes for the latest information. We are working hard to ease your user experience and to rebuild your confidence. The entire Hapara team thanks you for your continued support.
Respectfully,

Jan Zawadzki
CEO

Friday, 8 May 2015

Regarding the Google Alert for Discontinued SDK APIs

Many of our subscribers recently received an email from Google stating that the discontinued Provisioning API is still being used by a third party application. Some of our internal tools featured small bits of non-user facing code that had yet to be transitioned away from the deprecated APIs. This evening, as we worked to clean up and transition the last of the old code, we inadvertently made some API calls and triggered the Google alert you received.
  • We sincerely apologize for the alarming emails.
  • None of the API calls made are related to Teacher Dashboard.
  • There is ZERO action required on your part.
  • We sincerely apologize a second time.


Should you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out.


Thank You,
Hapara Support

Thursday, 2 April 2015

Updated Network Whitelist for TD2

Another day of full TD2 implementation is in full swing! We have come across a few access issues, and wanted to make you aware of the following URLs that will need to be whitelisted on your school network’s firewall or web content filter. Adding these URLs to your whitelist will ensure that Teacher Dashboard 2 functions without issue.

   https://accounts.google.com
   https://apis.google.com
   https://content.googleapis.com
   https://fonts.googleapis.com
   https://oauth.googleusercontent.com
   https://haparaview.appspot.com
   https://teacherdashboard.com
   https://www.teacherdashboard.com
   https://www.google-analytics.com


For a the complete list of recommended whitelists, please refer to our Support article here:

Thank You,

Hapara Support

Wednesday, 1 April 2015

Tips and Tricks for Teacher Dashboard 2

Full implementation of Teacher Dashboard 2 has now been in place for over nine hours! Whether you finished your first day, are sitting down to lunch after your morning lessons, or are just opening the blinds to your classroom, we hope you are as excited as we are. To help you get the most out of TD2, we have multiple resources in various mediums to ease adoption of the new platform:
  • Not sure how to do something on TD2? Well, lucky for you we have a handy How-To Guide full of step-by-step instructions and tips for every action you might need.
  • If visuals help you more, our Customer Success team has also put together some training videos to help demonstrate some classroom scenarios and key features.
  • Want a more in depth look? We offer TD2 orientations four times a week! Sign up today!

Feel we missed something or have a question? Drop us a line in the comments box or at support@hapara.com.

Cheers,
The Hapara Support Team

Tuesday, 31 March 2015

Welcome to Teacher Dashboard 2!

Teacher Dashboard 2 is now live! As of 31-March 18:30 NZT / 30-March 22:30 PDT, Teacher Dashboard Classic had been retired and TD2 is now the official interface of Hapara Teacher Dashboard. All users will be automatically directed to TD2 when attempting to access any instance of Teacher Dashboard.

Please stay tuned to this blog for updates and helpful tips throughout this opening week. To assist our users in the switch to Teacher Dashboard 2, we have compiled the following guide on our Support site: Getting Started with Teacher Dashboard 2.

We hope you enjoy the new interface! As always, please feel free to provide any feedback or suggestions to the “How can we improve this page field?” of any TD page and let us know of any issues by contacting us at support@hapara.com.

Thank You,

The Hapara Support Team

Thursday, 26 March 2015

Release Notes - March 26, 2015

What’s New

Configuration link for admins
TD Admins will now see a Configuration link in TD2, just as in Teacher Dashboard Classic.

Bug Fixes

Resetting students’ passwords
Google sometimes rejects new passwords if they’re too weak, but TD2’s password reset tool didn’t indicate such rejections. That tool now reveals such errors and suggests how to avoid them.
Seeing multiple schools as a TD Admin
For multi-school TD Admins without their own classes, TD2’s All Classes tab displayed classes from only one school. That tab now has a drop-down menu that lets TD Admins access classes from all of their schools.
Showing class descriptions in TD2
TD2 now honors the setting to display class descriptions instead of class names in the My Classes tab, in the All Classes tab, and elsewhere. Class nicknames, however, still take precedence over class names and descriptions.

Miscellaneous

Teacher Dashboard Classic retiring on March 30
Still using Teacher Dashboard Classic (TDC)? Then you’ve probably seen our messages promoting TD2 on TDC’s home page, in Smart Copy, and in Interact. Try TD2 today by visiting www.teacherdashboard.com! Starting March 30, teachers will be redirected to TD2 automatically. For more information, see our blog.

Friday, 13 March 2015

Release Notes - March 12, 2015

What’s New

Class Nicknames
Users can now nickname their classes without changing the official names in TD2. This lets teachers make more friendly alternatives to their school’s default class names, which may be long or confusing. 
Notes:
  • New nicknames can take a little while to propagate to all of Teacher Dashboard’s tabs.
  • Nicknames do not affect how classes are loaded into Teacher Dashboard.
  • Nicknames are specific to each individual teacher.

Improvements

Smart Share Progress Screen
Smart Share now shows its progress more clearly, even if you’re sharing files with students in multiple student domains. We’ve also updated its appearance to fit in better with the rest of TD2.

Bug Fixes

Loading a non-teacher’s classes in Teacher Dashboard 2
In TD2, non-teachers without classes on the My Classes tab would see a perpetual loading screen on that tab. Now the tab simply states that there are no classes on it.

Showing blog activity from multiple blogs for one student
For students with multiple blogs, TD2’s Blogger tab only showed the activity from one blog. Now, the Blogger tab shows recent activity from all of a student's blogs.

Miscellaneous

Promoting Teacher Dashboard 2 - Teacher Dashboard Classic Retiring March 31
Still using Teacher Dashboard Classic? Then you’ve probably seen our messages promoting TD2 on TDC’s home page, in Smart Copy, and in Interact. Try TD2 today by visiting www.teacherdashboard.com!  After March 31, teachers will be redirected to TD2 automatically. For more information, see our blog.  

Tuesday, 24 February 2015

Release Notes - February 24, 2015

What’s new in Teacher Dashboard 2:

  • Class Color Coding
    Teachers are now able to color their classes so the classes can be easily differentiated.
  • Blogger
    A "Blogger" tab that displays student blogging activity is now available. Blogger student panels display a preview and now have an "Open" button at the top that clicks through to the top level of their blog
    • Note: Blogger is not enabled by default. Each school must choose to enable it. The school Hapara administrator can do this via the td-admin tool.
  • Item Display Settings
    How many items the teacher asked to display in each dashboard tab is now remembered. Next time the same dashboard tab is opened for the same class, the number of items displayed will default to the teacher's last selection.
    • Note: Each class plus dashboard tab combination has its own setting (each of which is now individually remembered). Changing the number of items displayed in one class will not affect other classes. Changing the number of items displayed in one tab will not affect other tabs
  • Add/Remove Students
    Teachers can now add & remove existing students via the Class Info page.
    • Note: The teacher specifies the student to add using either their Google user name or their ID#. Each school decides which identifier is used, and can elect to disable this feature for their teachers.
    • Note: It can take up to 24 hours before the student changes impact the TD2 tabs.
  • Logout
    The top right drop down menu now contains a logout button.


Other changes and bug fixes:

  • Class Info Tooltips Restored
    The Class Info tooltips on the Class list are now visible again
  • Hide Classes Function Fixed
    Clicking the 'hide' button from the My Classes page did not always hide the class. This TD2 issue has been fixed
  • Force Password Reset Enabled
    TD2 now obeys the "Force reset on login" checkbox available on the Class Info page, and used when resetting a student's password.

Wednesday, 11 February 2015

Release Notes - February 11, 2015

What’s new in Teacher Dashboard 2:

  • Teachers are now able to use %F %L to put student names anywhere in a document file name in Teacher Dashboard 2 as was possible in Teacher Dashboard Classic.

Other changes and bug fixes:

  • The preview information shown when hovering over a document title in a student panel is now showing even when the student panel is at the bottom of the dashboard.
  • Teachers with uppercase characters in their email address will no longer get an error message when logging into Teacher Dashboard 2.
  • The beta feedback form now works correctly for multi-domain customers.
  • The label of "My hidden Classes" has been corrected to "My Hidden Classes"

Wednesday, 28 January 2015

Release Notes - January 28, 2015

What’s new in Teacher Dashboard 2:

  • Some customers have multiple domains for their students (e.g., mydistrictEast.edu and mydistrictWest.edu). Teacher Dashboard 2 now works for those customers: a teacher can see all classes and students, even those in the other domains; admins from one domain can see classes and students from that domain, but not from others. (note: this does not cover customers that have multiple domains for teachers; nor teachers with gmail addresses)
  • Customers can now drag and drop student panels, to re-arrange their dashboard as they want e.g. to group particular students together or move specific students to the top of the screen.
  • When inspecting a student's gmail, it's useful to know which messages the student has read. Now unread email messages are displayed in bold in the gmail tab, as the original Teacher Dashboard did.

Other changes and bug fixes:

  • If a customer uses Smart Share to simultaneously share documents to students in two classes which are in different domains, Smart Share was only sharing the documents to the first of the two classes. Smart Share now shares the documents to both classes as expected.
  • While Teacher Dashboard displayed classes and students correctly for teachers, domain administrators were unable to view classes and students. This has been corrected.
  • Domain administrators can choose to disable Interact, or limit its availability to specific teachers, times, or networks. There were situations when our sandboxes (demo domains for sales teams) weren't respecting the access controls for Interact. That has been fixed.
  • After using Smart Share to create new documents and share them with students, the new documents were correctly appearing in the student panels, but mousing over the new documents did not display a thumbnail preview. Mousing over these files now shows a thumbnail preview.
  • If a customer was logged into Teacher Dashboard, but left the Teacher Dashboard page untouched for an hour or more, the student panels would not refresh when they refreshed the page, i.e. the spinning image in the student panels would spin forever. This issue has been resolved.
  • The Sharing tab enables teachers to find student files which weren't shared with the teacher, and then click to open those files. Behind the scenes, Teacher Dashboard grants the teacher permission and then an hour later revokes that permission. In some cases Google API errors would occur while revoking the permission, although no problem was reported to the teacher or student. These changes ensure those errors are caught, diagnosed, and appropriate action taken for the correct operation of the system.
  • The class selection menu no longer remains open after a teacher has made a selection, it now closes as it should.
  • A grammar error in the body of the "add/remove student" email has been fixed. Grammar matters, people!

Monday, 12 January 2015

Release Notes - January 12, 2015

What’s new in Teacher Dashboard 2:

  • Teacher Dashboard 2 now has an internationalization framework built in and is now available in our first international language, French. We use your Google account setting for language to determine whether to show you English or French.
  • The Manage Classes page did not handle long class names elegantly, making the page difficult to read. An update has been made so that the panels expand to better handle these class names.
  • The Classes drop-down menu in the top-left now shows up to 10 classes in alphabetical order so you can access more of your classes quickly.

Other changes and bug fixes:

  • Student content residing in subfolders was not appearing. This has now been fixed and contents of all folders will be showing.
  • The Classes drop-down menu has been updated so that it expands to fit class names instead of showing horizontal scrollbars. This allow the menu to be easily viewable and therefore eliminates the need to scroll through class names.
  • The following three browser-related bugs have been fixed:
    • Internet Explorer:  the Hapara logo was showing over the navigation bar and is now appropriately placed.
    • Safari:  the "Document", "Modified by" and "Updated" were overlapping the student name bar and is now clearly visible.
    • Firefox:  the sorting tool closed before an option could be selected. It now remains open to allow selection.
  • Errors logging into Teacher Dashboard occurred for customers with uppercase letters in their Google ID. This has been fixed and access is granted again.

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.