D2L (the company that owns Brightspace) uses Continuous Delivery to update our Brightspace system. The Continuous Delivery model gives us regular monthly updates allowing for incremental and easily integrated changes with no downtime required for our Brightspace system.
Our Continuous Delivery update occurs on the 4th Thursday of each month. D2L provides release notes to help users stay up-to-date with the changes.
Here are some of the updates in the May 2024/20.24.5 release that were added to our system this month:
1) Awards – Certificate ID for an issued award
To improve security when issuing certificates, instructors can now use a new replacement string field when creating their certificate templates to add an automatically-generated numeric ID. This ID uniquely identifies the issued award, which can be verified using the new Brightspace API.
The feature introduces a new replacement string {CertificateID} that instructors can add to their PDF templates. A unique ID is generated and populated into the replacement string {CertificateID} on an ongoing basis when released.
The unique generated ID is 12 numeric characters long and is stored in the Brightspace database as CertificateID, along with other data for the issued award.
Note: The {CertificateID} replacement string follows existing rules of other current replacement strings and is marked read-only.
To support this change, the new Awards Brightspace API has been introduced, which allows the verification of issued certificates:
- /d2l/api/bas/(version)/issued/certificates/(certificateId)
The feature is only available on certificates issued with this release when the Certificate ID replacement string is added to the certificate template. The Certificate ID does not have to be added to a certificate template to be auto-generated, but the ID has to be added to be visible to the learner.
Previously, the {CertificateID} replacement string was not available.
2) Grades – Feedback files are now available in Grades for Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions
This feature allows instructors to ensure that learners can easily review feedback from the Grades tool.
Instructor feedback added in Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions is now visible to learners under Grades.
Previously, feedback files were only available to the learner by accessing the activity.
3) Manage Files – Receive notification when zipping and unzipping files
As of this release, whenever users add (zip) or extract (unzip) one or more files to a ZIP archive in Manage Files, a new dialog confirms that files are being zipped or unzipped in the background. Once the process is complete, a notification appears in Update alerts (the bell icon).
Previously, adding files to a ZIP archive was not a background process and thus there was no notification after zipping. In addition, the notification for unzipping files appeared in the Subscription alerts area.
If you are interested in getting more information about these and all the May Continuous Delivery updates, refer to the Brightspace Platform May 2024/20.24.5 Release Notes.
Additionally, refer to the Brightspace Release Notes for Continuous Delivery Releases, for details about current, past, and to preview upcoming continuous delivery updates.
Want more information?
View current, past, and preview upcoming Continuous Delivery release notes
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