Thursday 16th June (The Starz Team)

We have received notice from the developers that a small update is due on the 22nd June 2011.   It is not expected that this release should have any great impact on users and in the main.

The following changes are expected:

Calendar

• Remove calendar doodles from the teacher themed calendar.

Task Tool

• Within the progress screen for all the pupils within a task, include a button to ‘Mail All’ which sends a mail to all participants of the task.
• Within the instructions of a task, enable attaching a file (works in the same way as a community page).
   
• Inclusion of a ‘Repeat Weekly’ option when you are setting up a task
   
• Allow a task assignment work to be saved without finishing - currently saving a document automatically marks the assignment as finished and it disappears from the "To Do" list.  Instead, for most task types we can ask the user whether it is finished. If if is not finished then the task should remain in the To Do, and clicking on the item should load the previously saved work.
   
• When an email is sent to the pupil to say that the task is completed there is now a link to view their work.
   
• Media Embed has been added to the instructions of a task meaning that you can add media content such as a Youtube video.
   
• New task type will allow a file to be chosen. The file may be uploaded, created or chosen from existing files in the user's My Work area
   
• Addition of a Markbook tab to the task management page, providing a table of marks for all tasks created within the community. The tasks can be filtered by status.
   
• Currently you cannot create a task for an existing survey or quiz.  Provision of creating a task when the survey or quiz is published so that the task can be initiaised with the title, start and due dates, and the mark schema for quizzes.
   
• Add browse for task participants for existing tasks to more easily add larger numbers of users once a task has been set-up
   

Starter Theme (KS1) Email

• Display a notification, when deleting a message, to confirm which message has been deleted.

Teacher Theme Email

• Ability to create folders in areas other than the inbox, i.e. the sent folder, in staff webmail.
• Inclusion of a more detailed explanation as to why an email has not sent. i.e. “There are no addresses to send the mail to”
   
• Addition of 2 lists, 1 for address book contacts and 1 for friends within the platform to help manage pupils from adult contacts
   
• The selection area for each mail be extended to include the column, so that check boxes cannot be missed when selecting multiple mails
   
• change the sort order within teacher webmail

Surveys and Quizzes

• Added functionality through the admin cogs to include the cutting and pasting of surveys and quizzes.
• Quizzes and surveys will only appear in the ‘Whats’ On feed if they are not associated with a task

Account Administration

• Move the main administrator accounts out of the staff list (superadmin, dbadmin and laadmin) to support previous change introduced when populating communities with members using the 'select folder' option
• Ability to disable the friends feature - this is will affect the whole school and is only available as an 'all on' or 'all off' option.
   

Other

• Instead of sizing the background image to fit within the dimensions of the screen, it should resize to fill the dimensions of the screen.
• Icon designs improvements tosupport the document icon on the homepage.
   
• Abitlity to add export email contacts through a csv file - not specified if this is just for teacher usage

The Starz Team