Linewize - release notes

Release notes

Classwize and School Manager (Cloud) Release 1.6.6

17 December, 2020

Welcome to Classwize and School Manager release 1.6.6!

This is our last major release for 2020, and our focus has been on laying the groundwork for things that we want to accomplish next year.  We’ve made our first steps towards providing better help for Classwize from within Classwize by adding a new Guide button which links to our Classwize cheat sheet pdf.  We’ve also started work making student tiles more informative and giving you a better idea of why you might not be seeing any activity from a student in your class.

Thank you all for your continued support this past year.  We’re very excited about what we’re planning to bring you in 2021!

New Features & Improvements

  • We’ve added a new Guide button to the Classwize menu.  This opens up a pdf cheat sheet covering the Classwize interface and how Class Tools work.  It’s a bit barebones at the moment, but it’s a  stepping stone to providing easier access to help information from inside Classwize.  Watch this space!
  • We’ve updated what Classwize student tiles show when Classwize can’t see any activity from a student.  Previously the student would show up as offline when that wasn’t always the case.
  • We’ve given School Manager administrators the ability to stop users from being able to logout from the block page.
  • The Send Message Class Tool in Classwize stores the last message you sent to your students.  The drawback of that, aside from being able to see the embarrassing typos you made, was that you had to manually delete the old text before you could send a new message with new typos.  We’ve now added a ‘Clear’ button to quickly remove the old message text.
  • Our Australian School Manager support phone number has changed and we changed the support menu accordingly.

Bug Fixes

  • We fixed an uncommon issue where OneRoster and ClassLink syncs would fail because it had a sync status of ‘none’.
  • In very large schools with tens of thousands of classes, adding or editing a class shouldn’t cause School Manager and Classwize to timeout or give an internal server error any more. 
  • We fixed an issue where clicking on a Red Flag in School Manager would return a ‘no data to display’ error.
  • Video views and search counts should now correctly update if you change the time period of a User Timeline Report in School Manager.

Mobile Zone for Chrome 1.8.5

11 December, 2020

Welcome to Mobile Zone for Chrome 1.8.5!

Our focus for this release has been on improving performance and giving teachers better visibility on what their students are actually up to.

We’re rolling this update out in stages over the next week, so it may take a little while for it to be available for you.

New Features

  • We've improved the logic behind when Mobile Zone takes screenshots.  It now takes a screenshot if:
    • the student opens a new tab or window.
    • the student goes to a new website.
    • the teacher sends a message or pauses the internet.
    • it hasn't taken another screenshot in the last ten seconds.

Bug Fixes

  • We discovered and fixed a situation where entering a Bypass Code didn't actually let you bypass anything.
  • Some strange things were happening when students opened a blank page as a new tab or were in one of Chrome's internal (chrome://) menus.  There should be less strangeness (and fewer crashes) now.

Classwize and School Manager (Cloud) Release 1.6.1

7 December, 2020

Welcome to Classwize and School Manager release 1.61!

Our focus for this release was to build on some of the work we’ve done in other releases over the past few months.  For Classwize users, this means improving our menus and interface to make it easier to use and give you more information about what’s going on in your class.  For School Manager users, we’re continuing to do work in the background to improve performance, particularly when syncing.

New Features

  • We now tell you if you can’t modify students in your Classwize class because they’re being managed by your school.
  • The toolbar in Classwize no longer gets hidden if you have a large class and scroll down the page.
  • You should no longer need to refresh Classwize to see changes you’ve made using the Modify Students tool.
  • If you’re not certain who you are, Classwize will not help you resolve any existential crises but it will now show who you’re logged in as.
  • We’ve improved the way that School Manager syncs with OneRoster, particularly for schools that have very large data sets. 
  • Teachers who were assigned to a Classwize class as observers were being treated as if they were students by Classwize, and being affected by all of the class tools settings.  We’ve made it so that doesn’t happen anymore if you use Exceptions in School Manager to add teachers to a class.
  • We’ve made some descriptions of configuration options in School Manager more, er, descriptive.
  • Classwize is now compatible with Python 3.9.0.

Bug Fixes

  • Substitute or relief teachers should now see all of the Classwize classrooms that they’re eligible to teach in.
  • We fixed an issue where keyword blocking wasn’t always working if the student was not on the school network.
  • School Manager's Alert Manager shouldn’t throw a tantrum when it encounters Red Flags containing certain uncommon unicode characters.
  • A recursive loop was causing Signature/Category searches in School Manager to get stuck at the ‘loading’ stage because they were stuck in a recursive loop.  
  • It was possible to use Classwize to send messages and set focus, reward and pause rules for students and have them apply even when your class wasn’t in session.  We’ve fixed this and also made it more clear which of your class tools can be used when your class isn’t in session.
  • We fixed an issue where School Manager administrators could see the Cyber Safety, Overview and Activity pages of groups they weren’t assigned to.
  • School Manager shouldn’t direct Australian users to US-based support.

Classwize and School Manager (Cloud) Release 1.5.9

5 November, 2020

Welcome to Classwize and School Manager release 1.5.9!

Our focus for this release has been on giving some love to content filtering tools and giving School Manager Global Administrators the ability to import more and more useful data.

New Features

  • We’ve expanded the types of data you can import into School Manager. You can now import IP ranges, IP Subnets, MAC addresses and search keywords in the "Configuration > Tools > Pool" workflow. We’ll have a guide to doing this soon!
  • The ‘Signature/Category Search’ in "Filtering > Content Filtering" will now tell you if a domain you’re searching for sits in a category that has a parent category, and what that parent category is. For example, if you search for webjet.com, the search should tell you that this domain sits in the ‘Travel’ category, which is part of the ‘Shopping and Travel’ category.
  • We’ve completed moving Classwize from being styled with CSS to being styled with SCSS. We’re sure you’re as excited about this as we are.
  • We’ve continued to tweak the Classwize UI, this time to save you valuable clicks when using Class Tools to message students or open new sites for them.

Bug Fixes

  • The ‘Signature/Category Search’ in "Filtering > Content Filtering" in School Manager no longer returns incorrect results if you have blocked or allowed top level domains like .co.
  • We fixed an issue for Australian and New Zealand schools where Filtering Alert emails thought you were in America.
  • When editing or making a report in "Filtering > Emailed Reports", you should now be able to see all available Red Flags instead of just the ones that fit on your screen.
  • You shouldn’t get unwanted duplicate classrooms in Classwize after syncing anymore. You can, however, deliberately create duplicates if you’re certain you really want to.
  • We fixed a rare issue in Classwize where adding a student to your class using Class Tools could cause Classwize to hang and return an error message until you refreshed your browser.
  • Our banner in School Manager alerting you of incidents was automatically giving you a start and finish date even when we didn’t actually have them.
  • You should be able to apply schedules to Classwize classes created from LDAP and Azure group imports once again.
  • We fixed an issue in School Manager where using a Client’s OAuth Key for Google Sync would stop Classrooms from syncing about an hour after you turned on.
  • While we normally value out-of-the-box thinking, we had to fix an issue in Classwize where the student tiles would break out of their container boxes if students opened a lot of tabs or websites in very quick succession.

Classwize and School Manager (Cloud) Hotfix 1.5.8

3 November, 2020

We fixed an issue some very large school districts encountered where classes and users could be missing after running a ClassLink import.

Classwize and School Manager (Cloud) Release 1.5.7

27 October, 2020

Welcome to Classwize and School Manager release 1.5.7!

Our focus for this release has been fixing common syncing issues and laying the groundwork for splitting Google Directory and Google Classroom out into their own synchronisation schedules.  Over the next few months, we’re expecting to move to a model where School Manager will continue to synchronize with directory services (e.g. Google, LDAP, Azure) with a dedicated schedule set for Google Classroom. Manual Synchronization can still be run by School Manager Administrators.

The first step in completing this split is giving teachers the ability to manually sync Classwize with their Google Classroom.  This will make sure that teachers can easily update Classwize with any changes that they make to their Google Classroom in between scheduled Google Classroom synchronizations.

We’ve added a new option in School Manager that, if enabled, will let teachers do just that.  You can read about that in more detail below, or access our quick guide for teachers in our knowledge base.  We’re also investigating if this feature can be made available to schools that use Clever, Classlink, OneRoster and Wonde classroom synchronization services.

New Features

There’s a new option in “School Manager > Configuration > Classwize” called “Allow teacher to sync Google Classrooms”.  Enabling this option will add a “sync” button to Classwize that lets teachers manually sync their classes with Google Classroom.  Disabling it hides the “sync” button.  School Manager administrators will still be able to run manual synchronizations for their school and district.

We’ve got a quick guide for teachers on using the sync feature and troubleshooting common issues in our knowledge base.


Bug Fixes

  • We’re continuing to do a lot of behind-the-scenes work to improve performance and stability by cleaning up code and getting rid of unnecessary logout calls.
  • In our last update, student tiles in Classwize were supposed to display alphabetically by first name.  This wasn’t working for everyone, but it should be now.
  • You’ll now get an error message if you try to create a website content filtering rule in School Manager that doesn’t include a URL.  We’re also forcing domain names in filtering rules to be in lowercase because some of you like writing domains in mixed or upper case and that both disturbs us and confuses the filter.
  • We fixed an issue where you couldn’t run School Manager reports on some iOS users because there was a mismatch between their iOS login and the School Manager directory.
  • Microsoft Azure should now successfully sync with School Manager if you have got the “Use Microsoft API” option checked.
  • We fixed an issue for OneRoster users where syncing would fail due to an invalid certificate error despite your certificate being entirely valid.
  • If you use both Google Groups and Google Classrooms, you shouldn’t get duplicate classrooms in Classwize after syncing anymore.
  • We fixed an issue for Wonde users where teachers couldn’t be imported into School Manager.
  • We’ve done some clean-up of the Classwize user interface to make things neater, and the text on the Focus interface should better reflect how the Focus feature works.

Cloud Release 1.5.6

12 October, 2020

New Features

  • We’ve made some big improvements to the Classwize “Rules” interface and workflow. You can now edit existing rules!
  • Classwize now shows your students’ real names instead of their system username wherever possible, and student tiles now display alphabetically by first name.
  • We’ve added functionality in School Manager that lets us display improved tooltips and provide in-application help and tutorials. We also gave ourselves the ability to use School Manager and Classwize to alert you to incidents and upcoming maintenance.
  • Saving changes to a class in Classwize now gives you an indication that it’s working away in the background instead of leaving you wondering if it was doing anything.
  • We’ve improved performance by optimising the Chrome extension’s configuration and doing a lot of other behind-the-scenes work.
  • School Manager Administrators can manually authenticate users from within School Manager.
  • We’ve standardised the “Close” user interface element in Classwize and improved the look and wording of the “Focus Class” interface.
  • We’ve improved the look of the “Help” information panel in Classwize, and made it easier for School Manager Administrators to keep the information in it current.
  • We’ve continued work migrating School Manager and Classwize to the Google Cloud Platform to improve performance and stability.

Bug Fixes

  • We’re deploying a fix to make “Search Blocking” and “Red Flags” use the same set of keywords. We’re rolling this out over the next few weeks, so it may take a little while for this to show up for you.
  • The “Weekly Wellbeing Reports” sections are now populated with correct information. We promise.
  • We’ve fixed an issue where teachers were unable to add students to a local group in Classwize.
  • Class Titles in Classwize should now display correctly when there is only one class.
  • Classrooms with special characters in their Title can now be opened from within School Manager.
  • School Manager should correctly display the IP addresses associated with “School Manager device > Configuration > Networking > Interfaces”.
  • The School Manager Permissions table now shows the user-friendly name.
  • We’ve corrected the Pause Internet label and preview text for “Select Students” dropdown list.
  • We’ve fixed an issue where Classwize would make multiple login calls to Google/Azure authentication services when it didn’t need to.
  • School Manager now requires a valid MAC address when filtering by MAC address.
  • Classes in Classwize now end when their Group is deleted in School Manager.

Cloud Release 1.5.5

24 September, 2020

Resolved
  • [EDUGCP-434] - MyLinewize cutover to GCP
  • [EDUGCP-408] - Improve performance in GCP when using a Reporting/Pastoral Care Administrator with a lot of groups
  • [EDUGCP-414] - Timezone in /managedevice/settings/device not loading
  • [EDUGCP-416] - Current Transfer Rate does not show a value
  • [EDUGCP-454] - Errors in Cybersafety > Blocked when drilling into Policies
  • [EDUGCP-455] - Online device showing as Offline on first and subsequent page loads
  • [EDUGCP-466] - New coredumps are not showing in Diagnostics > Coredumps
  • [EDUGCP-376] - Extract services to their own repo: Bandwidth-quotas worker
  • [EDUGCP-405] - Extract services to their own repo: surfwizewebv2
  • [LW-1482] - Use RealName instead of Username to identify users in Classwize
  • [LW-1563] - Poor performance of AES/devices is starting to impact cause issues, fix it
  • [LW-1585] - Improve Classlink authentication logic so it can only trigger once
  • [LW-1596] - Remove network topology and interfaces from Configuration > Dashboard
  • [LW-1541] - Add Rule Modal in Classwize missed some language changes
  • [LW-1548] - Region switching (US -> AU) needs to be more performant
  • [LW-1557] - Syslog config returns undefined values when new
New Features
  • [LW-1511] - When there is a system incident / planned maintenance we need to keep our users informed with integration to status.io

Cloud Release 1.5.3

14 September, 2020

Resolved
  • [LW-1543] - classwize students dropdown in edit class modal not populated when device has restricted groups
New Features
  • [LW-1529] - Allow using a customer’s Google OAuth credentials for syncs

Cloud Release 1.5.2

7 September, 2020

Resolved
  • LW-1498: Classwize pause modal glitching when trying to remove multiple students
  • LW-1272: Search terms in /cybersafety/searches window show implied interactivity but are not clickable
  • LW-1430: Add User Modal: Validation message and invalid user details are not getting cleared off on modal close
  • LW-1488: Internal name is displayed in the Groups dropdown list on edit permission screen
  • LW-1515: School Manager Cloud throwing error when changing between us-1 and au-1
  • LW-891: Improve some tables in School Manager sorting logic
  • LW-1323: Improve Classwize “open url/tab” modal
  • LW-1328: “Apply to all students” checkbox for Pause Internet modal in Classwize
  • LW-1472: Change label on Classwize login page to include districts
  • LW-1477: Finish Classrooms -> Classwize language rebrand
  • LW-1489: Rename “Policy” to “Rule” for consistent teacher language in Classwize
  • LW-1480: Deprecate Classwize "Activity" tab
New Features
  • LW-1485: Add ClassLink support for teachers using Classwize