IOMAD 4.5 LTS

PLEASE NOTE

Upgrade could be very slow if you have multiple tenants AND multiple language packs, so we recommend patching your current version first before starting the IOMAD 4.5 upgrade process.

NB: There was a scheduled task added to all supported branches (after 22nd January) designed to mitigate time-to-upgrade. This scheduled task needs to run before upgrading to 4.5, which is why patching the current version first is recommended.

Following the release of IOMAD 4.4 in December, IOMAD 4.5 LTS brings some community-requested features into core code. As the turnaround between versions was much shorter than normal, not all of the requests made it in this time, so we’re working towards getting as many as possible into 5.0 with the aim of release in July.

• The IOMAD OIDC Sync plugin has been added to core. This is an opt-in plugin that will search for the tenant users and create them if they don’t currently exist. There are options to filter users via a Group ID, so only users within that directory group will be handled. You can also decide what to do with users who are no longer found on the remote system: do nothing, suspend, or delete. NB: If you choose to suspend them and they reappear, you also have the option to reinstate.
• An Advanced company settings page has been added to the IOMAD dashboard. From here, you can set up the IOMAD OIDC authentication settings and synchronisation, the IOMAD SAML2 authentication settings, and the tenant user policies. As you’d expect, these are capability-based, so rights can be given (and should be, in the case of the IOMAD OIDC Sync) to self-manage their own configuration.
• You can now upload new companies via CSV. That’s it. Does what it says on the tin.

1. Edit company now has capability-based access to different parts of the form. Rights to edit the maximum number of users or contract end dates can be given to resellers, and rights to edit the company appearance can be given to the company managers. The company SMTP settings have also been moved to this form, and control can, again, be given to the company manager role.
2. Email templates have been overhauled to allow for the “control” parts of the template (who is cc’d, when the template is sent, and how many times) to be kept separate from the “language” parts of the template (message subject, body and signature fields) so that changing the language for a template doesn’t change the rest. The list of templates has been sanitised (removing those unused), and specific scheduled tasks created for the digest emails. Issues where editing templates when not using English have been resolved, as well as issues when sending templates not using the correct language strings.
3. The training event booking process has been updated to allow users to include notes in their requests, and management of bookings now uses a modal form for deleting the booking, updating the booking notes, or moving the user to another event. The course page text now includes the user numbers booked (before the date) and attended (after the date when the user has met the completion criteria for the activity), and the booking link has been removed. Finally, management pages have been updated to remove duplication of text and take advantage of the theme buttons.
4. Updates made to the IOMAD Merge users tool, IOMAD OIDC authentication plugin, and IOMAD policy tool (all in line with the latest Moodle plugin versions).

If you want to try out these new features, or any of the improved IOMAD functionality, then our demo site will be updated over the next couple of days. You can also find the complete list of bug fixes since the IOMAD 4.4 release here.

Have fun! Derick – Chief IOMAD developer