Release 32
Rocket-fuel your content creation workflow with Content Profiles, a new Activity Class, redesigned Project settings navigation, a new Practice Screen Global Option, and much more.
Activity Classes
New Present:External:Scorable Activity Class
Avallain Author Release 32 introduces Present:External:Scorable, a new Activity Class aimed at enabling seamless and fully functional embedding of external interactive content within an activity in Avallain Author.
In this way, externally created interactive content does not need to be re-created or discarded, allowing users to use it with the same robust interactivity, workflow, administration and publishing properties of Avallain Author.
To use this Activity Class, external interactive content must be uploaded to the Media Library in zip format. If you set the media type filter to “3rd party scorable”, then all assets uploaded with that filter will be automatically tagged. Of course, you can upload without the filter and manually change the metadata setting for the files one by one.
The user can create a new LO or open an existing one, select the Activity Type Present:External:Scorable, and in the Content field click on “Add scorable file”, then select the zip file from the Media Library and insert it into the activity.
Important:
- In order to work correctly, external content must communicate with the LO by implementing an API based on JSChannel. For this, it will be necessary to develop an adaptation layer to translate the external content into messages targeting the API in Avallain Author.
- The look and feel of the external content cannot be modified when embedded in Avallain Author.
- This Activity Class does not have Activity Type Options associated with it; however, it can be configured through Global Options in the same way as any other activity in Avallain Author.
Note: If you need support to carry out this process, do not hesitate to contact the Customer Success team.
Backend enhancements
New Project settings navigation
Project settings have been redesigned to provide an even better user experience, with an interface divided into tabs for easier navigation, without the need for extensive scrolling to find the desired settings.
With this new layout, Project settings is now divided into the following categories:
- Project Settings: contains configuration options related to the appearance and functionality of the project.
- Project Team: enables the management and editing of users and roles within the project.
- Metadata: a section dedicated to the selection of metadata schemas.
- Design packages: in this tab, Design Packages desired for the project can be easily selected and applied.
- Project Activity Types: allows adding and removing the Activity Types available in the project.
- Global Options: in this section it is possible to add and remove Global Options, configure default option values or apply options to sets of LOs.
- Publishing: add and remove publishing types, manage new Content Profiles and wrappers as well as workflow stages.
New Project settings navigation
Introducing Content Profiles
Further enhancing the content creation and workflow experience in an efficient, fast and easily manageable way, Avallain Author Release 32 introduces Content Profiles, which can be created by Admins and used by other roles to speed up the structured and automated deployment of options to LOs.
This new feature consists of a number of preset options that can be easily and automatically applied to one or a set of LOs, without the need to define these options on a case-by-case basis.
Content Profiles offer enormous possibilities for agility and efficiency in situations such as:
- When creating a single LO intended to be used on different devices, in different environments or by different audiences, a specific Content Profile can be applied to run the LO, depending on each circumstance.
- When there is a need to apply a unified look and feel and functionality to a large set of LOs at the same time, a Content Profile can easily be applied to all of them at once quickly, ensuring instant consistency.
Among the advantages of this new feature, content creators can apply Content Profiles to each LO freely, with the ability to preview it with any of the Content Profiles enabled for that LO.
Important:
- Content Profiles only affect LO Options and Global Options.
- Options set in a Content Profile will overwrite options defined individually in a LO.
- Content Profiles can either encompass all Global Options or target specific functionalities such as navigation and validation.
Note: Should you need assistance in implementing Content Profiles, please do not hesitate to contact the Customer Success team.
New panels in the Project Dashboard
The Project Dashboard in Avallain Author Release 32 comes with two new panels, in order to further increase the visibility of useful information, making the management of projects and assets even more efficient.
The new panels are:
- My Tasks: In this panel, users get a list of the LOs that have been assigned to them, providing an action menu for easy and quick access to each pending task.
- Team Progress: This section displays the editing activity filtered by time and user. It also shows the current status of the project’s LOs, whether they are in Draft, Under Review, Approved, Exported, or without a defined status.
In addition to these two new panels, the dashboard now includes tooltips in the top right corner of each tile, with useful information about the function of each section as well as data on the activity carried out by the team on that project.
Metadata schemas extended to Structures
Avallain Author Release 32 extends the metadata configuration options, making it possible for Admins to manage custom metadata schemas for structures in each Product Type.
This way, Project Managers can select in the Product Type those metadata schemas that have been enabled and apply them to all structures within a project.
To further enhance metadata schema administration, now in Avallain Author structure folders will also show an additional button to quickly access the metadata editor and manage those configurable metadata schemas that have been enabled within a project.
In case you do not wish to apply configurable metadata schemas, the unstructured method of attaching key/value pairs to structures is still available to be applied by Project Managers.
Important: Switching between legacy key/value pairs and configurable metadata schemas will lead to loss of data. Using structured metadata is only recommended for new projects.
New image thumbnail full-view mode in the Media Library
As part of the updates included in Avallain Author Release 32, it is now possible to select how image thumbnails are displayed in the Media Library, either showing the full image or a cropped version.
Users can thus either display the full content of each image to, for example, distinguish similar assets easily, or use the cropped view to fill the available thumbnail space and achieve a more uniform view.
UI & UX enhancements
Option locking indicator
Further enhancing the user interface of Avallain Author, the icons that indicate when an option is locked or unlocked have been updated to improve their visibility.
In addition, all options, both those that are locked and those that are unlocked for the user, will now be displayed in the general list of options showing the icon corresponding to their status, either enabled or disabled for use.
In the case of users with the rights to lock or unlock options, they will be able to click on the icon and select the desired status for each option.
Implementing default Design Packages
From Avallain Author Release 32 onwards, it will be necessary for Project Managers to set a default Design Pack for each project, in order to ensure a more streamlined and orderly content creation experience.
Important: In the event that no default Design Pack is set for a project, the first Design Pack in the list will be automatically assigned.
Responsive performance in Order:Sort:Sorting Activity Class
As part of the enhancements included in Avallain Author Release 32, the Activity Class Order:Sort:Sorting has been optimised for mobile view. Design Packs can now perform responsively and decide to collapse containers, displaying a numerical indicator of how many tiles are in each container.
This further extends the responsive capabilities of this Activity Class as well as Avallain Author in general, giving content creators and users even greater possibilities to properly manage and consume learning content in several devices.
Numbered labels for mobile view in Order:Match:Text Gap (Label an image) and Input:Completion:Text Gap (Label an image)
In order to further increase the possibilities of delivering content on mobile devices from Avallain Author Release 32 onwards, we introduce the new functionality of replacing gaps with numbered labels in Order:Match:Text Gap (Label an image) as well as in Input:Completion:Text Gap (Label an image).
With this new functionality, when displaying the activity on a mobile device, gaps can be replaced by numbered labels and the labelled gaps are positioned below the image to make it easier to identify the elements in any screen dimension.
LO & Global Options
Introducing the new Global Option: Practice screen
Avallain Author Release 32 introduces a highly convenient new Global Option called Practice screen, which removes a validated and graded activity from the overall score, allowing users to perform a practice exercise without the risk of affecting their final grade in the course.
With this new Global Option, content creators gain the advantage, for example, of providing at the start of a course a clear and executable example of how the exercise should be carried out, further enhancing the user experience.
“See All Answers” and “See Next Answer” are now Global Options
In order to further increase workflow efficiency in Avallain Author, both See All Answers and See Next Answer will no longer function only as Activity-specific options, but can now be managed as Global Options and therefore configurable at the Product Type, Project, LO Options and Activity level, as well as in the newly introduced Content Profiles.
This increases the potential for increased speed and ease of configuration at both the Activity and broader levels, giving Avallain Author users greater control over the efficient creation of consistent and uniform content.
eBook enhancements
eBook Bookmaker tool now includes a record of imported page files
In order to provide users with useful information about all stages of content creation, from Avallain Author Release 32 onwards, the Bookmaker will include a log of the page files that have been imported into each eBook. These logs will be visible by clicking on the Import Log button below the file selection widget.
Watch the webinar recording
Learn more about this release’s new features by watching the recording of the webinar held by our in-house experts.
