Update Feed

Moodle LMS 3.9

19 June 2020

Moodle LMS version 3.9 is now available (major release).

Upgrading to Moodle LMS 3.9

Moodle LMS 3.9 can be upgraded to (or installed) using any of Installatron's products. Use Installatron's optional Automatic Update feature to automatically apply Moodle LMS updates as new versions are released, or use Installatron's Clone feature to duplicate an existing Moodle LMS install to test the 3.9 upgrade prior to applying it live. Get started managing your Moodle LMS installations with Installatron

What's New in Moodle LMS 3.9

NOTICE
Plugins will not be automatically upgraded as part of this update. You should check for the availability of 3.9-compatible versions of the Moodle plugins that you use before performing this update, and be aware that you may need to manually update plugins afterwards.

Security

Have options to call check_password_policy on every login
Antivirus: Support remote scanning using TCP sockets.
Allow virus checks to be retried if they returned an error state
Add logging for admin setting changes to antivirus to config log
New config option for ClamAV scanning errors to prompt user to try again later
If passwordunmask field is hardcoded in config.php, do not show the value

Activity Chooser

Move turn editing on button out of the edit menu on boost
Rework/Redesign the activity chooser
Front end implementation of indicating favourites with a star
Update activity chooser to include recommended activities
Add admin page for recommending activities
Support categories/tabs in the activity chooser
Ability to search in the activity chooser
New API for extending the activity chooser and implementation of favouriting
Introduce an Activities and Resources tab
Add searching of the recommended activities admin page

H5P

H5P editor integration
Create basic skeleton for a global xAPI library needed for H5P content
Apply Display H5P filter inside <a> tags
Render specific icons for different H5P content types in content bank
New activity icon for H5P
Add a mechanism to support multi H5P core_api versions
Create a new H5P activity
Add Admin UI to delete existing H5P libraries
Add xAPI statement support to mod_h5p
Improve admin UI to manage H5P libraries and give information about H5P tools' status
Create xAPI activity report inside mod_h5p
H5P editor: support content-type translations
Integrate content bank and H5P content creator
Include H5P Activity backup and restore options
H5P editor: integrate translations with Moodle String API
Add support for result, attachments, context to core_xapi library
Add duration, completion and success to H5P activity attempts
Add xAPI result support on mod_h5pactivity
Add link to the content bank in the H5P activity

Content Bank

Create a new 'contentbank' plugin type and a new H5P plugin in the content bank
Backup and restore options for course level content bank
Implement events for content bank
Add a delete content option to the content bank
Create a new repository for the content bank
Implement search functionality for the repository_contentbank
Create a new view type list in the Content Bank
Implement search API for the content bank
Implement search functionality for the content bank

MoodleNet Integration

Core setting to toggle MoodleNet features globally (master)
Allow links to be imported by tool_moodlenet (all versions)
Add links to MoodleNet in Moodle (master)

Participants Page Filtering

Create a single filter for tables and the AMD structure behind this
Update the participants filter to support filtering with additional logic operators
Update fetching of participants to support multiple values per filter
Add additional participants filter types and the ability to add multiple conditions to a filter set
"Enrol users" should not reload the page
Remove the previous (unified) filter from the participants page and deprecate relevant code

Course Copy

Course Copy User Interface

Safe Exam Browser

Add Safe Exam Browser integration to the standard Moodle package (moodle-quizaccess_seb)
New theme settings for secure layout - display lang menu and display logged-in user

Quiz and Questions

Make drag-and-drop onto image questions responsive and fix the print layout
Quiz manual grading: chosen options should be remembered as user preferences
Improve responsive design of drag-drop into text questions (also fixes layout when printed)
Drag-drop question types: remove the hard-coded maximum size limit on images
Update drag-drop marker questions to be more responsive (and improve print layout)
Question: Multi-choice Option to hide system 'Select ...'
GIFT question import/export format should support tags
Intelligent default idnumber when duplicating a question in the question bank
Create an additional admin "Required" setting flag and apply it to quiz require password setting

Badges

Add support for Open Badges 2.1
Hide issuer details when creating badges with Open Badges 2.0 and above
Allow admins to manage available backpacks
Remove support for Mozilla Backpack

Accessibility

Change the bold plugin to use strong tags instead of b for accessibility
Limit the image description length and improve the alt text string
Change the italics plugin to use em tags instead of i for accessibility
Create an accessible change event
Change the strikethrough plugin to use del tags instead of strike for accessibility
Improve the contrast of browser focus outline
Improve UI accessibility on small view ports

Usability

Add ability to summarise all forums in a specific course
Add ability to bulk delete files in "My private files" repository
Improve error handling for unoconv (Universal Office Converter)
Make pasting images into the Atto HTML editor work (as much as browsers will let us)
Add text direction to default ATTO generated markup
Support internationalized domain names (IDN) in URL resources
Workshop: should remember collapsed/expanded sections
Add a new availability completion option - "previous activity with completion"
Add "Go to top" link when scroll down in boost and classic themes
Add ability to duplicate grade items in gradebook setup
Improve the user grade display modal
Show graded status in forum grading UI
Use the checkbox-toggleall component for the gradebook setup page
Reduce the size of titles on the recent activity page
Improve the recent activity block styling
Make fonts appear smooth in Firefox on Mac
My overview block: Add sort by short name
Display more information such as the URL beside licenses drop down menu in help icon
Show steps consistently during import
Make calendar manage subscription form more user friendly
Make book navigation easier to distinguish from activity navigation
Avoid HTML5 player video forced scaling for low resolution videos
Update progress report (Download in Excel-compatible format) dates to a sortable format

Functional Changes

Notify the user when the original file extension has been removed or modified upon file editing in the filepicker
Avoid recycle bin locking the user's session during activity deletion or backup/restore (when it is enabled)
Add core profile fields to user filter
Include site name and link in contact request notifications
Modify the calendar events table to allow any component to create action events
Allow setting a subset of the available units in moodleform duration field
Enable additional content filters by default on new installs
Add a Quality of Service layer to the processing of the ad-hoc task queue
LTI 1.3: Allow tool to use JWKS URI rather than Public Key
Add name of user to fields included in forum exports
Render HTML in PDF dataformat export
Improve detection of non-public sites for registration
Include client_id and lti_deployment_id in OIDC Login Initiation request
Add a campaign feature, with a link to a Moodle page, to support sustainability
Stop using YUI modals in core/notification for alert and confirmation
Create "Feedback" link in Moodle to permanent survey site
Mark all as read in notifications menu should not apply to notifications received after the page was loaded
Subject for messages digest email should include site name
Move indent button to list group by default
User Tours: Restrict tours to account creation date, first login date or last login date
Upgrade jQuery EU Cookie Law popups to latest version
Prevent LTI Advantage external tool add failing due to uniqueness constraint and tag not persisting
Files API: Add Streaming file mime type support

For Administrators

Add new capabilities to control adding LTI activities from preconfigured tools
Add system status report including tasks with cli status script
Create user interface to add/delete new licenses
Add "show differences only" into tool_capability
Increase default session timeout and allow it to be configured in the GUI
Add support for per-task concurrency limits
It should be possible to view anonymous events in reports
Add support for custom course fields to Upload courses
Allow graceful fast exit of cron.php / adhoc_task.php via SIGTERM or SIGINT
Ad-hoc task processing for automated backups
Add filtering to the config changes admin report
Enable cli/adhoc_task.php to be run as a pseudo daemon with --keep-alive=60
Update admin/tool/task/cli/adhoc_task.php to respect task_adhoc_concurrency_limit
Re-run a scheduled task from the web
CLI changes should be included in the config changes report
Add more options to Maximum number of backups kept
Allow cron cli option to remotely stop all crons
Scheduled tasks admin: usability enhancements
Scheduled tasks admin: show the defaults in the form where you edit the settings for a task
Develop an automatic approval tool for delete/export of personal data with a standard completion reply
Increase the Antivirus default chunk size (ClamAV)

Mobile

Update the tool_mobile_disabledfeatures setting with H5P and new blocks supported on the app
Add a new "Mobile app subscription plan" section in the Moodle app settings
Enable logging into the mobile app via QR code in the web user profile
Add new "activeusers" field containing last month active users in registration data
Enable "Mobile Notifications" when a site is registered
Site admins should see a warning asking them to enable the Mobile notifications plugin after registering for an Airnotifier key

Performance

Read/Write splitting of DB operations to support primary/replica database configurations
Improve loading performance of filepicker when loading Recent Files
Improve theme designer mode performance
Improve course category tree cache performance by storing against single key instead of multiple
Improve the performance of the Analytics ML layer when using small datasets
Add Template and string prefetching
Speed up file system \core\task\file_trash_cleanup_task
Reduce the number of full table scans on the event table
Convert performance report to Check API
Extra session lock debugging for redis session handler
Tune the redis session handler to reduce blocking wait time