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Product updates (release notes) 2022

Inspera Assessment
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Below you will find all general product updates made available in Inspera in 2022. Please note that details on planned releases are added approximately 10 days ahead of the release and there might be changes running up until the release date. 

For more insight into what the Inspera team is working on, please visit our public roadmap. 

You can also subscribe to our monthly Release Notes by email by Registering Here. 

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January release

Planned release: January 6th, 2023

Planned in this release🚀

Rubrics are moving to general release

Rubrics are coming to Inspera! In January we are planning to move Rubrics out of the Open Beta phase to the General release phase. We know that many of you have waited for this functionality, and we are thrilled to offer Rubrics to everyone. With this functionality we are introducing a rubrics editor in the Author module, allowing you to easily create different kinds of assessment rubrics. Graders will be able to use the rubric to quickly mark a question and provide feedback to the candidate. The candidate will have access to the rubric and the feedback in the Candidate report. 

You can learn more about Rubrics in our Help Center article, Rubrics overview.

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December release

Released: December 2nd, 2022

Heads up 💡

Scheduled downtime January 6th, 2023

During the January 2023 maintenance window (Friday, Jan 6, 21:00-23:00 UTC), Inspera Assessment will undergo a period of planned complete unavailability to carry out maintenance tasks. While candidates logged into tests will be able to continue working offline, all online functionality will be unavailable for some time, and users may be required to log back in when the service is back up. We apologise for the inconvenience. Please avoid scheduling your assessments during this time window. 

For additional information about upcoming maintenance, visit our Status page. Learn more

New in this release  🚀

Marking 💯

Continued Rubrics development

  • When adding feedback to the candidate when marking with rubrics, we did not keep the entered feedback when the grader navigated between levels of performance. To reduce the risk of losing the entered feedback and having to start all over again we are now keeping the feedback when navigating between levels of performance. 
  • For rubrics we support both ascending and descending scoring. For the descending ones we previously used the lowest to highest numbers for the ranges (5-10). To better support the mental model of descending values we have flipped the scoring interval - so now we use the highest number first for the ranges for descending rubrics. 
  • Fixed an issue where the name of the grader was not available for point-based rubrics in the Candidate report.
  • In the Candidate report one can toggle on and off the “View with rubric” option. We fixed an issue where this only worked after the page was refreshed. 

Other Marking improvements

  • We have made Download marks and grades as CSV available for Graders, which was previously only available for Planners.
  • We had an issue where the marks table was not displaying correctly in the Candidate report. This has now been fixed. 
  • When using grading committees it was not possible to reopen a completed committee for grading in the cases where there were other committees without graders (Grader removed from the committee that was not completed). This is now fixed.  
  • When hovering over a grade the expected behavior is that we display the name of the grader. For shared marking, we displayed a numeric value instead. This has now been changed. 

Integrations 🔌

This is only relevant to Inspera users who use Open API's and webhooks.

Webhook-subscriptions with an unresponsive endpoint will be automatically unsubscribed - starting from the January release.

As the use of Inspera grows, we get a lot of test setups for webhooks sending notifications to temporary recipient sites. This is not a problem as long as those are unsubscribed when testing is done, but with increased usage, we also experience an increased number of test subscriptions that are not canceled after the test period. When the temporary endpoint dies, we then are still attempting to deliver notifications to those webhook endpoints. Based on the increased number of such, we are no longer able to manually handle those webhook endpoints and are introducing a feature of automatic unsubscribing.
The rules we will enforce are the following: 

  • Every 8th hour we send a verification message to each endpoint (we have already been doing this for a while)
  • If an endpoint fails we tag it as failed with the timestamp of the attempt.
  • If an endpoint fails and the first failed call was more than 16 hours ago, we send an alert in the event-log for each subscription to the endpoint
  • If an endpoint fails and the first failed attempt to deliver the verification-message was more than 24 hours ago, we automatically unsubscribe all subscriptions for that endpoint.

We recommend that customer-owned infrastructure have alerts on vital endpoints to detect any downtime and that if a production-endpoint has been down for more than 24 hours, that a new subscription-call is made after the endpoint (or a replacement) is online.

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November release

Released: November 4th, 2022.

Heads up 💡

Scheduled downtime January 6th, 2023

During the January 2023 maintenance window (Friday, Jan 6, 21:00-23:00 UTC), Inspera Assessment will undergo a period of planned complete unavailability to carry out maintenance tasks. While candidates logged into tests will be able to continue working offline, all online functionality will be unavailable for some time, and users may be required to log back in when the service is back up. We apologise for the inconvenience. Please avoid scheduling your assessments during this time window. 

For additional information about upcoming maintenance, visit our Status page.Learn more

Inspera Exam Portal (IEP) and Windows 7 and 8 support - advance notice

The current version of IEP (1.14.14) can be installed on machines running Windows 7, 8, 10, or 11, as well as macOS 10.15.

IEP 1.14.21 to be released December 2nd will be the minimum requirement from Q3 2023. That version will not run on Windows 7 or 8 as well as macOS 10.15. 

IEP customers will not be required to upgrade to 1.14.21 immediately on release but may wish to do so given the feature enhancements it will offer.

We can offer customers a new configuration for those that want to start testing the new IEP version once released so that the new versions can be tested securely on your production tenant.

Note, this only applies to candidates using IEP.  Where candidates are accessing the Inspera Assessment platform using a standard web browser, so long as their device can run either of the latest two builds of any Chrome, Edge, or Safari, they can continue to use whichever operating system they wish.

New in this release  🚀

Added support for Safe Exam Browser 3.4.0 for Windows (requires activation)

We have added support for SEB version 3.4.0 for Windows. As we are approaching the exam period, we are waiting until the February release to enable this by default. Please contact the Service Desk to enable this version before the February release. 

We also plan to discontinue support for older versions of SEB, see below. 

Supported SEB versions plan:

  • November release: added support for 3.4.0 for Windows (requires activation)
  • February release: 
    • SEB 3.4.0 for Windows will be enabled for all and will be the default version. 
    • Ending support for 3.0.1 for Windows
  • March release: Ending support for 3.1.1 for Windows

We are also working with the SEB team to get a new version of SEB for Mac.

See the full list of system requirements in our Help Center. Learn more

 

Marking 💯

Continued Rubrics development

  • Fixed an issue where the Planner was not able to see the feedback provided by the Graders in the Candidate report.
  • When updating the Level of performance title in a rubric and using this rubric to mark a question, the title was displayed as “New level” instead of the correct title in Grading. This is now fixed and we use the correct title description. 
  • In the Candidate report, one has the option to “View with rubric”, which displays the full Rubric when toggled on. This toggle was present in the candidate report also for questions that do not have a Rubric attached to them. We now only display this toggle when the test has questions using Rubrics as a marking method. In addition, we’ve made “View with rubric” the default. 
  • We had an issue where we were presenting the user with a warning message about unsaved changes, even though there were no unsaved changes. This is now fixed. 
  • In Author, when authoring a question, one can start to use Rubrics as a marking method and start to create a new Rubric for that question. If the Author changes the marking method and the Rubric is not saved as a template, it will be lost for eternity. To safeguard against this we have implemented a warning message informing the Author about the consequences of changing the marking method. 
  • Until now we had a pesky “0” appearing in the UI when inputting scores in the Rubric. This is now removed. 
  • We’ve changed the default Rubric size from 2x2 to 4x4. We’ve seen a lot of examples of existing Rubrics, and 4x4 is a better fit for most use cases. 
  • We’ve improved the user experience for the selection of cells in the Rubric. We now select a Level of performance with one click and open the feedback input field at the same time. 

Other Marking improvements

  • We had a bug in the left part of the header where the candidate ID did not update and display the currently selected candidate. 
  • For Planners looking at the Candidate report and Explanation of grades we were displaying a cryptic text string “grading.explanationOfGradesRequestStatus.undefined” when “Administration of grades enabled” was enabled. This is now replaced with the much more legible “Not requested”. 
  • In the classic marking tool, you can hover over a grade to see which grader has set the grade. In the new marking tool, this behavior was inconsistent. This has now been fixed. 
  • In the Candidate Report we displayed the achieved mark to the candidate when using bands and criteria. But we did not display the max mark. Now the candidate can see how many marks were available, and the achieved mark. 
  • Previously one could update answer keys while the test had candidates in progress. We’ve now added a guard against this. This is to ensure fair assessments.
  • Based on input from Norwegian Higher Ed institutions we have improved some of the wording:
    • Karakter ikke satt -> Kandidater uten karakter
    • Arbeidsflyt -> Status
    • Status poeng -> Vurdering oppgaver
    • Frist vurdering -> Vurderingsfrist
    • Vektet resultat -> Vekting
    • Besvarte oppgaver -> Kun besvarte oppgaver
    • Oppgaver -> Oppgavetekst
    • Ikke aktivert -> Autonavigasjon: Av
  • In the Marking 2.0 tool, we provide the option to “Open in” other workspaces. But until now we also provided the option to try to open in places that do not make any sense like “Help and support”, “Edit workspaces” and “Getting started”. These options have now been removed. 
  • We used to have quite a few action buttons in the Marking 2.0 tool, indicating that there are actions the user can do, when in fact there were no additional actions available. These have now been removed to help clean up the user interface. 
  • To further tidy up the user interface and remove unnecessary options we have removed the option to report bugs directly from Marking 2.0, and the link to the rollout plan. Bugs can/should be reported directly via the service desk, and when it comes to new features we refer to the release notes and the public roadmap. 
  • We’ve made some accessibility improvements to the user dropdown list. The language selector is no longer nested in the same dropdown but is displayed as a separate list. 

Test setup and Monitoring 🎛️

Minor improvements and bug fixes

  • For Late submissions, it is now possible for Invigilators to filter the candidates in the Monitor module by their Primary Submission Deadline (PSD). They can filter by - today, tomorrow, yesterday, this week, within the last or next # of hours/ days/ weeks/ months/ year, between two given dates. 
  • Fixed a bug that was allowing the Primary Submission Deadline to be set after the Test end time when using an API.
  • While creating a test using a template, the modal that appears when the question set is updated - was not fully visible on the screen, making it difficult to make a selection. The placement of the modal has now been fixed for it to be fully visible.
  • An improvement made in password settings - now when using Inspera Exam Portal the invigilator password cannot contain more than 8 characters.

Content production (Author) ✍🏼

Minor improvements and bug fixes

  • Fix bug in the API: /v1/candidates/pdf/{testId}/{userId} with “questionAnswerOptions”:“ANSWERS_ONLY”. This previously gave a PDF that included the question text, and has now been fixed so it includes the answers only.
  • Fixed an issue with broken QTI Excel import.

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October release

Released: October 7th, 2022.

Heads up 💡

Q3 2022 Release webinar is recorded below

Link to updated roadmap.

New in this release  🚀

Marking 💯

Word count in Marking on essay question type

We have added support for viewing word count when marking Essay questions types in Marking 2.0. Word count is also available when viewing an essay submission from Monitor or downloading/printing submission.

This is enabled for everyone, but can be deactivated by contacting the service desk.  We will also add support for word count in Marking for the Text area question type later this year. 

To learn more about Word count, visit our Help Center article Description of standard workspace for graders.

Continued Rubrics development

As Rubrics now is in Open Beta, the Marking team has continued to improve on this functionality based on the feedback we receive from the beta testers, in this release we have done the following: 

  • When a grader deselected a level of performance when grading with rubrics, we had an issue where the result on the question was not recalculated. This now works as expected. 
  • Fixed a minor issue where we had an extra row of yellow highlights for points achieved on a criteria.
  • We changed the hover color on cells to improve contrast/usability and to be in line with our design guidelines. 
  • To clarify which cell is selected when marking using a rubric, we now only use the yellow outline for the selected/active cell.
  • To avoid unintentionally penalizing candidates, we now default to the maximum of the range for a performance level when grading. 
  • If an ampersand (&) was present in a Rubric, it was not possible to save that Rubric. Now you can have as many ampersands as you like. 
  • When authoring a question using a rubric, we had an issue where the maximum marks for the question were not updated after the marks were changed. This is now fixed. 
  • We saw that users were trying to/expecting to be able to change the max score for a criterion by updating the max score for the highest performance level. The current implementation does not support this. For now, we have added a help text to guide the user to update the score in the criteria “column”. 
  • Previously we had placeholder texts for descriptions of levels of performance in the format of “Level of performance 1/2/3” etc. We’ve chosen to simplify the text to  “Add description”.

Other Marking improvements

  • We have introduced a warning for graders who are trying to (maybe inadvertently) confirm grading in a committee where not all candidates have been marked.

--

September release

Released: September 2nd, 2022.

Heads up 💡

Q3 2022 Release webinar

Our upcoming Q3 2022 release webinar will take place on Thursday, October 13th at 9 am CEST. We will walk you through the new features from the second quarter of 2022. Please note the sign up link is new and you will have to sign up to this new link to attend the session. The meeting will be held in Zoom.

Register for the webinar here.

Candidate selected question is out of beta

After positive feedback from beta testing, we have now taken candidate selected question out of beta. Please note that the functionality requires activation by the service desk.

New in this release  🚀

Content production (Author) ✍🏼

Improved language support in Graphic Text Entry question type

Added language support for background images. By default, a new language version will take the background image uploaded to the existing language version. If the background image, for example, includes text and should differ in different languages, the image can now be replaced per language version.
Graphic Text Entry question type requires activation. Please contact the Service Desk to activate.

Test setup and Monitoring 🎛️

Minor improvements and bug fixes

  • Fixed issue where test title disappeared in the Monitor user interface when reloading the page. 
  • Fixed issue where candidates could not view the results page in the case where auto-submission was enabled. 
  • Changed rules of auto deletion of submissions from being based on the date of individual submissions to be based on a graded date instead to better match regulations. 

Inspera Exam Portal and Smarter Proctoring 💻

Improvements to Inspera Exam Portal

We are making a major upgrade that is planned to be made available 09.09.2022. We previously referred to this major upgrade as Inspera Exam Portal 2.0, but have taken the decision to label it as Inspera Exam Portal 1.14. IEP 2.0 will mark the release of our improved AI face detection in Inspera Smarter Proctoring (coming soon). Some customers will already have an early access version of this upgrade (1.14.01 through to 1.14.12) with the official release being 1.14.14. If you have not received information on how to upgrade to IEP 1.14.14, please contact the Service Desk or your Account Manager.

For detailed information, please see our What’s New in Inspera Exam Portal 1.14-article.

Highlights of the improvements: 

  • Improved release processes through Universal builds with auto-updates. Updates will happen in-application, and the download link for IEP will remain the same (http://[yourtenancy].inspera.com/get-iep).
  • Improved security for high-stakes exams through enhanced performance of data capture, content protection, and new system checks.
  • Reduced exam day stress for candidates through the ability to complete all equipment checks before the test window opens
  • Improved flexibility for BYOD exams with the ability to change keyboard layout during a session

Improvements to Inspera Smarter Proctoring

  • Improved integrity of automated proctoring through the new face and object detection algorithm
  • Improved data protection of session recordings through end-to-end encryption

Marking 💯

Rubrics now available in open beta 💯

Team Marking’s primary focus is the rubrics functionality. In this release, we have been focusing on improving the user experience of the feature based on feedback from our beta testers. We fixed some issues connected to user roles and creating and saving rubrics, we now default to the highest point in a range for a performance level when grading, and we have been making improvements to the user interface for Authors and Graders. We had an issue with the screen flickering at certain resolutions, which is now resolved, and we now have fewer clicks in order to select the correct performance level and to provide feedback to the candidate. It’s now also possible to save a rubric as a template from the context of authoring a question. 

This feature is in Open Beta, please reach out to the Service Desk if you want to have early access to this feature and share your feedback, along with the details of the tenant where you want to use it. We recommend that you use a tenant suitable for testing purposes. Rubrics is currently only available in English.

Minor improvements in Marking

  • Fixed issue where when "hide question titles" was enabled in the question set, the question titles were still visible in the candidate report.
  • Fixed an issue where bands and criteria were not displayed in the candidate report for questions using criteria marking.
  • Fixed an issue where it was not possible to download submissions as PDF in Marking 2.0
  • Fixed an issue where when using answer key corrections, the candidate’s responses were missing.
  • Improvement: We now limit quick marks to two decimal places.
  • Improvement: We now use the same ordering of workspaces/menu items for Planners and Graders.
  • Improvement: We now include grades in "Grades as excel" export for planners when a test has the status “graded”

Please note we have a delay in displaying word count on submissions in essay and text entry questions. We discovered a need to make further improvements before releasing. We will come back to release date (October or November). Some customers will get early access for testing. 

--

August release

Released: August 5th, 2022.

Heads up 💡

Q3 2022 Release webinar
Our upcoming Q3 2022 release webinar will take place on Friday, October 14th at 9 am CET. We will walk you through the new features from the second quarter of 2022.

Register for the webinar here.

Improvement to Graphic Text Entry question type ✍🏼

In July we communicated that we would add support for setting the exact position of interactions in the Graphic Text Entry question type, as is supported in Graphic Gap Match. We are making some additional improvements and will make it all available later this year rather than doing incremental changes now.

Minimum allowed Inspera Exam Portal versions 1.13.54

Inspera Exam Portal 1.14 is now available to download. We strongly recommend every customer upgrade to this latest release now to improve security and stability. With IEP 1.14, version updating has been streamlined. As we transition to this new process of updating the application, we will be phasing out support of older versions of IEP. As operating systems are constantly updating and changing, Inspera Exam Portal must do the same to maintain its security. Please contact the Service Desk to provision IEP 1.14 for your institution.

Important information about Inspera exam portal:

  • The minimum version will change again to IEP 1.14.12 from Monday 10 October.
  • Support for IEP for Windows 7 and 8.1 will also end from Monday 10 October

 

New in this release 🚀

Content production (Author) ✍🏼

Option to deactivate composite question type

We have added support for deactivating composite question types for those that do not want to use the question type in their tenant.

This functionality requires activation by the service desk.

Test setup (Deliver) 🎛️

Timed out warning in Monitor

Timed out is a new warning status within the Monitor module that allows invigilators to efficiently identify the candidates who have exceeded their effective test end time (test end time or individual test end time as applicable) but have not yet submitted their tests.

This functionality requires activation by the service desk. 

Assessment path - first iteration for feedback 

We have completed the first iteration of our solution to group multiple assessments together for one overall grade. Using Assessment paths, you can, for instance, group together all the assessments planned for a course in a term or semester, weigh the different assessments, and provide an overall grade to the candidate in the course. We will continue making improvements on the solution throughout the next months, but we now would welcome feedback from more testers. 

If you would like to test this solution and provide feedback for further improvements (UI only, no general API as of now), please reach out to johanne.smestad@inspera.com.

Marking 💯

Continued Rubrics development & housekeeping 

Team Marking has been working on improving the rubrics' functionality. In this release, we have added percentage and point ranges for levels of performance. We’ve now also included the option for graders to provide feedback to the candidate when marking with a rubric. In addition to the new functionality, we have fixed minor issues that have been identified during testing. Thank you to our beta testers!

Rubrics is released in open beta to ensure we gather enough feedback to ensure the solution works well for everyone and enables us to release improvements also between releases for faster validation of the solution. If you are interested in trying out this feature, please reach out to us at morten.bergsten@inspera.com.

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July release

Released: July 1st, 2022.

Heads up 💡

Please note: Improvements to Graphic Text Entry were planned for the July release, but will be postponed to ensure no errors are introduced.

Feedback wanted on Marking improvements

We are currently assessing many improvement areas in Marking, and would love input on what you and relevant Marking users think about the existing solution and what you would like to see improve. 

Please take some minutes and reply to this survey. Feel free to share the link with relevant users in your institution. 

 

New in this release 🚀

Test setup (Deliver) 🎛️

Support for individual late submissions deadlines

This feature requires activation. Please contact the Service Desk to activate.

Late submissions can be used to allow candidates in a test to submit their responses after the primary submission deadline. The work submitted during this late submission period is flagged as being late and the submitted time and date are captured in Monitor. This information may be used by administrators to decide if a penalty should be applied against any marks awarded.

In some scenarios, candidates may require a different late submission window than the other candidates. This feature provides complete flexibility to plan the late submission window differently for one or more candidates in the test in such scenarios.

For more information on Late submissions in the Deliver module, visit the Help Center article Late submissions - Planners.

For more information on Late submissions in the Monitor module, visit the Help Center article Late submissions - Invigilators.

Marking 💯

Improvements to the Rubrics functionality
This release will primarily include improvements on the Rubrics functionality. After launching in open beta in June we have steadily been ironing out some kinks and adding to the functionality. In this release, we have added ascending/descending ordering of performance levels, validation improvements, and using the rubrics to mark a question.

Rubrics is released in open beta to ensure we gather enough feedback to ensure the solution works well for everyone and enables us to release improvements also between releases for faster validation of the solution. If you are interested in trying out this feature, please reach out to us at morten.bergsten@inspera.com.

mceclip0.png

Marking with Rubrics from the main grading panel

 

Minor improvements in Marking

  • Fixed: Graders are no longer able to edit explanations after they have been submitted in Marking 2.0 and send a new explanation.
  • Fixed: When using the Firefox browser, changes to the Explanation of grades were not saved if a user navigated to another candidate.
  • Fixed: When selecting Download grading protocol as PDF, it presents error 500.
  • Fixed: Bands and Criteria allowed the user to set a score greater than the max score achieved on the question.
  • Fixed: Adding a quick mark would automatically trigger the creation of a duplicate quick mark

Account & User management

Fixed issue where a new (duplicate) user entity was getting created even when that user already existed in the system.

Integrations 🔌

New endpoint for File-download-request

To ensure higher quality endpoints, we have created a new endpoint for all File-download-requests. The old endpoints have diverging responses back when you ask for status, and diverging (separate) callback-urls. The new endpoint makes sure this is uniformed across the different filedownload-api's we have.

To ensure a gradual transition to the new endpoint, we will mark the old endpoint in Swagger as "depreciated" so that new requests are made towards the new API. This does not mean that the old endpoint stops working, it will still work and be supported. 

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June release 🏳️‍🌈

Released: June 3rd, 2022

Heads up 💡

Q2 2022 Release webinar
Our upcoming Q2 2022 release webinar will take place on Friday, June 17th at 9 am CEST. We will walk you through the new features from the second quarter of 2022.

View the released webinar here.

New in this release 🚀

Content production (Author) ✍🏼

Additional file extensions supported for attachments and uploaded files

Authors can now attach .twbx files to questions, and candidates can download them without the file extensions being erased. Candidates can also upload files with this extension, and Graders can download them without the file extensions being erased.

Minor improvements in Author 🐛

Fixed issue with Multiple Choice Questions that has images as alternatives not being saved when added to question sets and not being visible in preview or when re-opening the question set

Test setup (Deliver) 🎛️

Usage lists - first iteration (open beta)

With Usage lists, Authors can see where and how different types of content have been used in various contexts. With the June release, Authors will be able to see the usage of any given Question in Question Sets

Later, we will add the option to see the usage of content also in assessments. For instance in what assessment a question set has been used.

This improvement requires activation and will be available in open beta after the June release. If you are interested in trying out this feature when available, please reach out to us at nikhil.gupta@inspera.com.

Marking 💯

Assessment rubrics and rubrics template - first iteration (open beta) 💯

In June, the first version of assessment rubrics will introduce the following functionality to support more control and efficiency in Marking:

  • An assessment rubrics editor for creating and editing rubrics
  • Assigning an assessment rubrics to a question
  • Creating new assessment rubrics, and the option to save them as a template for reuse
  • Creating assessment rubrics from a template
  • Marking using assessment rubrics
  • Displaying the assessment rubric to the candidate in the Candidate report

Rubrics will be released in open beta and is subject to change.

In later iterations after summer, assessment level and other types of rubrics will be supported. 

If you are interested in trying out this feature when available, please reach out to us at morten.bergsten@inspera.com

Minor improvements in Marking 🐛

  • Fixed issue where candidates were unable to view their Candidate report if ‘Confirm each candidate individually’ was enabled, and the candidate grade was then confirmed before the test was finished grading.
  • Fixed issue where a user with the Planner role was able to change the workflow setting from the Delivery module for unconfirmed committee when multiple committees were enabled ensuring that users are not allowed to change the workflow once a committee has confirmed grades.
  • Fixed issue where the Candidate report was not available for the Grader after a candidate was moved to appeals.
  • Fixed issue where the height of the PDF was cut when trying to ‘Print all questions for candidates’ in Marking 2.0.
  • Added support for showing Turnitin similarity report for Microsoft Excel file type (Upload Assignment question type)

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May release 🌸

Released: May 6th, 2022.

Heads up 💡

Power state checks within Inspera Exam Portal (IEP)

On IEP versions 1.13.64 and higher, a new System check called Power state will be enabled by default. We recommend leaving this enabled to prevent CPU issues and IEP from lagging. To disable this configuration, please contact the Service Desk. Learn more.

Support for Inspera Exam Portal versions 1.13.49+

To ensure stability and less change work for those in the exam season, we will allow usage of IEP versions 1.13.49 and higher. We will continue to provide support for these older versions of IEP until July. Your Inspera contact will reach out with new version after exams are concluded. Learn more.

 

New in this release 🚀

These are the improvements made available in the May release:

Content production (Author) ✍🏼

Additional file extensions supported for attachments

Authors can now attach .sldprt, .sldasm, .m, .step, .mlx, .stl and .rds files to questions, and candidates can download them without the file extensions being erased.

Minor improvements

  • We have resolved issue with a Document question type being created when adding test information to a test with template
  • We have resolved an issue with new Math working stimulus getting a max score of 10 unless it is edited

Marking 💯

Nynorsk(Norwegian) language pack in Marking 

Nynorsk is now offered as a language within Marking 2.0. Changes to the language can be found before login or within the User settings.

Rich text and image links in Candidate reports 

We have added support for Rich text formatting and image links to be displayed correctly in Candidate report from annotations and page notes.

Minor improvements

  • We fixed an issue with co-grader weighted result not being available during marking
  • We fixed an issue with stimulus text area not being visible in Marking 2.0
  • We fixed an issue with candidate report not being available for the grader when the candidate is moved to appeals 
  • We fixed an issue when candidates was moved to appeals and then the weighted results disappeared from the marking workspace
  • We fixed an issue where co-graders could not see shared mark without first refreshing the page
  • We fixed an issue where banded marks displayed incorrectly in the Candidate Report if the grading workflow changed from shared to private marking
  • We fixed an issue with multiple choice question alternatives with latex not being visible in ‘Edit Answer Keys’
  • We fixed an issue where blank alternatives displayed within Edit answer key correction in Marking 2.0
  • We fixed an issue when marking is completed and the grade is automatically calculated, the alert to confirm the calculation of the grade was not triggered

Integrations 🔌

Improvements to LTI Integrations

  • We have cleaned up the integration so that non-assessment related roles can no longer be created during the assessment launch as previously possible. Contributors to the assessment can still be added as normal.
  • We have added support for LTI 1.3 with the same feature set as in LTI 1.1  and this is now being tested in closed beta test. We will give more the option to test and use LTI 1.3 as we are sure it is of the quality expected after testing. 

--

April release 🌱

Released: April 1st, 2022.  

 

You can see the Q&A from the session here.

 

Heads up 💡

Q1 2022 Release webinar
Our upcoming Q1 2022 release webinar will take place on Thursday, April 7th at 1 p.m. We will walk you through the new features from the first quarter of 2022.

Register for the webinar here.

Future support for Safe Exam Browser (SEB) 3.1

A blocker issue was identified in SEB 3.0 for Mac. This means we will not be adding support for this version, and are waiting for SEB 3.1 for Mac to be released. We do not have a release date for this but will add support as soon as possible. As we are approaching the exam period, we will not enable SEB 3.1 default, but inform in the release notes when it is ready so that each institution can decide whether to enable it. 

New minimum requirement for Inspera Exam Portal (IEP)

There has been a delay in the latest version. If you are on a version older than 1.13.60, you will receive the new version in April 2022. Please contact the Service Desk if you have not received version 1.13.60 or above by 6th May. 

For more information on the different versions of IEP, visit our Help Center. Learn more

New in this release 🚀

These are the improvements made available in the April release. Please note if a new feature requires activation by the Service Desk on your account:

Content production (Author) ✍🏼

Improvements to candidate-selected question ✍🏼

This improvement requires activation. Please contact the Service Desk to enable on your account.

This feature allows candidates to select which questions on a test they wish to answer and we have made some key improvements to the functionality so that: 

  • Candidate decisions (Yes/No) are retained when returning to a test. (In the case of refreshing the page / logout/ crashed device/ new device/ new browser) 
  • When opening for resubmission, all questions are available so candidate can change their decision and the Invigilator can choose which version to submit on their behalf.

Please note that we want to avoid making any changes to the test experience directly so this improvement has to be enabled by the service desk. 

We will keep this feature in beta as we will add some improvements to the texts and how the candidate select a question to ensure a great candidate experience before releasing fully. Learn more here. 

Minor improvements 🐛 

  • We have fixed an issue with question prompts not being displayed for Upload Assignment question type.

Marking 💯

Minor improvements 🐛 

  • Updated threshold editor
  • Improved: annotations user experience for PDF uploads solving issue with highlights not always behaving as expected.
  • Improved: user experience when clicking option on reusable comment.
  • Fixed: grades were calculated before marks were complete.
  • Fixed: more than 2 decimals on Bands and Criteria displaying in some cases.
  • Fixed: navigation bug where one would see the wrong candidate when opened in Marking.
  • Fixed: a case where annotations were ordered incorrectly in the candidate report.
  • Fixed: Dropdown for quick marks is now responsive (grader dropdown)
  • Fixed: if not using a grade scale, candidates were presented as “Not graded”.
  • Fixed: Edit answer key' action was not available on setMark feature from context menu
  • Fixed: Download "Marks and grades as CSV" had a bug when appeal committee is used (grade incorrectly fetched from the original committee) 
  • Fixed: Bands and Criteria: Criteria were not shown while navigating between questions
  • Fixed: When in Results and using dropdown to set grade the candidate response was not updated
  • Fixed: Workflow actions not available for candidate level

--

March release 🗻

Release date: March 4th, 2022

Heads up 💡

Q1 2022 Release webinar

Our upcoming Q1 2022 release webinar will take place on Thursday, April 7th at 1 p.m. We will walk you through the new features from the first quarter of 2022. Register for the webinar here.

New minimum requirements for Inspera Exam Portal (IEP)

There has been a delay in the latest version and the minimum version will not be changed in March as previously communicated.

If you are on a version older than 1.13.50, you will receive the new version in March 2022. Please contact your customer owner if you have not received version 1.13.50 or above by 1st April.

For more information on the different versions of IEP, visit our Help Center. Learn more.

Changed MacOS requirement for Inspera Exam Portal (IEP)

OS X 10.15 and higher is now required for Inspera Exam Portal and Smarter Proctoring

 

 

New in this release 🚀

These are the improvements made available in the March release. Please note if a new feature requires activation by the Service Desk on your account:

 

Content production (Author) ✍🏼

Bug fixed 🐛 

Matching/Pairing question type: Fixed an issue where the question was displayed incorrectly when adding images and no text to columns/rows.

Test setup (Deliver) 🎛️

Group management with CSV

This feature requires activation. Please contact the Service Desk to enable on your account.

Within Deliver, we have added the option to create groups and assign candidates to groups by uploading a CSV file. This allows planners to quickly create and update multiple groups and group memberships on all the candidates on a test in one go. By allowing the import of CSV, the planners can reuse relevant group data from other systems. Learn more

Committee management with CSV

Note: Will be available March 11th. This feature requires activation. Please contact the Service Desk to enable on your account.

Within Deliver, we will add the option to create committees and assign candidates to committees. This allows planners to quickly create and update committees on a test in one go. By allowing the import of CSV, the planners can reuse relevant committee data from other systems.

 

Marking 💯

Add decimals to thresholds

To provide more flexibility in setting up thresholds on tests, we are adding the option to use decimals in the threshold editor. The number of decimals will be limited to two places. 

Export Criteria and Marks

This feature requires activation. Please contact the Service Desk to enable on your account.

The traditional Marks export provides the score that candidates receive on each question. With the new Export Criteria and Marks, the score on each criteria will also be included in the exported excel file. This is available for questions with predefined rubrics (bands and criteria) or predefined criteria.

 

Integrations 🔌

LTI integration

  • New custom-parameter “(custom_)use_template_on_create” will control when the template-parameter is applied. If this is set to true, the template will only be applied when creating the test.
  • Implemented change on how system roles on admin users are handled in lti-launch, when LMS is master of user administration
    • Upon launch the given/mapped roles will only apply to the privileges on the test, except if the user doesn’t have the given role, then this will also be added to the user - the same way as the API for adding contributors' work.

--

February release ☃️

Released: February 4th, 2022 

 

Heads up 💡

Delayed support for Safe Exam Browser (SEB) 3.0

We have identified an issue with SEB 3.0 for Mac and will not be adding support for it in this release. When SEB resolves this issue, we will add support. Until then, we will not be removing support for 2.1.4 and 2.3.2 for Mac in March, as was previously communicated.

Please also note that SEB 3.3.1 Windows is still under testing, and further updates on the new version will be provided in the coming release notes.

 

New minimum requirement for Inspera Exam Portal (IEP)

By this time, all customers should have received IEP version 1.13.00 or higher. However, because of security enhancements in version 1.13.50, we recommend that all customers use 1.13.50 as a minimum. 

If you are on an older version, you will receive the latest version by 25th February 2022. Please contact your customer owner if you have not received version 1.13.50 or above by then. The minimum version will be set to 1.13.50 from March 4th.

For more information on the different versions of IEP, visit our Help Center. Learn more

 

New in this release 🚀

These are the improvements made available in the February release. Please note if a new feature requires activation by the Service Desk on your account:

Content production (Author) ✍🏼

  • Support of additional file extensions - Authors can now attach .r, .rmd, .sib, .pbix, .ipynb, and.mpx files to questions, and candidates can download them without the file extensions being erased.
  • Rich text enabled for all - Support for using Rich text in question prompts enabled for all

mceclip0.png

Image text: Here you can see the rich text features bold and underline used in the prompt field.

 

Test taking 💻

Bug fixes on Candidate selected question (in closed beta testing)

Fixed issue where questions were automatically selected when clicking through a test with Candidate Selected Questions setting. 

 

Inspera Exam portal: Enable candidate to log out and back in without password

This feature requires activation. Please contact the Service Desk to enable on your account. Also requires version 1.13.47 or later. 

If the invigilator password is left empty in Test settings (Deliver), the candidate can log out and back in without a having to enter a password. 

 

Test setup (Deliver) 🎛️

Customise candidate post-submission review availability

If there is a need to control the time in which the submission can be reviewed by the candidate, a date can be set when the submission will be available for the candidate. Learn more

mceclip1.png

Image text: Here the candidate will be able to access their submission from (the beginning of) February 5th, 2022 until (the end of) February 6th, 2022.

 

Lock test settings (in beta)

This feature requires activation. Please contact the Service Desk to enable on your account.

In test settings, a user with Extended Access can now lock all settings on a test by clicking the lock icon in the upper right corner. This allows for full control if there for instance is a quality assurance process and a central test governance body wants to ensure no changes are made after a test has been reviewed before the test event takes place. Learn more.

newlocked.png

Image text: Here, a user with extended access has just locked the test settings and an alert message appears.

 

Marking 💯

Total marks as final results

This feature requires activation. Please contact the Service Desk to enable on your account.

If there is a need to use a test's total marks as the final result instead of converting the marks into a grade, we have implemented support for Marks Only tests. This option can be enabled in test settings in Deliver.  Learn more.

mceclip2.png

Image text: The option Do not use grade scale has been selected and the candidate will only receive the marks achieved without a conversion to grade on the test.

 

Other marking improvements

  • If graders are only allowed to view and mark particular questions on tests with Question assignment enabled, they will no longer be able to see the plagiarism scores from unassigned questions.
  • Improved readability of tables: The table feature's responsiveness has been improved, with improved text wrapping when the table width is resized.

 

Integrations 🔌

LTI integration

  • Added support to pass class information from LMS to Inspera Assessment to “session ID” field by using the following customer parameters:
    • “(custom_)session_id” = static session_id or substitution-variable
    • “(custom_)session_id_field“ = pointer to any other field to fetch session_idfrom 

New authentication token format in APIs

As announced in the January release notes, we have now implemented new JWT access tokens for APIs. Existing tokens will be valid until they expire.

 

Other improvements and bugfixes

  • A bug in swagger documentation for /v1/test/{testId}/options has been corrected for the following: "generalOption" changed to "generalOptions". Change is not made to any code in the API and no changes are required for the customers using this option.

Added support for using “/” in test externalID when calling our APIs by setting parameter b64encodedExternalTestId = true when calling APIs

 

--

January release 🐅

Released January 7th, 2022  

Heads up💡

Downtime with release

Expect some downtime between Jan 7, 2022, 22:00 CET  -  Jan 8, 2022, 00:00 CET. 

Within the maintenance window in January, we are making some changes to the infrastructure of Inspera Assessment that requires service wide downtime. To keep up with our system updates, visit the status page here.

 

Safe Exam Browser (SEB) version support

  • February: add support for 3.0 Mac (found issues in testing that need fixing)
  • February: add support 3.3.1 Windows
  • March: remove support for Win 3.0.1, Mac 2.1.4 and 2.3.2. Please note that SEB will no longer be supported on Windows 7.

If there are any questions regarding the versions of SEB that will be supported, please contact the Service Desk for assistance.

 

SEB has ended support for Windows 7

This does not mean that SEB does not work with Windows 7, but that neither testing nor bug fixing is done for Windows 7. The background for removing this support is that Windows themselves ended support for this operation system in January 2020. Customers who want to use SEB with Windows 7 in the future should test the compatibility prior to their exam periods. This does not affect customers using IEP/ISP, where Windows 7 is still supported. System requirements can be found here.

 

New authentication token format in APIs in February release

New format for auth-tokens used in API’s. This is only relevant if you are currently persisting the access-token you receive when authenticating for API-use. We are changing from fixed-length tokens to JWT that will be longer and not have a predetermined length. Please adjust storage accordingly before the February release (Feb 4th). Please get in touch with us if you have any further questions or if your integrations won’t be able to support this change.

 

New entry point for Help Center in Swedish

To see Help Center articles in Swedish, you select Swedish at the bottom right corner of the help center main page. 

 

New in this release 🚀

Update to Inspera Exam Portal (IEP)

We are updating all existing clients to Inspera Exam Portal version 1.13.x by January 7th. You will receive the new version through your customer contact. 

Versions below 1.13 will not be supported past January 14th. If a candidate tries to login with an older version, they will receive a message asking them to update.

For more information on what changes have been made to each version of IEP, visit our Help Center.

 

Support for languages in audio and image alternatives in MCQ and MRQ enabled for all

Available for Authors: We have previously added support for alternating between different languages within the audio and image alternatives for Multiple Choice and Multiple Response questions. This has now been enabled for all.

 

Full release of Candidate report

Available for Planners/Graders: You may fully rely on the Candidate report to distribute results to candidates now that the feature is complete. The following components have been added this release:

  • Result: Displays the candidate’s final grade
  • Submission: View and download the candidate submission
  • Explanation of grades: View received explanation of grades

Results/submissions/grade explanations will appear in both the Candidate dashboard and the Candidate report if the Candidate report is enabled; however, if Marking 2.0 is enabled, we recommend users to send candidates to the Candidate report for the entire scope of results. Learn more here.

 

Other minor improvements

Authoring:

  • Authoring bands and criteria with decimals: improved and more intuitive way of using keyboard to set numbers for max marks per criteria and band.

Candidate experience:

  • Fixed issue with Math Working answer box exceeding the page in PDF print view.
  • Fixed issue with progress bar clearing when the test page is refreshed.
  • With the exception of Windows Narrator, an issue with screen readers not reading the progress bar correctly has been resolved.
  • Pause and resume: Extra time is rounded to the nearest second and not the minute.
  • Fixed issue with submissions not being available for graders: In some edge cases, candidate submissions have not been available in the UI due to issues with candidates having multiple sessions open at the same time. Old sessions will now be invalidated and issues should not appear anymore. 

Marking: 

  • The annotation panel has been updated to a newer version.
  • We are now hiding irrelevant workspaces when certain features are not enabled on the account/tenant. If Appeals or Explanation is not enabled, for example, the "Appeals" or “Explanations” workspace will be hidden.
  • During marking, a "Show all" mode has been added to allow markers to see all bands and criteria for a question:

mceclip0.png

Integrations: 

Ladok integration:

  • Added support for setting template from which tests will be created in Inspera Assessment. 

LTI integration:

  • Added functionality to turn grading function on after test has been created in Inspera Assessment and grades will still be passed back:
      • For Moodle and Canvas: it is now possible to turn result passback feature on LTI tool after test has been created in Inspera
      • For BlackBoard: it is now possible to turn “enable evaluation” on after test has been created in Inspera
    • Important note: grade passback/evaluation function has to be turned on in LMS - and activated via a launch-link, before candidates start logging to Inspera to take the test.

Bug fixes:

  • Fixed a bug where it was not possible to remove room/building from candidate users even when empty values were passed in API payload. New parameters added to remove those. “removeRoomName” and “removeBuildingName”

For developers

API: 

  • The field "SourceTemplateId" is changed to have effect until the test is activated, and can now be used to change to another template than used when creating the test. Or simply apply a template to an existing test created without one.
  • Added support on all asynchronous API endpoints to set custom expiry-time on the pre-signed URLs
    • Added parameter “expiryPeriod” on API, with default value of 3600 seconds (one hour) . Allowed values will be 300 - 86400 (5 minutes to 24 hours)
    • Swagger documentation is updated on all endpoints where it is possible to send this parameter as part of API call

 

 

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