Student / Faculty / Staff Experience

Feature

Benefit

Screen resolution setting

• Lower resolution (faster response)
• Dynamic resolution (better quality)

Additionally, when we detect that users have a poor connection (e.g. latency > 120 ms for 2 minutes), a prompt displays asking the user if they’d like to use the lower resolution setting. This prompt will show once per session if a poor network is detected.

Homework upload to LMS

Ability for students to upload homework files from Apporto directly to the LMS. This feature is supported for Canvas and Blackboard. When faculty create assignments in the LMS (e.g. online assignment with a file upload deliverable), students will see a homework upload menu option in the Apporto menu bar.

After selecting an assignment and file, the file is transferred to the LMS where faculty can review and grade the assignment.

Contact your customer success manager (or email [email protected]) if you would like to set up an LMS integration or enable homework upload for an existing integration.

Desktop localization (Spanish)

Note: The login page, App Store, and user profile have not been localized yet, but these are on our roadmap.

Keyboard language preference

With a growing number of international users, there has been demand to support non-English keyboards. So, we added support for 18 keyboard languages. Users can set their preferred keyboard language in their profile, accessible from the Account menu. U.S. English is the default if no preference is set.

Additionally, on the user’s first session, we will auto-detect the browser language and ask if we should set a corresponding keyboard language. Note: This prompt only displays for supported languages (except U.S. English) and if the user has not already selected a preferred keyboard language.

Launch enhancements

• Improved launch experience for persistent (named) virtual machines. Previously there was a delay of several seconds before a preloader appeared.  We fixed the delay and added messaging to let users know the cloud computer is starting.
  
  
• Improved messaging for auto-scaling of shared environments.  Previous messaging referred to “adding capacity”.  This confused users unfamiliar with cloud environments.  So, we changed the message to “Starting your virtual computer. This may take 1-2 minutes. Your session will begin shortly.”
• Fixed an issue causing a delayed launch.  Now, most desktops and applications launch quickly (less than 12 seconds).  The exceptions include persistent VMs (which take 1-2 minutes to launch) and Docker applications (MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle XE, MongoDB) which take about 1 minute to launch.

Classroom enhancements

• Improved default classroom layout.  Student desktops automatically re-size to fill the screen for a more responsive design.  If only a few students have logged in, larger desktops will display for better visibility.  You may adjust the number of desktops per screen via the dropdown menu at the top of the screen.  Options include auto, 4, 9, 16, or 25 desktops per screen.
  
• Ensured students appear in order of login by default.  You may change the sort order via the class roster.  The roster is accessed via the group icon at the top of the screen.
  
  
• Removed “placeholders” for absent students in the classroom.  Beta user feedback indicated the gray placeholder desktops did not add value.  Instead, you may use the class roster to see a list of absent students.

Friendly error message

Enhancements and bug fixes

• Addressed accessibility issues found in our most recent audit (after the 2022.2 Release). Our latest VPAT can be found here: https://www.apporto.com/vpat.
• Added criteria that students need to launch the same app as faculty in order to appear in the virtual classroom, not simply be members of the same group.
• Fixed an issue in which a black bar hid the desktop for low resolution settings (< 100% resolution).
• Fixed an issue in which the cursor appeared disproportionately large for high resolution settings (>200%).

Admin Experience

Feature

Benefit

• Auto-publishing:
  If your LMS integration is configured such that students launch a specific application (rather than landing on the Apporto App Store), the application will be automatically published to the student. This saves Administrators time since they don’t need to manage publishing via the Apporto Admin Console.
• Group persistence:
  In the past, when users launched Apporto from the LMS, their course and section information (Apporto group affiliation) updated every session. If the user’s last session was launched from a Math course, their only group assignment in Apporto would be Math, even if they’d previously launched from a Biology course. This was problematic for users who also log into Apporto via SSO (a common scenario). So, we changed the logic to persist all group affiliations. In the case above, the user would have both Math and Biology group affiliations in Apporto – and see all applications published to those groups in the App Store.
• Schoology Integration:
  Added support for Schoology integrations via LTI 1.3. Users authenticate via Schoology. When Apporto is launched, the user does not need to authenticate again. Group and role information is passed automatically.

The Network Objects screen can be found under the Setup menu. First, Admins create a list of network objects. Then, they select objects from a checklist to grant group access.

Note: This feature was introduced in a prior release as Network Segmentation. The UI has been updated significantly for easier management and scalability.

• Improved performance of bulk operations for Users (e.g. deprovisioning, deletion, adding users to a group, etc.).  Previously, it was common to encounter PHP timeouts for bulk operations on a large number of users.  Now, bulk operation (i.e. “Update Options”) processing occurs offline and a notification displays when the process completes.
  
  
• Improvements to cron performance and reliability.  You should notice improved offline processing, user import, scheduling, and updates to the Servers screen.

• Ensured “deprovision after x months of inactivity” accounts for activity (i.e. Apporto access) via the LMS as well as SSO.
• Added a time filter for the bottom left chart in the Admin Dashboard with a default value of last 30 days.
• Removed servers, persistent VMs, and auto scaling groups from the App menu in the Admin Dashboard.
• Added a “Create Image” option for Base Image Servers on Azure.
• Added a column for image creation date to the Persistent VMs screen.
• Changed the logic for SFTP User Import file processing. Instead of importing files once a day, we check frequently for new files and process them whenever a new file is detected.
• To simplify App creation, we enabled starting the base image server from the Apps screen. Previously this could only be done on the Servers screen.
• Fixed an issue to ensure that users in Desktop Variant nested groups are added to the corresponding AD groups.
• Upgraded to PHP 8.025 to ensure the latest security patches are in place.