What's new?
- 30 Sep 2024
- 4 minutes to read
What's new?
- Updated on 30 Sep 2024
- 4 minutes to read
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There are a number of improvements and new features for Totara 17 across all of our products.
Totara Talent Experience Platform
You can find more information about Totara's platform features (i.e. those that are available regardless of which products you're using) in the Using platform features section of this documentation.
Auditing notifications
When using Totara's centralised notifications you can audit your notifications to check that they're being sent and delivered as you would expect, or to investigate missing notifications or unexpected behaviour.
You can check your site's notifications (or notifications at a lower context level or for a specific user) with three different reports:
- Notification events: Check which events triggered for which users and when, and whether the related notifications were sent.
- Sent notifications: This report shows which notifications were sent, when they were sent, and who they were sent to. You can also see the status of the notification for the number of delivery channels.
- Delivery log: Check that a given notification was successfully delivered for each delivery channel.
These three reports are also available as report sources when creating user reports.
External API
Totara 17 introduces a new external API with GraphQL-based requests and automatically generated documentation. You can also extend services within the API, and add new services depending on your requirements.
You can set up clients for each specific task you want to be completed via the API, and you can associate service accounts with each client to determine the permissions assigned to that client. You can also view logs for any API-related events.
Weka editor improvements
A number of improvements and features have been added to the Weka editor. You can now add layout blocks to content, allowing you to arrange content in columns to make it easier to read, or align images with text for example. The Weka editor toolbar is now sticky, meaning it will always be visible even as you scroll down in larger content areas. Formatting options for text alignment and underlining have been also been added. Finally, the UI for formatting images has been improved.
Approval workflows
In Totara 17 there is a new feature called approval workflows, which allows administrators to configure workflows that enable users to submit applications for other users to approve. Note that this functionality is hidden by default, and requires developer support to configure the available forms via an approvalform plugin.
Sending notifications to multiple recipients
When setting up centralised notifications, the Recipient dropdown list has been replaced with a set of checkboxes, allowing you to select multiple recipients for a single notification, instead of creating one notification per recipient.
Schedule user deletion
As of Totara 17.3, you can now schedule when suspended user accounts will be deleted, and therefore when their data will be purged from your system. This can help you to comply with data privacy laws, such as GDPR, with less manual work for your team.
Diagnostic tool
This new diagnostic tool can be used to create a file containing important, non-sensitive information about your site. This information can be used by the Totara Support team when investigating issues. The diagnostic tool is available from Totara 17.22 onwards.
Totara Learn
Calculated quiz question capability
As of Totara 17.23 there is a new capability which determines a user's ability to add calculated quiz questions. You can use this capability to limit Calculated, Calculated simple and Calculated multiple choice quiz questions to administrative users if required.
Totara Engage
Legacy recommendations engine deprecated
The legacy recommendations engine (also called Recommender) has now been deprecated, and will be removed in Totara 18. Please see the Machine Learning Service documentation for more information on Totara's improved recommendations functionality.
Totara Perform
Performance activity notifications
All notifications for performance activities have now been migrated to the centralised notifications system. There is also a new notification trigger which can be used to send notifications when a participant completes their part of an activity.
Performance activity UI improvement
The UI for reviewing your own and others' performance activities has been improved, making it easier to see important information at a glance. Additionally, it is now easier to see your progress through multi-section performance activities.
Bulk create competency achievement paths
Instead of configuring each competency's achievement paths individually, you can now set them up in bulk. You can configure the achievement paths for a specific competency, then duplicate all of those achievement paths to any other competencies in the same competency framework.
Additional performance activity response data formats
In addition to exporting performance activity response data as a CSV file, you can view the data in an embedded report in Totara, or download it as an Excel file.
Goals improvements
You can now Save and continue editing when creating or editing a goal, allowing you to immediately populate any custom fields without needing to return to the goal. Some useful filters have been added to help you find specific goals when adding goals to a review item question in a performance activity. The UI for the Goals page has been improved, helping you to review your goals (or those of your team members).
Totara Help
The documentation for Totara 17 is available on the new Totara Help site. We have created a guide to help you find your way around the new site and find the information you're looking for.
Can't find what you're looking for? Contact us at documentation@totara.com. Alternatively, book a call to have a chat about your Totara platform with a dedicated Customer Success Manager.
© Copyright 2024 Totara Learning Solutions. All rights reserved.
© Copyright 2024 Totara Learning Solutions. All rights reserved.
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