What's new?
- 30 Sep 2024
- 6 minutes to read
What's new?
- Updated on 30 Sep 2024
- 6 minutes to read
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There are a number of improvements and new features for Totara 18 across all of our products.
Totara Suite
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.
SAML SSO authentication
To streamline the login process for users, you can now use Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication. This functionality allows users to log in to Totara using existing credentials, eliminating the need for multiple usernames and passwords. SAML SSO enhances the user experience, improves security, and reduces administrative overhead for Totara administrators.
Check API and system reports
The System status report, Site performance overview report and Security overview report have all been improved with the Check API. A new CLI script allows you to configure monitoring and alerts for these three reports.
Schedule user deletion
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.
Bulk action for removing force password change flag
A new bulk action allows you to remove the Force password change flag from multiple user accounts at once.
Tenant reporting
Tenant Domain Managers and Site Administrators can create reports that are specific to a tenant, allowing these users to only see relevant data for their tenant.
Tenant isolation mode
Tenant isolation mode is no longer an experimental setting. This setting allows you to keep your tenants and their data completely separate, meaning users cannot see or interact with content from other tenants.
Configure tenant-level notifications
If you are using multitenancy, you can now configure centralised notifications for each tenant individually. If you make changes to the notifications for a tenant, those changes will be inherited to all lower contexts within that tenant.
Multi-factor authentication for Site Administrators
You can now configure multi-factor authentication for your Site Administrator accounts, helping to keep these accounts secure.
Modern login page
We have introduced a new login screen with a modern look and feel, which will be enabled by default. You can revert to the legacy login screen if you wish.
Numerical custom fields
There are two new custom field types available as of Totara 18.2: Decimal input and Integer input. These fields can be used to add and aggregate numeric information to user profiles, courses, positions, organisations, and more.
PDF improvements
As of Totara 18.2, PDF documents will now open in a new tab when clicked. Additionally, PDF documents can be embedded in Weka content areas as cards.
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 18.9 onwards.
Improved look and feel
Totara 18 also features improved and modernised user interfaces for a range of features.
Totara Learn
You can find more information about the features included in Totara Learn in the Totara Learn section of this documentation.
Pathway course format
The Pathway format is a new course format that provides a streamlined, modern user experience in which Learners see a single activity or resource at a time. The left-hand sidebar shows an overview of the user's progress through the course, and allows the user to jump to other activities.
This format is best used for courses with multiple activities that aren't reliant on blocks.
Clone a program
You can now duplicate a program, copying its details, contents (i.e. course sets), and notifications. This allows you to use your existing programs as the basis for a new program, rather than creating every new program from scratch.
New program content UI
The program Content tab has been modernised, improving the process for adding and configuring course sets, making it easier to visualise a program's content and the relationship between course sets.
H5P course activity
The H5P plugin is an interactive content authoring and publishing tool that enables users to create rich and engaging learning experiences including interactive videos, quizzes, and games, without the need for advanced technical skills. You can now add H5P activities to your courses in Totara.
IntelliData learning analytics integration
IntelliData is a comprehensive learning analytics and reporting platform designed to provide actionable insights into the effectiveness of training and development programs. With its powerful data visualisation tools, this integration allows organisations to leverage the data captured by Totara to make informed decisions about their training programs.
New activity completion report
There is a new report source which allows you to see activity completion data across your site.
AI course tag recommendations
As of Totara 18.8, you can now add tags using the AI tag recommender when editing a course. This will suggest relevant tags from the available tags on your site based on the course content.
This feature is intended to serve as an example for how to develop other useful interactions using Totara's AI plugin.
Totara Engage features added to Totara Learn
Totara Learn has been enhanced with all of the functionality that was previously available in Totara Engage, such as workspaces, libraries, user-generated content, recommendations, and more.
Add courses to workspace libraries and playlists
You can now add your site's courses to workspace libraries and playlists as of Totara 18.2, allowing you to make use of your existing learning materials and provide access to users who may be interested in them.
Topics have been integrated with tags
The topics functionality has been integrated into the tags feature, meaning you can manage tags for user-generated content (resources and playlists) with a tag collection. You can also use the same tag collection for both learning content (courses, categories and programs) and user-generated content, allowing users to use the same filter(s) for all of your catalogue content.
Calculated quiz question capability
As of Totara 18.10 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 Perform
You can find more information about the features included in Totara Perform in the Totara Perform section of this documentation.
Performance overview page
The new Performance overview page allows you to see a summary of how you're progressing through your goals, competencies and performance activities at a glance. Donut graphs visually display the status of your performance items, and the various items are listed by status (e.g. Progressed, Not progressed, Not started). Managers can also view the Performance overview for their direct reports.
Totara goals
Totara 18 allows you to select from two different goal-setting systems: Totara goals and Legacy goals. Totara goals are designed to support performance review processes in combination with performance activities. These goals can be created, reviewed and updated from within the flow of performance activities.
Create a goal in a performance activity
A new performance activity element allows users to create new personal goals in the flow of their performance activities.
Response redisplay improvement
You can now configure the Response redisplay element in performance activities to display a response from an earlier section in the current activity instance, allowing users to see earlier responses without needing to toggle back and forth between different sections.
Multi-select filter for competency reports
The new Competency name (multi-choice) filter in Totara 18.2 allows users to select multiple competencies for reports using the Competency assignments, Competency ratings, and Competency status report sources.
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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