What's new in our June 2020 Release?
Office Online improvements
Teacher Follow-up Tasks
Optimizing Images
Embedding Videos
Office Online Improvements
We’ve made improvements to the way Office Online documents are created and appear in itslearning and Fronter 19. The upgrade also means that Office Online features will be immediately available for our users.
Easier to Create Documents
When creating a new Office document directly in the platform (by clicking ‘Add’), you will be prompted to name your document.
- When editing, documents now open in a separate tab to give you more space. Previews are still within the platform.
- Once you click the Create button, the Office Online editor (such as Word Online) opens in a new tab so you have the full space of the browser to work on your document.
- When you return to the itslearning/Fronter 19 tab you will be notified that your document has been added and you can jump straight to te created document.
Full Screen Editing
Office documents now open in a new tab – more space to edit. After edits, you will be reminded to refresh so changes are reflected in the platform. Edits show up immediately once you have closed the tab with the editor (e.g. Word Online). If you keep the tab open, it can take about a minute before your edits are reflected.
Plus:
- View documents in full screen mode
- If you don’t have permissions to edit, you will see the option ‘Open in Word for the web’. The document opens in a new tab. This option replaces the ‘full screen’ option.
- Downloading a document
- Download directly from the Office Online viewer.
Upload/embed O365 Docs
Assignments: Chose between uploading or embedding a document from OneDrive, SharePoint or Microsoft Teams. (Check with your sys admin if embedding is allowed on your site.)
If you embed a document, any edits on OneDrive, SharePoint or MS Teams will be reflected in the platform.
The default will be to uploaded a copy on the platform. Only uploaded files can be used to make a copy for each student.
It is not possible to use linked Office 365 documents to make a copy for each student.
For student answers itslearning/Fronter 19 will always upload a copy of the document.
Teacher Follow-up Tasks
A more modern view for the teacher follow-up tasks on the homepage (Updates) and Course overview page.
- Easier to read, just like your students’ task list view.
- Teachers will see up to six follow-up tasks but can click the ‘Show more’ button to load more tasks.
- List will display the number of tasks to assess.
Send to profiles and roles
You can now better target your audience by selecting the specific profiles on your site such as parents and ‘non-teaching staff.’
- Schools can now select ‘All Parents’ to send a message to every parent with a child registered in the selected hierarchy, so you don’t miss users who are teachers and also a parent of a child in that hierarchy.
- Previously, only hierarchy roles (Admin, Teacher/Staff, Student, Guest) could be selected.
Uploaded images will now be resized to 640 pixels instead of 400 pixels. We resize the images that you upload to itslearning to reduce bandwidth and speed up loading times.
Embed video
And, because we know you love using TED videos as teaching tools, it’s now easier to add TED videos in our rich text editor. Simply click the ’embed’ icon and paste the video link.