EKP 7.1 New Features Guide

Transcription

1 EKP 7.1 New Features Guide

2 Document Information Document ID: EKP7103 Document title: EKP 7.1 New Features Guide Version: 1.0 Document date: 6 May 2011 This document may be revised from time to time. Please check NetDimensions Support site at for updates to this and other documents or send an e- mail to support@netdimensions.com to request the most recent version. Please report any errors or feedback with this document by sending an e- mail to support@netdimensions.com. Copyright Information Copyright by NetDimensions Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Information in this document is subject to change without notice. The software described herein is furnished under a license agreement, and it may be copied only in accordance with the terms of that agreement. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or translated in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of NetDimensions Ltd. All company and product names used herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies unless stated otherwise. How to Contact NetDimensions Support US toll- free number support@netdimensions.com General Enquiries info@netdimensions.com Page 1

3 Table of Contents Frameless Layouts... 3 Enhanced Course Listings... 9 Improved Appraisee Listing Smartphone Optimized UI Permission Selector Enhancements Search Enhancements Miscellaneous UI Enhancements Archiving Learning Modules Add a banner (or logo) to Printed Transcript Holiday Calendars on Sub- sessions Gadgets PTK API enhancements Page 2

4 Frameless Layouts Creating A Frameless Skin Until now, frames in the user interface have placed limitations on navigation and the appearance of menus in EKP. With the release of EKP 7.1, "frameless" skins can now be used together with the existing configurable menus functionality to create navigation menus to suit the needs of different EKP sites as well as different user groups on the same EKP instance. Please note that frameless skins are currently incompatible with the "Minimize Pop- Ups" feature and the setting will be ignored if the selected skin is frameless To see a working example of a frameless skin, install one of the attached skins on your own EKP 7.1 instance and switch to the frameless skin via User Preferences The attached skins have been provided as a reference only and have not been fully tested. Skins for production sites should be tested against a range of screen resolutions and browsers with the end user in mind. Step 1: Basic Skin Design Skin layouts generally fall under one of the following categories: Top Banner and menus across the top area of the screen Page 3

5 Left Banner and menus on the left area of the screen Page 4

6 Top-Left Banner and secondary menu across the top and primary menu down the left area of the screen After deciding on a layout, prepare the appropriate images, CSS, and skin.properties for your new skin. For frameless skins, the following property must be present in the skin.properties file: skin.frameless_ui=true When true, frames will be removed from most screens rendered by the system with the exception of pop up editor style windows. When false, the user interface will be presented in a frame set as before. Please see skin.properties files in attached sample skins for examples. Step 2: Defining Menus Using navigations.xml Using navigations.xml, a primary menu and a secondary menu can be defined and each menu item in the primary or secondary menus can optionally have a sub menu or tab set. Please see Configurable Menus for more information. In addition to the transactions that each menu item links to, the appearance of the menu can be controlled by providing the corresponding CSS class name in the navigations.xml file. Please see Step 4 for more information about Sub Menu Css Class Name. Step 3: Declaring Top and/or Side Menus via main.css Menus for frameless skins can now be positioned using pure CSS and without having to specify such things as "top" or "left" transactions. By default, two navigation containers will be rendered to the Page 5

7 screen, both complete with user greeting, a primary menu, and a secondary menu. A plethora of layouts can then be achieved by positioning and/or hiding elements as desired. Top and Left Skins For layouts with banners and menus that only occupy either the top or the side area of the screen, one of the navigation containers should be hidden. This can be achieved by adding, for example, the following to main.css: #navigation- container- side { display: none; } Top-Left Skins For layouts with banners and menus that will occupy both the top and left of the screen, the individual child menu elements inside the two menu containers should be styled or hidden as required. Here is some sample CSS that will result in the main menu being rendered down the left of the screen, and a banner, a greeting, and a secondary menu across the top of the screen: #navigation- container- side { float: left; width: 15%; display: inline; } #navigation- container { background: url(images/customize/topbg.jpg) top left no- repeat; } #navigation- container.main- menu- container { display: none; } #navigation- container- side.greeting { display: none; } #navigation- container- side.sec- menu- container { display: none; } Page 6

8 Step 4: Configuring Sub-Menus The sub- menus are rendered as lists of links whose elements can be selected for styling using CSS as in previous version of EKP via main.css. Sub menus can be made to appear dynamically when the user hovers over the parent menu item using CSS or JavaScript. Page 7

9 CSS Sub Menus Drop down menus can be achieved using CSS2 selectors. For browsers that only support early versions of CSS, such as Internet Explorer 6, it may be necessary to use a JavaScript solution for drop down menus. Do not use submenu as a CSS class name in navigations.xml if using a CSS solution as this will trigger the JavaScript solution resulting in undesired behaviour. The below CSS will hide the sub- menu until the user hovers over the parent menu item:.dropdownmenu { display:none; }.main- menu- container li:hover ul { display: block; position: absolute; margin:0px; padding:0px; }.main- menu- container li:hover li { float: none; }.main- menu- container li:hover li a { border- bottom: 1px solid white; background: lightgrey; }.main- menu- container li li a:hover { background: black; color: white; } JavaScript Sub Menus For sub- menus that should be triggered by JavaScript, you must use submenu as the CSS class name in navigations.xml. Step 5: Zip Up and Install Finally, zip up the skin and install into your EKP instance at Manage > System Administration Manager > System Settings > Screen Layout Manager for tweaking. Page 8

10 Enhanced Course Listings Overview The goal of enhancing the course listings is to provide the learner with a better understanding of the workflow and easier access to functions like selecting a session. New Layout The enhanced course listing displays summarized information of programs/courses that the user is enrolled in. The new layout makes it easier for users to browse information that could change over the lifecycle of the enrolled programs/courses. The information displayed for each course/program includes: Title Revision (shown only if there are more than one revision) Learning module type Date/Date range Knowledge Center button Indicator of whether the learning module is required Required hours for programs / Hours for other learning modules All the exams in the learning module All the evaluations in the learning module Status shown in percentage Total training time Deadline (shown only if applicable) Page 9

11 The status of the learning module is presented as a progress bar so that users will know how they progress in each learning module just by a quick glance. Exams and evaluations are shown as icons, which provide users with ability to launch them quickly and to see their statuses. Before using the new layout, users may wonder why status of a course does not change to "completed" after they have finished the course, and they need to go to the Knowledge Center to figure out if they miss any exam or evaluation that is attached to a learning module. With the new layout, status is much clearer: Required Exam/ Evaluation Incomplete Exam/Evaluation Completed Exam/Evaluation A brief description is shown if the user moves the cursor over an exam/evaluation icon. Previously, the process of selecting a course session is very cumbersome for users. In the new layout, session selection can be performed easily on the enrolled learning modules listing. EKP will prompt the user to confirm before a session is selected. Page 10

12 The session date will then be shown as fixed text once the selection is confirmed. In addition, programs can be expanded in the new layout to let the user view the information of learning modules within the programs. Unlike the original layout, module attributes are not shown in the new layout. Moreover, the information presented in the new layout is fixed, which means the system configuration options for enrolled learning modules used by the old layout do not affect the new layout. Page 11

13 Improved Appraisee Listing The new layout is also used in the appraisee course listings in the Review menu. An appraiser can expand each of his/her appraisee to see his/her learning module listing. Page 12

14 Smartphone Optimized UI Overview A newly optimized UI for smartphones has been developed in EKP 7.1. The new UI enables users with smartphones to gain access to the overview of their courses, records, and search for learning items. Upon navigating to the EKP website using smartphones, users will automatically be directed to the new optimized login page for smartphones. Note that for SCORM courses to work on smartphone devices, EKP must be configured to use JavaScript SCORM API adapter. Page 13

15 Once logged in, users will be able to view details of their enrolled course listings, records of transcripts, and perform catalog search. From the list of enrolled courses, users can choose to launch the course, find out more information relating to the course and view their transcripts. Page 14

16 Appraiser users will also be able to view a list of their direct appraisees and their details. Setting up Exam Template for Mobile Device This section provides a guide to setting up exam template for optimized display on mobile devices. To create an exam that is compatible with mobile devices, the following items should be followed: 1. "Allow Section/Question Navigation" in Presentation Properties should be unchecked. 2. Only add these question types to an exam: single choice, multiple choice true/false, rating, fill- in- the- blank, and essay. Other question types are not supported. 3. No media should be included in any question in an exam. 4. An exam should not include any random question section. In other words, every section in an exam should have a fixed set of questions. 5. If strictly followed, exams created with the above items would result in optimized display on mobile devices. Page 15

17 Permission Selector Enhancements Overview The goal of the enhancements for the permission selector is to make it 1. more compact (only show the needed attributes) 2. more flexibile for AND and OR cases UI Changes This is the first view when user opens up the Permission Selector. By default, the owner has already been added into Users. Click on Users to add additional users. If no permission is needed for the current setting, the Everyone check- box can be checked and all criteria below will be ignored. To add more criteria(s), click Add criteria selector drop down list to select one criteria and press Go button. The criteria box will be added to the bottom of the page. To remove the criteria, press the X button on the top right of the criteria. To add members to the criteria, click the top left header of each criteria, anther window will popup for selection. Select All of the following criteria or One of the following criteria use AND or OR logic in addition to the selected users. Please save your settings when moving from Read Access to Write Access or back. Page 16

18 Search Enhancements Cleaner User Interface The search form will default to display only the most often used Keyword(s) field. Detailed options will only be displayed when clicking Advanced Search link. New Search Result Settings Search results per page and Search Result Format are introduced. Search Results per Page Search results per page is a personalized setting available on search form, it allows user to select different number of results per page. Page 17

19 Search Result Format The search result format is previously configured in ekp.properties, user cannot avoid restarting EKP after a change on the setting. In this release, Search Result Format setting is moved to System Configuration and it would be effective at once after save. Currently, 3 formats are available: Module Name, Learning Type, Associated Catalogs, and Brief Description Page 18

20 Search Relevance, Module Name, Catalog, and Learning Type Module Image, Module Name, Learning Type, and Brief Description Page 19

21 New sortable columns in search result New sortable columns can ease locate the target in the results. In System Configuration, if Search Relevance, Module name, Catalog, and Learning Type is selected for search result format. Results would contain new columns, namely Average Rating, Session Cost and Vendor. Directly Enroll from Search Result Previously, course title link in search result would enroll user and launch the course when the system is configured to "Directly enroll and launch modules from catalogue search result". In this release, the presentation is made more obvious; enrolling user and launching the course is done by clicking the Enroll and Launch button while course information page will be opened by clicking course title link. Page 20

22 Miscellaneous UI Enhancements Overview In order to make the UI more consistent and easier to use, we have made some UI enhancements in EKP 7.1 Catalog Editor Remove Confirmation Message when Saving So far, when a user clicks the Save button in the Catalog Editor, a pop- up message "Please confirm that you wish to save all the changes" will be displayed (see the picture below). In EKP 7.1, no more pop- up message will be shown. Move the Keyword field to the top in the Catalog Search EKP 7.0 EKP 7.1 Page 21

23 "Click to add new audience field" Replaced by Automatic New Fields Previously, when adding more than one audience in a module, it was necessary to click the Click to add new audience field link or the Save button in the top menu tools bar. Either way, the page was reloaded and the content of the page will be jumped back to the top. Therefore, in most of the cases, users need to scroll down the page to the Audience field every time they want to add a new audience. In EKP 7.1, whenever a new audience is added, EKP will create an additional Audience field automatically, so that it is not necessary to manually click the Click to add new audience field link or the Save button. EKP 7.0 EKP 7.1 Page 22

24 User Editor All Save and Delete buttons in various places have been have been replaced by toolbar buttons. EKP 7.0 EKP 7.1 EKP7.0 EKP7.1 Page 23

25 Exam Template Editor All Save, Delete and Clone Exam buttons have been replaced by toolbar buttons. Some examples: Print Properties - Save button EKP 7.0 EKP 7.1 Module Assign - button in the top menu tools bar (SAVE button) EKP 7.0 EKP 7.1 Random Question Properties - Save button) EKP 7.0 EKP 7.1 Page 24

26 Section Properties (After creating a new section --> select the section) EKP 7.0 EKP 7.1 Enrollment Policy Editor All Save, Delete and Create Copy buttons are replaced by toolbar buttons. Edit Policy detail - Save and Create a Copy buttons EKP 7.0 EKP 7.1 Page 25

27 Approval Step1: Direct Appraiser Approval - Save and Delete buttons EKP7.0 EKP7.1 Repository Manager Permission links of Folders and Files are replaced by buttons. Folder Permissions EKP7.0 EKP7.1 File Permissions EKP7.0 EKP7.1 Page 26

28 News Editor Rearrangement of the elements on the Target Audience tab page (MANAGE - - > News Manager - - > News Search and Maintenance - > New Article) EKP7.0 EKP7.1 User Selector Search Button to be the Default Button In EKP 7.0, the Save button is not set to be the default button so that users can not just simply hit the Return key to do the search. However, in EKP7.1, the button is set to be the default button. The following picture shows the Search button in the User Selector: Page 27

29 Skills Role Access Control In EKP7.0, the following things are not access controlled by the Skills setting, no matter you set the Skills to No Access or Unrestricted, the following things will still be shown in EKP. However, in EKP7.1, we extend the Skills access control to check the following things which if the Skills is set to No Access, the following things will not be showed in EKP. Skills setting in Role Access Control Set to No Access Set to Unrestricted Skill item in the Competency Manager Set to No Access Set to Unrestricted Skills Exam type in the Exam Template Editor Set to No Access Set to Unrestricted Page 28

30 Skills Exam option in the New Exam Template Set to No Access Set to Unrestricted Skills Exam Template option in the Exam Generator Set to No Access Set to Unrestricted Page 29

31 Competency Editor OK Buttons are replaced by Save Button in Toolbar All the buttons are removed in the following pages. They are replaced by a Save button in the toolbar. EKP7.0 EKP7.1 Page 30

32 Archiving Learning Modules In EKP 7.1 we have added the ability to archive learning modules. In the Catalog Editor there is a new page named Archive Status. On this page a catalog administrator can mark a module as archived, or configure a date on which the module will be archived automatically. Page 31

33 Modules that are marked as archived will not appear by default. However, on the Catalog Editor search page there is an option to show archived courses instead of active courses. Page 32

34 Add a banner (or logo) to Printed Transcript In EKP7.1, a banner/logo can be added to the printed version of Record/Transcript by using the new CSS class, transcript- report- banner. For example, by adding the following CSS to base.css, you will be able to add a banner to the printed version of the transcript as illustrated below:.transcript- report- banner{ background- image: url(../images/background/header.jpg); background- repeat: no- repeat; height: 150px; width: 700px; } Page 33

35 Holiday Calendars on Sub- sessions Introduction Introduction In EKP 7.0, holiday calendars can be assigned to training centers. In 7.1, these training centers are used when scheduling classes where the holidays appear in the class bookings. To demonstrate how it is done, please refer to the instructions below. Set-Up We have a PH Holiday Calendar assigned to the PH training center. Please note the dates in the PH Holiday Calendar. Important! Make sure the training center has resources or facilities assigned to them or the class schedule will show nothing. Creating a Class We create a class of a course, in this case a classroom course. Upon adding a session, go to Edit Event Schedule. Then Add New. The Schedule a New Class will appear that lets you schedule the sub- session, book a venue / resource / instructor. Page 34

36 Select the PH Training Center as the training center of the sub- session then go to the date of the holidays as listed in the PH Holiday Calendar. Notice that the Holiday Dates are blocked in red. It is still possible to book on these dates but it will a warning that there is a conflict with the booking. Page 35

37 Gadgets EKP gadgets are fragments of content from EKP that can be embedded in other web pages simply by copying a snippet of HTML code. They require neither programming nor any special server software. The following gadgets are available. Latest Courses Enrollments News Latest Forum Posts Personal Calendar Assigned Job Profiles Competency Completion Status Certifications Awarded Training Plan If your site has the API (Portal Toolkit) enabled, then you can find the EKP Gadgets page under Manage > Developer Tools > EKP Gadgets, otherwise it will be under Manage > EKP Gadgets. This page lists the available gadgets. Displayed beside each gadget is a snippet of HTML code that you can copy- and- paste into your own web page. Additionally, EKP gadgets support Google's Gadgets API. You can embed an EKP gadget into another application that supports the Gadgets API by copying and pasting the gadget URL from EKP into the appropriate configuration area of the other application. Below is a selection of sites and platforms that support the Gadgets API. Many Google products, including Blogger, Gmail, igoogle, Google Calendar, Google Sites, Google Spreadsheets, Google Toolbar, Google Wave and orkut Atlassian products such as Confluence and JIRA Enterprise and web portals such as myaol, IBM websphere portal, RedHat JBoss portal, SUN portal and BEA weblogic portal. Page 36

38 An EKP gadget in Gmail: EKP gadgets in igoogle: An EKP gadget in Google Calendar: Page 37

39 An EKP gadget in Confluence: Page 38

40 PTK API enhancements EKP's API already covers common learner- oriented functionality including news, enrollments, training records, catalogs and courses. In EKP 7.1 we have expanded the API to cover module search, career development and discussion forums. Module search A new API function returns modules that (optionally) match the supplied keyword(s), as rich XML, RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0. The results can be ordered either by relevance or by module creation date (most recent first). Combining chronological sorting with RSS or Atom provides a feed of the latest modules, optionally filtered by keyword(s). Name Description Sample Response(s) modules Returns summary information about modules matching the specified criteria. modules- xml.xml modules- rss.xml modules- atom.xml Career development Six new API functions provide functionality related to job profiles, competencies, certifications and training plans. Name Description Sample Response(s) assigned- job- profiles Returns the job profiles assigned- job- profiles.xml assigned to a user competency- completion- status Returns the completions status of competencies associated competency- completion- status.xml with a user certifications- awarded Returns certifications awarded certifications- awarded.xml to a user training- plan Returns a user's training plan training- plan.xml job- profiles Returns available job profiles, job- profiles.xml organized by catalog job- profile- assigner Assigns a job profile to a user assigned- job- profiles.xml Discussion forums A new API function provides access to a feed of the latest forum posts (topics and replies) as either RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0. Name Description Sample Response(s) latest- forum- posts Returns the most recent forum posts (topics latest- forum- posts- rss.xml and replies) latest- forum- posts- atom.xml Page 39