Tabula release notes

We released Tabula 2021.1.2 on Thursday 14^th January 2021. In this version:

• Tabula now only retrieves small group teaching events in the current year when you view a timetable. This is to reduce the load on the Tabula database and improve performance.
• Thanks to Oscar Harris and Michael Gale for the following open source contributions:
  • Oscar simplified the configuration process required for contributors to work on the Tabula code. He also improved the documentation for this process.
  • Michael improved the Tabula API such that you can now use it to add students to, and register attendance at, small group teaching event occurrences.

We released Tabula 2021.1.1 on Wednesday 6^th January 2021. In this version we made some changes related to small group teaching events:

• When you view a list of events without a map location, it now excludes those with a delivery method of 'online only'. You can access this list in the 'Manage' dropdown menu on the main Small Groups page for your department.
• We added another list, accessed from the same place: 'Events without an online delivery URL'. This lists all events with a delivery method of 'hybrid (online and face to face)' or 'online only' and no online delivery URL.
• Thanks to Oscar Harris for fixing, via an open source contribution, a bug affecting timetable iCal feeds. When an event did not specify an online delivery URL, the iCal feed included an empty URL, which could cause problems when subscribing to your timetable.

We released Tabula 2020.12.3 on Thursday 17^th December 2020. In this version:

• You can now create a copy of a small group teaching event. This is via the 'Copy' button that now appears next to the 'Edit' button for each event on the Events tab when you create or edit a small group set.
• Recording that a student attended a small group teaching event now works as follows, depending on the delivery method of the event:
  • Face to face only: you can select only Attended in person (Attended - in person); Attended remotely (Attended - remotely) is greyed out and not selectable. If you hover your mouse over this option you see: "You cannot record remote attendance for a face-to-face only event".
  • Online only: you can select only Attended remotely (Attended - remotely); Attended in person (Attended - in person) is greyed out and not selectable. If you hover your mouse over this option you see: "You cannot record in-person attendance for an online-only event".
  • Hybrid: you can select either Attended remotely (Attended - remotely) or Attended in person (Attended - in person).
• We updated the Tabula API to include the new remote attendance state for small group teaching events. When retrieving attendance, state now has 'AttendedRemotely' as one of its possible values.

We released Tabula 2020.12.2 on Thursday 10^th December 2020. In this version:

• We completed some work on the Small Group Teaching component to cater for different event delivery methods and facilitate Covid-19 contact tracing:
  • When creating or editing a small group set, there is now a required 'Delivery method' property, with the following options:
    • Online only - there is no 'Location' property for the event. When you record students as having attended, Attended remotely (attended remotely - introduced in Tabula 2020.11.4) is the only option.
    • Face to face only - when you record a student as having attended, Attended in person (attended in person) is the only option.
    • Hybrid (online and face to face)
  • We also added the 'Delivery method' property to previously created sets, with 'Hybrid' as the default value.
  • When you select 'Online only' or 'Hybrid', another two properties are available:
    • Online Platform - with options such as Teams and Moodle.
    • Online delivery URL - for the URL of the event on the relevant platform. This appears as a link in students' timetables.
  • These new properties are also available in the 'Default properties' for the events within a set.
• On the 'Manage extensions' page for an assignment, if a student has not requested an extension, the Status now reads 'No extension requested'. The previous text, 'No extension', did not make clear that an extension had not been requested.
• We fixed a bug that affected approved extension requests that were subsequently revoked. The notification to the student about this incorrectly listed the current date as the assignment deadline.
• For assignments set not to allow late submissions, students are no longer notified when their submission is overdue.
• We restored the message you see when you are prevented from creating an assignment from SITS with the same name as an existing assignment. A bug was preventing the display of this message, which applies for assignments within the same module and year.
• We fixed a bug that affected some assignments using a reusable marking workflow and marker allocations imported from small groups. For the affected assignments, attempting to modify the imported marker / moderator allocations led to all students being allocated to a single marker / moderator.

We released Tabula 2020.12.1 on Thursday 3^rd December 2020. In this version:

• Visibility of student names on the 'Submissions and feedback' page for an assignment again depends on the department setting. In Tabula 2020.11.3, we made names always visible here to Departmental Administrators, Module Managers and Module Assistants, but this caused problems for some departments.
• We fixed a bug that affected Missed Assessment reports in the Reports component. Current students were appearing multiple times, in place of any permanently withdrawn students.