Released 2018-11-29
This is the first release of Engine 2018.1. Here's what's new in this release:
Version 2 of the REST API
This is the first major revision of Engine's REST API since its initial release in Engine 2015.1. This new version of the API gives us a chance to improve some of the API resources we had in v1, and enhance the tenant and credential management capabilities. It is now possible to create short-lived tokens with finer-grained permissions that can be used to grant access to the API for calls from client-side applications or other workflows.
Note for Upgrading Customers: The version 1 API is still available in 2018.1, and upgrading customers can continue to use it.
Administrative Interface
Engine now has a modern front-end for configuration and troubleshooting. This is a tool meant for application administrators and developers in order to do things like: manage tenants, create API credentials, modify course configuration, troubleshoot registrations, and get user counts.
Note for Upgrading Customers: with this release, the previously deprecated 'Console' application (/tools/console) is no longer included with Engine. Customers who were using it can use the new administrative tool for much of the same functionality, though there will be some areas not covered.
Metrics
Engine is now outfitted to track and provide real-time statistics on API and database performance. These metrics can be pulled into external monitoring systems through a new endpoint that outputs the data in a Prometheus-compatible format. This requires a setting change and some small changes to the web application configuration to enable it.
This feature is also available in more recent releases of 2017.1.
xAPI Interactions Reporting
Interactions (question and answer details) from launched xAPI courses are now available from Engine’s normal registration progress API resource and postback, if the course sends statements for interaction activities.
This feature is also available in more recent releases of 2017.1.
Performance Improvements
With this version, Engine has enabled by default the StoreRuntimeDataAsLob setting that we introduced in 2017.1 (defaulted to 'false'). This changes the way we store registration runtime data internally to reduce database load and possible contention during the process of updating registration state.
In addition to this configuration switch, several changes have also been made internally that reduce CPU usage for most processes in Engine. These changes were also deployed in some more recent releases of Engine 2017.1.
Note for Upgrading Customers: if you are an older integration that is running queries directly against our ScormActivity tables, you will need to add this setting to your configuration with a value of 'false' to get back to the old behavior. Otherwise, activity data will no longer be in the tables where your queries expect it.
LTI Export for Dispatches
Engine Dispatch now has the ability to share content as an LTI tool provider when creating a dispatch. This will help anyone building an application around Dispatch who has customers or prospects in K-12 and higher education where this standard is widely used.