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Engine and Engine Dispatch 21.1.1

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Released 2021-12-15

 

This is the first release of Engine 21.1. Here's what's new:

Vimeo Support

You can now create a course in Engine for a Vimeo video by its URL, and deliver it to learners with the same results tracking that we provide with our native MP4 video support.

cmi5 Improvements

We have made several changes in this version to further improve the support we have for cmi5 in Engine:

  • Validations added so that Engine passes the CATAPULT conformance tests
  • Performance for cmi5 launches and recording of data has been improved
  • For customers who are using our Dispatch feature, you can now export a cmi5 dispatch package (previously only SCORM and AICC were supported)

LTI 1.3 Improvements

  • Line Items: New endpoints were added that allow LTI tools to retrieve all line items associated with a context id, as well as individual line items by line-item-id.
  • Custom Claims: An LTI 1.3 tool may choose to add extensions when updating the score for a user, as described in the specification. As of this version of Engine, any extensions provided will be persisted and can be retrieved via the registrations API, in the lti13CustomClaims property of the registration schema.

Caching

In order to enhance performance and reduce database usage in high volume environments, Engine now supports the use of Memcache servers to act as a shared cache for some frequently used data. As well, the local in-memory caching has been updated with some new configuration possibilities, like setting different expiration values for different types of objects. Things that rarely change, like package definitions, can be kept for much longer, versus other types (like configuration settings).

Course Asset Retrieval

In the previous version, Engine allowed the updating of individual course files through the API, if the way the course was imported allowed for it. However, there was no way to download the course files after import. With this release, there are new endpoints for listing the files, getting them individually or all together, and for deleting individual files.

Writable Agent Profiles

Some xAPI-based content may try to save data in the 'agent profile' (an xAPI term) of the learner associated with the course launch. Previously, this was not allowed by the LRS in Engine, but now there is a setting, AllowWritableUserAgentProfile, which can enable this ability.

Package properties migration

As mentioned in the breaking changes document, Engine is removing our older 'package properties' implementation and corresponding data. As part of the upgrade to 21.1, for older systems, Engine's upgrade tool will convert the older data into the corresponding configuration settings, if necessary.

Removing this legacy mechanism brings all configuration under the same system, and will allow us greater flexibility moving forward.

 


Note: There are a number of potentially breaking changes in Engine 21.1. If you are upgrading from an older Engine please check out this document for details on those.

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