February 2020 Update

Welcome to the February 2020 update to Doubtfire. There are a number of significant feature enhancements in this release which we hope you will like. Some of the key highlights are:

• Campus Support - Tutorials and student enrolments are now linked with campuses.
• Tutorial Streams - Each unit now has tutorial streams, so you can have a Prac and a Seminar in the same unit for different student types.
• Tutorial Capacity - Tutorials can optionally have a maximum capacity set.
• Extension Changes - There is now a setting (on by default) that will automatically apply student extension requests that result in a due date that falls before the task’s deadline. This is marked as approved by the main convenor.
• Multiple Convenors - You can now indicate who is the main convenor for a unit. Communications from OnTrack will come from the main convenor in most cases.
• Smart Syncing - Unit rollovers, system integrations means you can spend less time on admin tasks.
• Reply Comments - You can now reply to any individual task comment.

And if you want a peek under the hood…

• Platform enhancements, Updates and Optimizations — We have made changes to enable bundle optimisations in the load times of Doubtfire.

Campus Support

Campus support categorises students based on their campus location, or cloud. It supports mixed campus-based and online-based students, and can ensure students of one campus can not move into tutorials of another campus.

Tutorials Streams

Tutorial streams allow you to support multiple tutorial types within a unit. For example, a unit like Introduction to Programming could have a practical, workshop and a tutorial all running for different student types. These are optional, so if a unit only has one type of tutorial then you can leave this setting unset. This feature is particularly useful for units with mixed campus and online cohorts.

Tutorial Capacity

Tutorials can optionally have their capacity set, and will not allow students to transfer.

Extension Changes

There is now a setting (on by default) that will automatically apply student extension requests that result in a due date that falls before the task’s deadline. This is marked as approved by the main convenor.

Multiple Convenors

A unit can now have multiple convenors, with one convenor nominated as the main convenor. All emails will originate from the main convenor

Smart Syncing

Smart syncing supports deep integrations with your institution’s settings to sync student enrolments, tutorials, locations etc.

Comment Replies

You can now reply to individual comments within a task panel, useful for when you are responding to a number of comments at once. Simple click the reply button next to a comment and start your response. You can respond to and with text, audio or image comments!

Platform Updates and Optimisations

• The build process has been optimised, drastically improving load times for the app.
• Doubtfire is upgraded to Angular 9, enabling the IVY renderer for better performance.
• Full service-worker support for snappy loading times. (~2.1s -> ~0.6s on a fresh load after service worker registration.)