We’re excited to announce powerful new features and improvements designed to give you more flexibility, control, and visibility in your platform experience. This release includes integrated communications for Events, flexible time-based environment access, the ability to switch templates and regions mid-session, and several UI and usability enhancements.

✨ New features

• Integrated comms for Events: Built-in voice, video, and chat are now available directly in the Event classroom. Hosts can share their screen, individual apps—or even a participant’s VM—with the entire class. Participants can also follow the host’s view changes in real-time, making it easier to guide students through complex workflows. Learn more here.
• Limit access using Active time: Set a time limit on how long students can actively use their environment—while keeping their access window open for a longer period. Great for controlling costs while offering flexibility. Learn more here. 
• Change template or region of a running environment: Need to switch a running environment to a different template or region? Now you can—without restarting from scratch.
• Customizable “Access currently disabled” screens: The workspace view now shows different screens depending on whether an event hasn’t started, has ended, or is outside class hours. Customize these messages via the Language module.
• New notifications for changes to events:
  • Event ending soon notification: Warn users when an event is nearing its end, with configurable lead time and recipient settings. Admins can define default notification behaviors per event.
  • Event cancellation notification: Send automatic alerts to hosts and participants when an event is cancelled before it starts—so no one shows up unnecessarily.

🌱 Enhancements

• Event Classroom icons for Direct RDP: Classroom tiles now display an icon to easily identify students using Direct RDP versus browser-based access—helping instructors monitor sessions at a glance.
• Improved Direct RDP mirroring controls: Instructors now see clearer feedback during Direct RDP session mirroring, with streamlined retry logic and two new controls:
  1. Mirror now for immediate retry; and
  2. Mirror session to restart mirroring after retries have stopped.
• New reference fields in Events: Add Event code and Billing code fields to event configurations (configurable at a tenancy level via Administration > Settings). Useful for API lookups, reporting, billing, or integrations.
• Parent column in Environment list: Quickly see which event or course an environment belongs to, with a clickable link for faster navigation. Toggle this column on/off as needed.
• Persistent sort preferences in lists: Lists now default to alphabetical by Name—but if you sort by a different column, the platform remembers your choice for next time.
• Delete resources directly from Detail pages: Remove individual VMs, templates, policies, and environments right from their Detail page (via the Actions menu)—reducing navigation steps and minimizing errors.

🔧 Bugfixes

• Visiting /login in a new tab no longer logs out active sessions in other tabs.
• SSO with MFA users can now sign in seamlessly without unexpected prompts / errors.
• Credential state updates (e.g. assignment status or visibility) now appear instantly without needing to refresh.

We look forward to your feedback!

We’ve just rolled out a powerful upgrade that makes live training more engaging, collaborative, and effortless for everyone in the virtual classroom.

Introducing Integrated Comms — a built-in voice, video, and chat solution, purpose-built for virtual instructor-led training (VILT).
No more juggling external tools. Everything happens inside Heropa.

Why this matters

Until now, running a live session meant switching between different platforms to screen share, chat, or move between views.

With Integrated Comms, it’s all built-in — making sessions smoother, more interactive, and easier to manage.

✅ No more context-switching
✅ Keep everyone in sync inside the Heropa platform

What’s new?

🗣️ Built-in voice, video, and chat for seamless live collaboration

👀 “Follow the Host” mode — participants automatically track the instructor’s view as they:

• Switch between their own VM and shared desktop or window
• Share a participant’s VM with the class to highlight great work or troubleshoot live

💻 Everything happens inside Heropa — no external apps needed

Whether you’re running a hands-on lab, delivering complex software training, or troubleshooting live with participants, Integrated Comms keeps everyone connected and focused.

Ready to try it?

Reach out to the Heropa support team to enable Integrated Comms for your events.

👉 Learn more: See our support article.

👋 Hi from the Heropa team!

We’ve just released a powerful new feature that gives you greater control over training delivery — while giving your students more time and flexibility to learn.

Introducing Active Time Limit, a smarter way to deliver hands-on labs for both classroom and on-demand training. With Active Time Limit, students enjoy flexibility, and you keep training delivery costs predictable and under control.

The challenge

Traditionally, giving students 30 days of lab access meant giving them unlimited usage during that time. This offered flexibility — but also meant unexpectedly high training delivery costs, even if a student only needed a few hours.

The typical workaround? Shorter access windows. But that often limited flexibility and added pressure on learners.

The solution: Active Time Limit

With Active Time Limit, you control how much time students actively spend in the lab workspace — not just how long it’s available.

✅ Example: Give students 30 days of access, but cap usage to 5 hours of actual lab time.
✅ Flexible pacing: Students can pause and resume learning when it suits them.
✅ Cost control: You set the maximum usage time, so lab costs stay predictable — even with longer access windows.  

How it works

You can apply an Active Time Limit in two ways, depending on how you deliver training:

🖥️ On-demand labs and courses
Set an Active Time Limit within your policies — just like max duration or idle timeout. Define it at the course or environment level, allowing students to access their lab over an extended window (e.g. 30 days) while only consuming a set number of active hours (e.g. 5 hours).

🎓 Events and virtual classrooms
Enable Active Time Limit at the event level to cap the time spent in the workspace during instructor-led training.

Note: If you schedule event environments to automatically start at the start of class, and the user does not access the workspace (absent or direct RDP to the VM), Active Time is not consumed but VMs are still running. We recommend that you choose your preferred method based on your requirements.  

Example: Run a 3-day training course across 5 days. Students get up to 3 × 8-hour days of Active Time Limit and can choose which days to join, while instructors provide real-time support.

💡 The result: You keep costs predictable. Students get the freedom to learn on their own terms.

✅ Active Time Limit is available now for both Courses and Events.
It’s easy to configure — Learn how to set an Active Time Limit.

The Heropa team has been super busy of late. Here's some of the highlights we've been working on over the last little while:

✨ New features

• VM backups for AWS environments: You can now back up and restore environment VMs hosted in AWS. This enables customers to create safe rollback points, restore environments in place, or generate new VM images from backups—offering greater flexibility and protection for critical environments. Learn more here.
• Webhook notifications: You can now configure webhook notifications to receive real-time updates when key events occur within your Heropa tenancy. This enables better integration with external systems and improved visibility across workflows. Learn more here.
• Protected environments – override capability: Users can now override protection on a protected environment when making simple changes. A confirmation modal will warn users that their actions may impact the environment, and all overrides are logged in the audit trail. This allows administrators to make necessary adjustments without first removing protection—while still maintaining traceability and accountability. Learn more here.
• Default environment logo: Companies can now set a default logo for all course and event environments. This logo will appear in students’ MyLabs view, providing a more branded and consistent experience across all environments. Learn more here.

🌱 Enhancements

• Templates: Added deletion protection for templates that are in use by courses or events, preventing accidental removal of templates currently in use.
• Event classroom: A confirmation modal is now shown when selecting View workspace, helping prevent accidentally disconnecting students who are actively using their environment. 
• Event classroom: We have added a Hide option to the classroom tile dropdown to make it easier to hide event seats that you no longer want to see. 
• Event classroom: The View Workspace button has been moved into the tile dropdown to reduce the risk of instructors accidentally interrupting students actively using their environments. We’ve also reorganized the tile dropdown menu—options are now context-specific based on user and environment statuses, and the order has been adjusted for greater consistency and clarity. Learn more about all our classroom updates here.
• Protected environments: Destructive actions such as Reset Environment, Destroy Environment, and Delete VM are no longer available for protected environments. This ensures important environments remain safe from accidental changes or deletions. Learn more here.
• SSO: Company administrators can now configure a Logout URL for SSO users. When set, users will be logged out of their SSO session with the identity provider upon logging out of Heropa. This is an optional field and will only be used if configured.

🔧 Bugfixes

• Event templates: Fixed a missing validation when adding a template to an event where the selected credential pool had no credential sets available.
• Event classroom: An issue where newly provisioned student environments were not appearing in the classroom view without refreshing the page has been fixed.
• User imports: Column headings in the User import CSV were case sensitive. Headings are now treated in a case-insensitive manner for smoother imports.
• Credentials: An issue where updates to credential sets were not immediately reflected in the credentials list without refreshing the page has been fixed.
• Events: Deleting participants as part of an event deletion will no longer remove users who have a role assigned. Only users without a role will be deleted.

Note: The v7.67.0 release will be rolled out to customer environments over the coming week.

👋 Hello from the Heropa team! We’ve made some changes to the Event Classroom UI to improve the host and instructor experience—and to help avoid accidentally interrupting participants who are actively working in their environments.

What’s new in the event classroom

• "View Workspace" button moved to the dropdown: To reduce confusion and avoid unintentional disconnections, the View Workspace option that was previously available when hovering on a participant tile has been moved to inside the tile dropdown menu—away from the primary action area. View workspace takes control of the workspace being viewed - this is not normally intention of the host and as such removing it as the default hover option will help to avoid user disconnection.
• View Workspace confirmation: When selecting View Workspace, you’ll now see a confirmation modal to help prevent accidentally taking over a student’s session. Again, this was implemented to protect active users.
• Context-aware dropdown actions: The tile dropdown now shows actions based on the user and environment status, and we’ve reordered the options for improved clarity and consistency.
• New Hide option: We’ve added a quick Hide option to the tile dropdown so you can easily remove seats from view without needing to adjust visibility settings separately.

We hope these improvements help you manage your sessions more confidently. As always, we’d love to hear what you think!

👋 Hello from the Heropa team! We’re excited to share a powerful new feature that gives you more control and peace of mind when managing your AWS-based environments.

Introducing VM Backups for AWS Environments

Whether you’re experimenting with changes, preparing for a demo, or working with a valuable environment, it’s helpful to have a way to roll back if something doesn’t go to plan. Heropa’s new VM backups feature allows you to create on-demand snapshots of individual VMs, giving you a reliable way to restore to a known good state.

With this update, you can:

• Back up individual VMs on demand
• Restore a VM in place from a backup
• Create a new VM image from a backup for testing or template creation
• View and manage all VM backups in the new environment Backups tab

This means you can confidently test updates or make changes knowing you can easily roll back if needed. It’s also a great way to preserve critical VM states or clone VMs into new environments for validation.

Here’s a peek at what’s new:

• A new row action on environment VMs to create a new backup
• A Backups tab in your environment with backup details, status, and actions
• New options to backup, delete, restore, or create a VM image from backups

We hope this feature gives you more flexibility and confidence when working with important environments. As always, we’d love your feedback—reach out if you have any questions or suggestions!

👋 Hey from the Heropa team! We’ve just rolled out something that opens up a lot of possibilities for integration and automation.

Introducing Webhook Notifications

Ever wanted to be instantly notified when something important happens in your Heropa tenancy? Or maybe you’d like to trigger actions in another system when user enrolls in one of your courses, a new event is scheduled, or an environment needs updating?

You can now configure webhook notifications to receive real-time POST requests whenever specific events occur in Heropa.

This makes it easier to:

• Automatically update external systems when users or environments change
• Trigger notifications, workflows, or alerts in tools like Slack, Teams, or Zapier
• Maintain tighter integration between Heropa and your existing processes

Each webhook can be configured with:

• A custom endpoint URL
• A list of events you want to subscribe to
• JSON payloads containing event-specific details

Whether you want to power dashboards, automate manual tasks, or log activity in an external system—webhooks make it possible.

We’re excited to see what you build with this new capability. Let us know how you use it—or if there are more event types you’d like to see supported!

👋 Hello from the Heropa team! Today we’re releasing a powerful new feature that gives you more flexibility when managing protected environments—while keeping them safe from destructive actions.

Override protection when you need to make changes

Protected environments are designed to safeguard critical resources from accidental changes or deletion. But what if you just need to tweak a setting or make a small update—without removing protection entirely?

You can now override protection on a protected environment, allowing you to make non-destructive changes while preserving guardrails around high-value environments.

Here’s how it works:

• When you attempt to modify a protected environment, a confirmation modal will now appear with a new “Override protection” option
• Selecting this will trigger a second confirmation, ensuring the action is intentional
• Each override is recorded in the audit log, environment history, and user history for traceability

Additional safety improvements

To further protect critical environments, we’ve removed destructive actions from protected environments:

• Destroy Environment and Reset Environment are no longer available in the action menus
• You can no longer delete or protect individual VMs within a protected environment

These changes help ensure that only intentional, safe updates are made—keeping your environments secure and your audit trail complete.

We hope this update gives you a better balance of flexibility and control. Let us know what you think—or if there’s anything else you’d like to see added!

👋 Hey from the Heropa team! We’ve just added a small but mighty update that gives your environments a more polished and branded feel—automatically.

Set a default logo for environments in MyLabs

You can now upload a default logo that will be shown for course and event environments in the student MyLabs view. This new setting helps ensure your environments always reflect your company’s branding, even if a specific logo isn’t added during course or event setup.

Here’s what’s new:

• In Administration → Settings → Branding, you’ll see a new option: Default MyLabs logo for environments
• Click on the logo shown to open the image selector and upload or replace your default logo
• Your selected logo is automatically applied to all newly created courses and event environments
• You can still set different logos for individual courses when needed

By setting a default, you can deliver a consistent, professional visual experience to your students—without any extra effort from your course or event creators.

📚 For more information, see: Configuring settings.

We hope this makes it easier to keep your training environment looking and feeling like an extension of your brand. Let us know how it’s working for you!

Hi everyone! We have some great news! Heropa has been audited and has re-certified to one of the most reputable accreditations for security standards in the world: ISO 27001:2022! 🔐 

At Heropa, we care about your data security and privacy. We already do lots to keep your data safe and our interactions secure, but we wanted to give you even more peace of mind. 

Want to know more? Take a look at our Trust Center at https://trust.heropa.com/.