Here's some of the new things you can now enjoy using in Heropa! We'd love to hear how these are working for you! 

✨ New features

• Events: When creating a new event, you can now optionally select a time period during which no automated shutdowns of user environments will take place. This will override the policy setting related to user inactivity shutdowns.

• Editing VM networks: When modifying a VM's network rules, we automatically detect your IP address to simplify the process of adding additional inbound and outbound rules to your local computer.

🌱 Enhancements

• Events: Classroom panel enhancements: We've made some awesome improvements to the Classroom panel to make it easier for hosts and instructors when running a virtual event. Read all about it here: An improved classroom experience
• New ‘VM shutdown’ notification: Users with an inactive workspace are now automatically alerted 10 mins prior to their VM being shutdown by the policy, allowing them to cancel the automatic shutdown.
• User registration form: It’s now possible to add a second, separate URL for new users to review when registering their account with Heropa. For example, links to a separate Terms of Service and Privacy Policy can now be included in the registration form. See: Configuring user settings in Configuring settings.

🔧 Bugfixes

• Enrolling users in Courses: Fixed an issue preventing users from being enrolled in a Course via the Course detail / Enrollments tab.  
• Branding: Resolved intermittent issues saving images in the Branding module. 
• Protected environments: Options were available allowing VMs within a protected environment to be protected or unprotected. These have been removed. 

We’re excited to share that we’ve made some changes to the virtual classroom to make it easier for event hosts and instructors to manage their classrooms. Thanks for your feedback which helped shape these improvements, we hope they help you.

Firstly, we’ve re-organized the Classroom screen so that you can see more of your users' environments. The thumbnail aspect ratio has been modified to better match the most common connection size. This allows for an increased density in the classroom, while also reducing the pixel distortion.

To view or join a workspace, simply hover over a thumbnail. This replaces the previous methods. 

All other existing capability has been retained, with the following improvements added: 

• If a user is idle in the workspace, the thumbnail will show a small orange timer on the top right corner of the user panel, indicating how long they have been inactive 
  
• If you suspect the displayed user status is incorrect or a thumbnail is missing, try selecting ‘Refresh user status’ on the thumbnail. This will send the user a message notifying them to refresh their browser, which can often resolve any connection issues. 
  
• You can optionally show and hide the bottom panel of each thumbnail - containing the IP address and VM name - to free up space if needed. To show this information, use the bulk action 'Show details'.

One request we had from customers running Events in Heropa was for a way to easily share files with event participants during an event.

Introducing... Shared drive! 🎉   

Events can now be configured to include a shared drive. When configured, Windows VMs in the event will show a shared drive to facilitate file sharing during the event. Hosts, instructors and participants can view or download files in the drive, as well as add and remove files. 

For more information, see: Creating an event.

Video content can now be included in a course to provide supporting content to a self-paced lab. Vimeo, Wistia and YouTube videos are supported.

Once a video has been added to a course, it can be viewed by clicking the button at the top of the workspace. 

To add video content to a course, see: Adding content to a course - Adding a video

Over the weekend we released the following updates to Heropa. We look forward to your feedback!  

✨ Features

• Pin VMs: We've made it easier to access VMs you work with regularly via a new Pin VM feature. See: Working with VMs in the workspace.
• AWS status check: A tool has been created to help troubleshoot failed connections to AWS VMs. See: AWS VM status check.
• Notify users by email when a new environment is created: Select to notify a user via email when a new environment is created for them. See: Creating and launching an environment.
• Copy content sections: At a section level, content can now be copied and inserted into into other content, making it easier to re-use content. See: Creating content.

🌱 Enhancements

• Events - Classroom thumbnails: Thumbnails are now retrieved directly from the server without requiring local user workspace information. This should result in a significant improvement in the delivery of thumbnails in the Classroom view.
• User session management: Some general enhancements to user session management were implemented to better recycle stale user sessions.
• Deleting a VM within an Environment: When deleting a VM, the name of the VM is now shown to the user prior to deletion.
• Dashboard role permission optimisations: It's now possible to restrict a role's visibility of the Dashboard. See: Using Roles and Permissions.

🔧 Bugfixes 

• Terraform updates are now asynchronous: Updates to existing environments incorrectly showed a failed / rollback status. This was due to the synchronous implementation of Terraform updates to AWS. We have now implemented asynchronous updates, removing the false positive failure status.
• Updating Environments: Row actions available for specific environment states were incorrect and could lead to unwanted actions being available for selection. These have now been updated so only applicable actions based on the environment state can be selected.
• User timeline: For some users, timeline information was not visible in the User Details / Timeline tab due to required data fields being missing. This has now been resolved. 
• Reconnecting to disconnected VMs in the workspace: This was only updating once a successful connection was established, and not showing the attempted reconnection in progress. This has now been resolved.

We've just introduced a troubleshooting tool to help understand the cause of a failed connection to an AWS virtual machine. 

In the Heropa workspace, if an AWS VM is disconnected, you'll now see a 'Status check' button.

Selecting this will run a backend status check, returning vital information from the AWS API to assist in understanding why the VM is disconnected. 

This includes a status check, system and instance checks, and a console screenshot. 

See Troubleshooting VM connections.

Thanks for all your feedback and suggestions on how you'd like for it to be easier to work with multiple VMs in the workspace. 

The result is a new feature where VMs can be pinned to the top of the workspace, making them more accessible and easier to move between those VMs that you work with regularly.

Up to 4 VMs can be pinned along the top of the workspace panel, and remain pinned until they are unpinned.

See: Working with environments in the workspace.

A huge update from our team here at Heropa, with lots of news about what we've shipped recently! 

✨ Features

• Course enrollment email: Select to notify a user via email when they are enrolled in a course. See: Providing users access to a course.
• Company role permission optimisations: We've introduced some granular role permission optimisations for Companies. It's now possible to restrict a role's visibility to their own company only. It's also possible to configure which Company tabs are visible for a role. See: Using Roles and Permissions.
• Record T&Cs acceptance: Company Admins can now configure whether new users are required to accept T&Cs upon user creation. Acceptance is recorded in the user's Profile. See: Configuring user settings in Configuring Company details.
• Content import and export: Export and import JSON content files from Heropa so they can be used in other templates and courses. See: Exporting and importing content. 

🌱 Enhancements

• Events: LTI users can now be assigned seats in Events.
• Direct enrollment in Courses: We introduced a concept whereby Companies need to be assigned access to Courses, to make it easier to enroll users in courses, See: Assigning a Company access to a Course. 
• Adding users to a Company: It's now possible to add a user directly from the Company Details / Users tab. 

🔧 Bugfixes

• Deleting LTI users: A bug preventing deletion of LTI users has been fixed.
• Deleting users in Events: We've fixed a bug preventing users from being deleted in Events.
• Deleting Groups: A bug preventing the deletion of empty Groups has been fixed.
• Public IP addresses: It's again possible to save notes in Public IP addresses.
• Users created via csv import: We were having some issues where new users created by csv import were not being created correctly. This caused access issues for new users. This has now been fixed.
• New users and email domains: We removed the automatic creation of email domains when new users are created as this was causing issues with users being assigned to Companies.
• Templates - Replacing VM images: Searching for VM images was broken. This is now working. In addition, deleted VM images are no longer visible in the list of VM images. 

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:

✨ Features

• Events: Add time to an event using the 'Add time' feature. This adds time to all environments in the event and updates the event's end time. See: Running an event.
  
• Events: Save time and effort by configuring an event so that both the event and its participants are automatically deleted when the event finishes. See: Creating an event.
• Templates, Environments: Set one or more secondary IPs on VMs within a template or environment. See: Creating a template.

🌱 Enhancements

• Environments: We previously shared that environments can be protected from deletion. Now, you can also protect individual VMs inside an environment from deletion. See: Managing an environment's VMs.
• Environments: Easily see when environments are due to be deleted via the new 'Deletes on' column on the Environments List screen.
• Templates: When deleting templates, we now show you the template names prior to confirming their deletion.
• LTI: Admins can now configure whether users see an intermediary confirmation screen when joining Heropa from an LMS. Go to Administration / Company Details / LTI to manage this setting.

🔧 Bugfixes

• Events: User initials were displaying in the workspace when their session was idle. This has now been fixed, and they no longer display.
• Environments, Templates: When editing VM networks within an environment or template, we had a bug which was allowing a duplicate IP to be assigned to a VM. This is no longer possible.

We've made some improvements to how role permissions are managed, and hope you like them! 

1. Changes to infrastructure permissions

In the Role / Permissions tab, role permissions can now be set on different infrastructure components in Heropa. Previously, this was managed by an overarching category called 'Infrastructure'. 

This has been replaced by new separate permission categories for Environments, Templates, VM Images, Policies, and Public IPs, example below:

2. A new way to manage what's visible in the left navigation

The new 'Left nav' permission is what determines whether the category is visible in the left navigation menu in Heropa. This can be used to control what screens users with different roles see. Note that there may some roles where permissions to a category might need to be granted, even if seeing the screens in the category is not required for the role. 

For example: You might want to give a role left nav visibility of Courses. If the role also requires visibility of the Environments, Templates and VM images in courses, then a 'View' permission should be set on each of these categories, even if the 'Left nav' permission for these categories is not set. 

Learn more in our knowledge base article: Using roles and permissions.