The team has been busily working away on a new module within Heropa, called Training Credits. This has been developed to provide an easy way for our customers to sell bundles of prepaid credits that can be redeemed for courses on Heropa. 

Customers using the Credits module need to first assign a credit value to their courses. Then, once credits are sold (outside of Heropa), a credit transaction can be added to a company in Heropa, giving them a credit balance. Each credit transaction is worth a predetermined amount of credits, with a set expiry date. 

The company's users can then be enrolled in courses on Heropa, deducting from the credit balance. Credits are reserved once a user is enrolled in a course, and only redeemed once the course is launched. 

Here's an example of a credit transaction worth 1000 credits, where 500 credits have been reserved due to an enrollment in a training course.

For more information, see: Training credits.

If you'd like to learn more about Training Credits, and see it in action, please speak to us!

It's already easy to add custom colours for fonts, buttons and backgrounds via Administration / Settings / Branding. 

Further customizations to the Login page are now available, including:

• Adding a custom background image
• Adding a Welcome panel. This can be used to provide a welcome message and instructions to users when they first arrive to log in. 

A custom header and footer can also be added.

See: Configuring Settings.

Here's an update outlining what's in our latest release. If you'd like to receive these updates via email, please subscribe!

✨ Brand new   

• Customizable Login page: Align the Login page with your branding and look and feel. See: Customize your Login page. 

🌱 Enhancements

• User View: Users can now see more details about each course in their Library. Details about their progress through a course's sections and exercises are also available in My Labs by expanding the course details. 
• Content - Mark as complete: When content is included in the workspace, we've made it easier for users to mark each exercise as complete, immediately taking them to the next exercise.
• Password security: We've done some work to improve the security of our password hashing.  

🔧 Bugfixes

• Bulk delete of VM images: A bug preventing the bulk deletion of VM images has been fixed.
• Datatable column header alignment: A longstanding issue affecting the alignment of column headers in datatables has been fixed. 
• Create new environment - Picklist ordering: A bug affecting the ordering of Companies when creating a new environment has been fixed.   
• Order of VMs in the workspace: An issue affecting the ordering of VMs in the workspace when content is used in an environment has been fixed. 
• Reports - Column sorting: We fixed a bug where the sorting of columns in the Companies and Courses Reports was not working. 
• LTI Course - Submit for grading: An issue where the 'Allow grades' toggle was not being respected has been fixed.
• Environment resets: A bug preventing some customers from resetting their Azure environments has been fixed.

List screens are those that contain lists of resources. For example, select 'Environments' to view a list of active environments in your Heropa instance.

When viewing lists of resources in Heropa, Administrators can modify the information that is visible to them. This includes: 

• Changing which columns are shown / hidden in datatables on list sceens
• Re-ordering columns
• Adjusting column widths

Any changes you make are saved to your profile so that these preferences are retained next time you the list screen.

To restore the default view of the datatable, select 'Reset view' from the Action menu.

Lots of things happening behind the scenes here at Heropa. Take a look at what's in our latest release below. If you'd like to receive these updates via email, please subscribe! 

✨ Brand new   

• VM workspace settings: Admins can configure VM workspace settings for a template, environment, course or event. See: Enhance your users' workspace experience with new VM configurations. 
• Company Details: We've added a Courses tab within Administration / Company details. It's now possible to view courses a company has access to, and see how many users from the company are enrolled in each course. Drill down on the course name to see detailed information about the company’s users enrolled in the course, including their progress.
  

🌱 Enhancements

• Long running VMs: We've changed the way we handle long running VMs. See: A new way to handle long running VMs.
• Event settings: Several event settings that used to be managed in the event's Template tab are now in its Configuration tab. This makes it easier to configure settings for an event. See: Creating an event / Configuring event settings. 
• Usage Report: When viewing usage grouped by Environment, click on the Environment name to view usage for a single environment during the specified report period. See: Using Reports / Usage Report.
  
• Left hand menu item name change: In the Administration menu, the 'Company Details' menu item has been renamed to 'Settings'. This is to avoid confusion with other capability in Heropa to manage Companies. From Settings, you can still manage everything to do with your Heropa instance.  
• Reset view: On List pages, Admins can customize which columns are visible, and their order. A'Reset view' action has been introduced to allow Admins to restore List page columns to their default view if needed.

🔧 Bugfixes

• Event seats: A bug allowing for event seat numbers to exceed the maximum seats allocated to the event has been fixed.  
• LTI users: We fixed an issue so that users accessing Heropa via an LTI are correctly assigned to their company if the company also exists in Heropa. 
• Reset password: Some users were unable to complete the reset password process. This has now been fixed.
• Workspace side panel: We addressed an issue where the right hand edge of the desktop was being slightly obscured by the Content side panel in the workspace. 
• Workspace mouse click: An issue where the left mouse click was being unresponsive while in the workspace has now been fixed.
• Expired video-only courses: An issue causing these courses to expire for end users has been fixed. 
• Managing groups: We fixed a bug preventing companies from being added to / removed from Groups.
• Leave without saving: Within Administration / Company Details, there was an error preventing a user from leaving a screen without saving changes. This has now been fixed.

Historically it's been very difficult to determine when a virtual machine should be shut down. The shutdown policy associated with the environment only takes effect when the user session is idle. Determining true idle states across all browsers has proven to be unreliable, thus causing VMs to run longer than customers expect.

We have now moved the ability to prevent VM shutdown to outside of the policy. The Policy Details page now allows a maximum running period of 12 hours. 

To allow a VM to run constantly, this now needs to be specified on the VM within a template or environment via a row action called 'Disable auto-suspend'. 

Any VM without this setting will automatically be shut down after 12 hours, regardless of user status.

We previously shared that VMs can be pinned to the top of the workspace so users can easily access and move between them. 

It's now possible for Admins to configure VM workspace settings for a template, environment, course or event. 

In the Configuration tab of the resource, configure: 

• Which VMs start automatically when the environment, course or event is launched
• Which VMs are visible in the workspace
• Which VMs are pinned to the top of the workspace by default. Note: Pinned VMs maintain an active console connection, so if users are regularly moving between multiple VMs in the workspace, pinning these VMs will provide the best user experience. Pinned VMs can be changed by a user as desired.
• The order that VMs are displayed in the workspace

See: Working with environments in the workspace.

We've introduced some new ways to categorise resources, which will make it easier for them to be managed and shared. 

It's now possible to add labels and tags to your Heropa instance, and then assign labels and tags to resources. In a nutshell:

Labels:

• We suggest using Labels to classify resources that are used and shared internally. 
• Once labels have been created, they can be assigned to resources in Heropa.   

Tags:

• Tags can be added to Courses and Events, and should be created when you want to classify these and have this visible in the end user Library. 

To learn how to create labels and tags, and add them to resources, see: Using Labels and Tags.

'Resources' in Heropa are any objects that are used within a virtual lab. These include: templates, environments, VM Images, policies, courses, and content.

For some time now, customers have been asking for a way to limit resources to certain sets of users. We've been working on ways to solve this, and have made some changes to Companies. Resources will be able to be shared across companies, and it will also be possible to filter access of resources to certain companies, and certain users within companies. Over the coming months, we'll be rolling out several updates to make this possible. 

If you actively use Companies to group users, then it's important that you are across these changes. Please subscribe to future updates. We'll also work directly with you to ensure you have enough information to benefit from this new capability. 

What are the changes?

1. Introduction of a company level role type

Previously, only a 'Global' role type was available to administrators. Global roles have always had, and will continue to have visibility of all companies. 

Now, a new role type called 'Company' will be available. This can be used to create roles that have visibility of a single Company, and provide users with access to perform functions for their own company.

For more information, including examples of how this can be used, see: Using roles and permissions.

2. Ability to segregate resources for users with a company role type

Previously, all resources were accessible to admin users from all companies. Last year we introduced course filtering for end users (see: Assigning a Company access to a Course), and have since been working to extend this to all resource types.

Each resource (eg. a template, environment, course, policy, etc) will have a primary company, and can then be shared with other companies. If a resource is not shared with a company, users from that company with a company role type will not be able to see it or use it. For more information, see: Sharing resources across Companies.  

How does this affect me now? 

Some UI changes have been released, however the full filtering implementation is still in progress. For now, there are two things to be aware of: 

• When creating roles, you'll need to select either a 'Global' or 'Company' role type. Please continue to use the 'Global' role type, as Company level roles can still see resources across all Companies until the filtering implementation is complete.
• When creating a new resource, you'll need to select a primary company. Use your own company to do this. You will also be asked whether you want to 'Share with all companies'. Please tick this check box until we complete the filtering implementation. New template example below: 
  

What's coming next? 

In the next few weeks we will activate the filtering of resources to company level roles. We'll let you know when this is available. We'll also reach out to make sure you have the information you need to take advantage of this new capability. 

In the meantime, if you have any questions, please speak to your Heropa contact. 

Happy 2023! We're really excited about what we're working on for you in the coming months. Don't forget to subscribe to receive these updates via email! 

✨ Brand new   

• Resource filtering and sharing: New capability that provides a way to limit resources to certain sets of users, via Companies. This is being progressively rolled out. To learn more, read this post: Resource filtering and sharing capability.
• Labels and Tags: Labels and tags can be created for your company, and can then be used to help categorise resources. Read all about it here: Manage resources using labels and tags. 

🌱 Enhancements

• Events - Shared drive: It's now possible to add / modify a shared drive to an event after it has been launched. Existing event attendees will also see the shared drive. See: Creating an event.
• Showing videos in the workspace: We've made it easier to add YouTube video URLs to show these in the workspace. Wistia videos are also now supported. See: Adding content to a course.
• Editing information: We've standardised how information about objects and resources can be edited. Modifying an object's name or description is now done via an 'Edit information' modal. Labels and tags are also managed from here.
  

🔧 Bugfixes

• Error when switching views: Fixed an issue where an incorrect screen was loading for users when switching from the User View to the Admin View.
• Editing templates: An error preventing the editing of networks within templates has been fixed. 
• End users unable to access the workspace: For users with an event seat allocated directly by a host there was a bug that sometimes disabled the "View workspace" button.
• Event creation browser load: During the creation of an event we created duplicate user configuration files that were passed to the admins browser. This had the effect of impacting performance of the UI.
• Event classroom thumbnails: We fixed an issue where user updates were not reflected in the classroom having the result of missing thumbnails.
• Video only courses: In certain circumstances users enrolled in a video only course were receiving an expired message almost immediately.