✨We're excited to share that macOS VMs are now supported in your Heropa instance!✨ 

Our implementation of Amazon EC2 Mac instances allows for instant access to macOS environments running on real Apple hardware. If you have software running on macOS, training participants can be given a macOS desktops for hands-on learning, eliminating the need for physical Macbooks. Capacity can be scaled up or down as needed, helping to control costs. 

It's also a great result if you want to build training content or sales demo environments that are truly cross-platform. One Heropa customer has created a training course with both Windows and Mac in the same classroom environment, which provides for a great learner experience. 

Read more about it in our recent blog post: Using macOS desktops on-demand with Heropa.

Another useful resource is this article from our knowledge base, which outlines some important points to be aware of when running macOS in Heropa.

If you're interested in learning more about macOS VMs in Heropa, please get in touch! 

Did you know that the Heropa user experience can be made available in different languages? Both the Heropa portal and workspace support language localization. 

Admins can set a default language and then configure additional languages. Users can then choose their preferred language to work in.

To optimize the user experience in the workspace, a default keyboard layout can also be set. In the workspace, users can also select their preferred keyboard layout.  

For more information, see: Configuring languages.

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.