Welcome to the latest edition of the Heropa release notes.

Version 9.39 brings new ways to manage, build and deploy virtual labs with the release of the Heropa MCP. Connect Claude to your Heropa account and list templates, build new environments, create lab guides, enroll learners and launch labs from a single chat.

This release also lets you choose which resources learners see in their workspace when you add them to a template. Plus, 3 fixes, two of them for Virtual Browser. 

✨ New

Introducing the Heropa MCP

Heropa MCP gives Claude access to more than 120 tools across templates, environments, courses, events, enrollments, lab guides, users and policies. Describe what you need, and Claude actions the request in your Heropa account from any device.

Read the launch blog for the full walkthrough.

Build interactive lab guides or transform existing content

Give Claude a PDF, a digital manual, a handout or a description of the lab. It builds a lab guide with sections, pages, formatted text, extracted images and command blocks learners can copy. Claude can then attach the guide to your Lab Workspace, update, reorganize or publish it from the same chat ready for your users to follow alongside their labs. 

Courses, events and environments

The Heropa MCP enables you to create templates, environments, self-paced courses and instructor-led events with a prompt. Change environment settings, configure or create new policies, push environments live, and list active environments, courses and enrolled users effortlessly. 

Enrollments made easy

Enroll users, send invitations, assign a host on the morning of a workshop, or drop a late attendee into a free seat. Claude tells you before it sends any enrollment email and waits for your go-ahead, and you can enroll existing users without sending emails at all.

Permissions & controls

Each tool the MCP calls upon in Heropa has flexible permissions depending on your needs and requirements. Set requests made from Claude to your Heropa platform to Always Allow, Requires Approval or Blocked. For example, let lookups run freely and have anything that changes a live environment wait for you or a colleague to approve. 

New in v9.39

This release brings additional functionality to the MCP, with Claude now able to find shared templates to build from, change the size of a credential pool before a busy event, and set active-time limits and labels on a policy. 

Getting started with the Heropa MCP

Heropa MCP works with Claude Code and Claude Desktop and runs on your own Claude subscription. Get in touch with the team today to discuss access and configuration for your platform. 

🌱 Improvements

Add Resource modal changes

When you add a resource, you now choose whether it gets a workspace interface. You can also remove a resource's interface later, so learners only see the interfaces your lab actually uses.

🔧 Fixes

Three fixes this release, with two for the Virtual Browser. 

• We’ve improved the workspace layout, so your VMs sit centered in workspaces when there is no active side panel, including in responsive and full screen modes.
• You can select Virtual Browser for resource-backed hosts in workspace templates, so learners can open services running on those resources in their browser.
• Adding a Virtual Browser interface to a lab resource now fills in the available host.

Thanks,
The Team at Heropa

The Heropa MCP is here 🌟

Connect Claude to your Heropa account, describe the outcome you need, and let Claude handle the setup.

With more than 120 tools across Heropa, you can provision environments, configure policies, create courses and events, enroll learners and manage templates, all from a prompt.

Get all the details over on our launch blog: https://www.heropa.com/blog/heropa-mcp-for-virtual-labs/ 

How to use the Heropa MCP

To connect Claude with your Heropa platform and scale your virtual labs via MCP, contact us.

Thanks,
The Team at Heropa

AI Lab Keys have arrived in Heropa 🔑 

Give every user a secure, virtual API key and power AI tools in your virtual labs. Select providers, models and usage limits and run training, POCs and demos that launch with AI already authenticated.

There's so many exciting use cases for AI Lab Keys, and we can't wait to see how you use them. 

A few examples we've seen already:

✅ Run AI coding sessions with Claude Code ready before learners arrive
✅ Deliver POCs that let prospects drive your API using AI, on a key you scoped
✅ Launch AI assisted investigations for cybersecurity training

How to use AI Lab Keys

To start using AI Lab Keys in your Heropa platform, contact us to discuss bringing your own AI provider or leveraging Heropa-managed access. 

To learn more, read the full announcement for AI Lab Keys.

Thanks,
The Team at Heropa

Welcome to our latest edition of the Heropa release notes.

We’re excited to share that the Heropa Public API now gives developers and content teams new ways to manage lab guides and content, provision users, set up event content and check company compute options from their own applications and automated workflows. We've also introduced course archiving, so you can retire a course without losing it.

Plus the team has shipped 11 fixes, 7 of them in Events.

Read on for the details! 

✨ New

• Course archiving. Have a course you’re not running anymore, but might in the future? Administrators can now archive a course and restore it later, keeping all of its contents. Archived courses drop out of your normal course lists and stop accepting new enrollments. Learners already enrolled keep their access, so they can finish their labs. 
• Version history for shared templates. See what changed in a template before you build on it, which matters most when another colleague or team maintains it. Open the version history and change descriptions on any shared template. 

Heropa API

• Lab guide and content management. Content teams and developers can now use the Heropa API to export and import content as JSON, upload images, and manage chapters, sections, pages, exercises and quizzes without completing each step in your portal.  To learn more, read our developer documentation on exporting and importing content in Heropa. 
• User management. Developers can create or update users with their company, role and custom fields already set. Applications can also list the available roles and view details for a selected role. 
• Event content. Developers can create or update an event and assign its content in the same automated workflow, so scheduling systems can prepare events without a separate manual step. 
• Company compute options. Applications can now list the compute options assigned to a company. 

🌱 Improvements

• Single sign-on controls. 
  • A new permission governs who can change a user's single sign-on settings.
  • Companies using OIDC can also choose to refresh mapped details when existing users sign in, so approved changes from the identity provider carry into Heropa at the next sign-in. 
• Event slides. Event hosts can now open the Slides tab whenever slides have been added to an event, even when they are not presenting. Read more on presenting slides in Heropa events here. 

🔧 Fixes

We've got a host of fixes for you this release:

• Event content updates. Changing an event's content now updates its participant environments to match.
• Event lookup through the Public API. Looking up an event by its event code now returns its participant templates, instructors, host seats and participant seats correctly. 
• Event list filters. Filtering events by status or finished state updates the list correctly.
• Shared events. Host and participant environments now launch correctly on their intended separate networks. 
• Temporary event users. Temporary users created for an event are now being removed when the event ends.
• Screen sharing. Learners can reconnect to a shared screen after a brief interruption without the host having to stop and restart screen sharing. 
• Event workspace layout. Event workspaces follow their saved "Open maximised view" setting.
• Single sign-on user details. OIDC claims now populate mapped custom user fields correctly.
• Creating single sign-on users. Administrators can create users with single sign-on enabled from the Users and Companies areas, and through the Public API.
• Participant authentication. API authentication checks follow the settings chosen for participant templates.
• Templates created from environments. Saving an environment as a template keeps its network settings.

Thanks,
The Team at Heropa

This update makes everyday admin tasks faster and more reliable, while smoothing out issues that could interrupt training delivery. You’ll see improvements across course management, lab authoring, and API functionality, along with fixes that enhance overall platform stability and consistency.

🌱 Improvements

• Assign a user to multiple courses at once: Administrators can now enroll a user into multiple courses in a single action, reducing the time needed to manage training assignments for large cohorts.
• Improved Copy/Paste block in the lab guide editor: The Copy/Paste block has been updated with a refreshed style, making it easier to add and manage text that students need to copy from lab guide instructions into their VMs. 
• New columns in the template list view: The template list now includes Type and Code columns, making it quicker to find and identify templates across large libraries. 
• Events API improvements: Two enhancements have been made to the Events API: the "Assign seat to user" endpoint now creates and assigns a seat in a single call, and the List Events endpoint now includes instructor IDs in the response. 

🔧 Fixes

• Rendering issues in the portal: Resolved multiple display issues including the workspace failing to release from idle users, content tabs not loading, and the 'My' filter not working correctly on the Courses page. 
• Host screen sharing: Resolved two issues affecting the host screen feature, the host screen button reconnecting on every click, and co-instructors (additional hosts) being unable to see the "Host screen" button while the primary host was presenting.
• Conflicting VM shutdown rules caused unexpected shutdowns during events: Resolved an edge case where overlapping shutdown policies could cause a VM to be shut down while still in active use.
• Compatibility test hanging and not completing: Resolved an issue where the compatibility check would stall indefinitely rather than reporting a result. 
• Classroom to falls out of sync with a student's session: A race condition could result in a silent failure without updating the students session. 
• Renaming training credit pools: Resolved a bug where editing the name of certain credit pools would silently fail.
• Azure environments getting stuck in a pending state: Resolved an issue where environments provisioned on Azure could become stuck in "pending" and fail to progress to a running state. 
• Webhook `environment.created` not firing: Resolved an issue where the webhook event was not triggered for certain environment creation flows.

Version 9.4.2 brings powerful new SSO capabilities, richer content tools, expanded automation options, and important reliability fixes. This release focuses on giving you more flexibility in how you manage access, content, and events - while improving overall stability.

✨ New features

• Support for OpenID Connect as a single sign-on provider: Configure OpenID Connect as a Single Sign-On method, giving you greater flexibility when integrating with your identity provider. Within Settings, a dedicated SSO tab makes configuring SSO easier to access and manage.
• Image library for managing Course and Event thumbnails: Streamline how you manage visual assets for Courses and Events by uploading and storing approved thumbnail images in a central Image library. Course designers and event coordinators can select from a ready-to-use list of thumbnails directly in the UI, and via the Public API, ensuring consistency across both manual and automated workflows. Images can be accessed via the Content menu, Image Library tab. 
• Lab Guides: As part of this update, content items have been renamed to Lab Guides. Lab Guides provide a way to share content within a Course or an Event, as a side panel in the lab workspace. Lab Guides continue to be located via the Content menu.
• Reuse exercises in Lab Guides: Reuse content in multiple Lab Guides, reducing duplication and making content easier to maintain. When adding an exercise to a Lab Guide, you can choose to either create a new one or select an exercise from the same or a different Lab Guide. If you reuse an exercise, you can either duplicate the content or reference the original. Referenced exercises stay linked, so any updates to the original are automatically reflected everywhere they’re used, making it easier to manage shared content at scale.

🌱 Improvements

• New bulk actions for environments and event seats: Update access settings for multiple environments at once, via the 'Add Access duration' bulk action in the Environments list view and within Event environment lists. In Events, you can also perform bulk seat actions including Revive, Retry, and Rollback, making event management faster and more efficient.
• Improved content editing experience and content styling options: We’ve enhanced the content editing experience with new styling capabilities, including support for coloured information panels to highlight key instructions, warnings, or tips. We’ve also updated checkout behaviour for Lab Guides, providing a more consistent content editor experience.
• New webhooks: We’ve added three new webhook events - environment.resume, workspace.opened, and event.prelaunch - to support deeper integrations and automation workflows, including triggering external processes before an event starts.
• External web view credential placeholders: The external web view now supports credential property placeholders in the URL field, improving dynamic configuration.
• Search by course code in MyLabs: End users can now search using course codes in MyLabs, making it quicker to locate specific courses.

🔧 Fixes

• Incorrect email formats are now properly validated.
• Group deletion and bulk deletion now correctly update the Groups list and work as expected.
• Web-only environments can now be resumed after pausing active time.
• Event environments no longer fail to launch if the region is changed before the scheduled time.
• The enable/disable sound control now works correctly when sharing.

We’re excited to introduce Slides, a new synchronized presentation experience built into Heropa’s Follow Host and integrated comms. Slides makes it easy for hosts to present supporting documentation, walkthroughs, and diagrams directly inside the workspace - so students stay focused and engaged without switching tools.

With Slides, hosts can guide the class through a PDF-based presentation, keep everyone perfectly in sync, and let students revisit slides at their own pace when the session ends.

Present with confidence

Slides lets you upload a PDF presentation (up to 20MB) directly in the Event configuration tab. Heropa automatically processes the file into optimized images for fast loading inside every workspace. Once uploaded, the presentation can be reused across events.

Before presenting, hosts upload their PDF and add presenter notes to each slide during the import process. During the event, they can view their notes alongside a next slide preview and use a built-in presentation timer to stay on track. This gives hosts a smoother, more polished teaching experience without juggling multiple windows.

Keep every student in sync

During the event, once the host is presenting, hosts can click Slides in the top navigation to start showing their slides. Students see the slides through the Host screen view, and as the host moves between slides, everyone automatically follows.

If the host enables Force follow, students are fully synchronized and cannot navigate independently - ideal for keeping the class aligned during key explanations. When Force follow is disabled, or the host stops presenting, students regain control and can move through the slide presentation on their own.

If the host exits the presentation entirely, students are taken straight back to their VM view.

Integrated with Follow Host

Slides works seamlessly with Heropa’s existing Follow Host capabilities. Hosts can switch between slides and live demonstrations in their VM with a single click. Students see every transition instantly, creating a smooth flow between explanation and hands-on practice.

Try it out

Slides is currently available behind a feature toggle. To enable it for your tenancy, reach out to Heropa Support.

For more information, see our support article: Presenting slides in events. 

Lots of great things in this release! We introduce several new capabilities, improves classroom usability, and resolves some key bugs.

✨ New features

• Open Workspace VMs in a new browser window - You can now pop out workspace VMs into a dedicated window for a focused workspace. The new window includes only the VM view and simple controls to close the window or return to the main workspace. The window automatically closes if the VM stops or leaves the running state. A preloader now appears in the workspace when a VM is selected. For more information see the announcement here.
• Slides for events - Hosts can present slide decks directly inside the classroom. Participants follow the host’s progression while still having the freedom to explore slides independently. For more information see the announcement here.

🌱 Enhancements

• Event classroom new layout - A refreshed classroom experience is now available behind a feature toggle. The updated UI removes the old top and bottom sections, adds a rounded mirroring area, introduces clearer VM power-state indicators, and improves visual cues for direct RDP, live view, and screenshot modes. Tile hover actions are simplified with clearer options for assistance requests, joining the workspace, and more.
• Environment list views - A new Public IP column displays the Public IP of the first visible and pinned VM in each environment, making it easier to locate and manage access details.
• Course deletion - When deleting a course that has an environment pool and where pool enrollments are the only ones linked to the course, the updated modal now resets the environment pool to zero before deleting enrollments and removing the course. This prevents admins from having to manually set environment pools to 0, and ensures a smoother cleanup flow.
• Credential properties dynamically embedded in content - Lab content now supports shortcodes that dynamically display credential values such as username, password, email, or custom fields. This removes the need for students to switch between lab content and the Credentials tab during exercises.
• Support for reusing LTI launch links across LMS courses and modules - A new configuration option allows LTI launches that differ only by module parameter to reuse the same enrollment. This enables embedding the same Heropa course/event across multiple LMS modules without generating duplicate environments.
• Shared templates - Shared templates can now be hidden using a new Hide template row action. Hidden templates appear with a new “Hidden” status and gray status color, and are hidden by default.

🔧 Fixes

• Visiting /login no longer logs the user out - The prior fix was rolled back due to an edge case that caused redirect loops. The underlying issue has now been fully resolved.
• Active user detection bug - Environments that are active and in use will no longer be incorrectly shut down when “Stop VMs after student inactivity” is enabled. A condition that incorrectly marked active environments as idle has been fixed.

Thanks as always for your continued support and feedback to help us improve Heropa. 

You can now open any VM from your workspace in a separate browser window, giving you more space, flexibility, and control over how you work. This makes it easier to follow instructions, view host presentations, or use multiple monitors without constantly switching tabs.

A more flexible way to work

This new feature lets you take any running VM and pop it out of the main workspace. Students can follow along with a host’s screen while keeping their own VM visible. Instructors and admins can use it to multitask across environments more effectively. It works everywhere: course enrollments, standalone environments, and event seats.

How it works

From the workspace, Click on the VM’s gear icon in the top navigation, select Open VM in new window.

A new browser window opens with a fully functional VM session. You can place it side by side with the main workspace or on a second monitor. Each VM in an environment can be opened into its own window. The host screen and follow-host options stay in the main workspace, so students can keep the host visible while interacting with their VM in another window.

When you’re done, you can return the VM to the main workspace in two ways:

• Open here (found in the main workspace window): Closes the pop-out and restores the VM to the workspace
• Close (found in the top bar of the pop-out workspace): Closes the pop-out and reopens the VM automatically in its original location

If the VM shuts down, reboots, or loses its browser RDP or SSH connection, the pop-out window closes automatically.

Wrap-up

Opening VMs in a new window makes hands-on work simpler and more efficient, especially when following a presentation or working with complex instructions. To reduce confusion for students, this feature is off by default. If your company would like to enable it, reach out to Heropa Support.

For more information, see our support article: Opening workspace VMs in a new browser window. 

This release focuses on improving platform stability and performance, with several key fixes and refinements across the admin and workspace experiences.

🌱 Enhancements

• Company default settings for event shared drives – When the shared drive setting is enabled but no name is provided, a unique shared drive is now automatically created for each event under an events/ folder, using the event code as the drive name.
• Performance improvements – General optimizations across workspace and admin views to keep everything running smoothly.

🔧 Fixes

• Templates tab – Fixed an issue where the Templates tab under VM Images did not display associated templates.
• Workspace login with access code – Fixed a problem preventing the Log in button from responding correctly on the workspace login page when using access codes.
• Training credits – Addressed an error that caused the Training credits details view to fail loading in some cases.
• General stability – Various additional bug fixes and refinements to improve reliability and responsiveness across the platform.

That’s all for now. Thanks for continuing to provide feedback to help us make Heropa better every release.