This thread is to track recent platform/product updates and enhancements. I will update this main post when we perform platform updates (usually semi-monthly), most recent update first.

Scott

Scott McBrien
Principal Product Manager, Red Hat Online Training
Red Hat Certified Architect, Level VI (100-000-264)

Online Platform release July 20, 2018 [Grizzly Bear] [Hummingbird]:

* Attendance Certificates Available

For Online Training modality courses, as the %completeness moves over 75% a Certificate of Attendance will now be available. We are working with the Video Classroom content team to get something similar there as well.

* Updated Virtual Training Classroom Interface

This doesn't affect self-paced users, but the Virtual Training (live instructor with remote delivery) classes now have a new instructor/admin/user interface. We'll be phasing this into operations in the next couple of weeks. It should cut down on the administrative tasks of the instructors for these classes.

Online Platform release June 20, 2018 [Fin Whale]:

* Version pulldown updated

In classes where we offer multiple versions, the version pulldown now indicates the version you are using.

* PDF Download dialog updated

The initial PDF download dialog now indicates the limits of the feature.

* Additional work to migrate to an alternate SSO

We have been working on moving towards switching from our older Single Sign On framework to a more modern one offered by Red Hat. While we are not switching yet, this release includes some updates to assist in that effort.

* Updated footer element

We've switched to a different theme for the page footer. You should notice small thematic changes coming in the next few releases.

Online Platform release June 6, 2018 [Chinchilla][Dhole][Eastern Gorilla]:

* Updated watermark application on PDF documents

We've updated the watermarking process for PDFs that are distributed with the product to no longer visibly watermark the first two pages of the document

* Updated HTML book styling

Recently we changed the format of our manuals, you will see this new styling in newly released classes. We are also starting to include some styling changes from this updated format to our HTML content as well. You may notice some slight differences, the NOTE entries in Online Training contents, for example.

* Updates to FEATURE REDACTED 

For a while we've been working on a new feature. We used this for the first time in our Summit Training Challenge booth event. Things went well, and we made some updates based on our Summit experiences with it. Now we're on to the next phase which is doing some user interface work to start incorporating it into something users can see and use.

* Product Terms and Conditions Updated

Last week we updated the Terms and Conditions for our Online Training and Learning Subscription products. The updated terms can be found here:
https://www.redhat.com/en/about/red-hat-training-policies

Online Platform release April 25, 2018 [Borneo Elephant]:

* Defect Resolved: PDF download error for reaching subscription limit

You'll recall that a couple of releases ago, we added the ability to download a watermarked PDF for every class in the portfolio. However, the limitations of this feature is that you are limited to no more than 1 PDF per day, no more than 10 per subscription period. When people hit the 10 per subscription period, we were erroneously telling them that they had reached the 1 per day limit. An accurate error message is now displayed when this situation occurs.

* Red Hat Summit Training Challenge

With only a couple of weeks left to go before Red Hat Summit, we've been putting the finishing touches on a Red Hat Training & Certification booth activity, the Training Challenge. In addition to being able to visit us on the trade show floor at Summit and compete for fabulous* prizes, this work is our initial field deployment for REDACTED FEATURE. There is still work to be done on REDACTED FEATURE before we make it publicly available throughout the online training platform, but this is a big step in the direction of getting it released. This is not the REDACTED FEATURE you are looking for ...

*For varying definitions of fabulous

Online Platform release April 12, 2018 [Zero Man] & [Armadillo]:

* Version and Translation Buttons moved

We've moved the Version and Language buttons in Online Training modality courses to be displayed on the course page, as opposed to within the Table of Contents tab, where they previously were. This should make it easier for people to track which version of a course they're working on and change it if desired.

* Authentication Backend updates

We landed some work on the server-side in preparation to moving to a new authentication provider. We use an older SSO framework at Red Hat and are working towards moving to a newer one. The new framework will resolve the need for case sensitivity and will make it possible for us to integrate with other Red Hat web properties without requiring re-authentication. The front-end, customer-facing bits of this work have not yet been completed, but it is coming.

* New Instance

With this update, we upgraded to a larger machine footprint with more memory. This should make things a bit more snappy.

* Updated login page

The Login page now presents an error message if we're unable to authenticate the username/password combination entered.

* Resolved defect: RHLS-Standard user's course progress % not updating in UI

We resolved a system inter-communication defect that was causing customers with RHLS-Standard subscriptions from having their course progresses update correctly. These should now be operating as expected.

* Reminder about feature included in Xemnu the Titan Release

In the Xemnu the Titan Release (February 28), we included the ability to download PDF versions of manuals in all courses. This ability is limited to:

• 10 courses per subscription period
• 1 book generation and download a day

* Summit Training Challenge

We committed some not yet customer facing stuff to support our Training Challenge being put on at Red Hat Summit May 8-10 in the Red Hat Training & Certification booth. Myself and some of the other Online Training Ops and Dev folks will be around. Hope to see you there!

Online Platform release March 14, 2018 [Yaag the Slayer]:

* Machine Reset Issues Resolved

We finally tracked down and resolved the issue that was causing machines to sometimes not reset properly when the Reset operation was kicked off. A hotfix was made to the platform last week, but our update this week reconciled that hotfix with our normalized codebase.

* Several new courses in Early Access

Not really a platform update per se, but there are now 3 classes in the Early Access catalog including RH362 Red hat Identity Management with Microsoft Active Directory Integration. Remember that these courses are the ones currently under development by the Red Hat Training & Certification content development team so the Early Access materials are updated as new content becomes available for the course.

Online Platform release February 28, 2018 [Xemnu the Titan]:

* Addition of downloadable PDF manuals to Online Training modality classes (with limits)

There is now a Download Student Guide PDF button available from the Online Training modality courses. Customers are limited to one course PDF download per day, no more than 10 course downloads per year.

* Refinement of Lab Controls

We added an obscuration envelope to the individual machine controls while the lab environment is starting or stopping. This should resolve some issues we've seen where the environments were sent conflicting commands by customers.

* Addition of new labs region

We're now offering geo-colocated labs from a Mumbai location for customers located in India.

Online Platform release February 1, 2018 [Vixen]:

* Updated loading states to no longer obscure top-level lab controls and i -info icon

Now Delete Lab and other global lab controls and information is available during the lab provisioning or boot process.

* Send API call during each polling interval.

Now, during each polling interval to determine machine states, an additional API call is made. This should aid in slightly faster transition states for machines undergoing boot, shutdown, or reset operations.

* Backend API released to support REDACTED FEATURE

We're working on something new, and some non-user visible code went into place to support this feature. Though we will confirm nor deny nothing.

Online Platform release January 18, 2018 [Ulysses Archer]:

* Login page now using updated UI framework

We moved our login page to a newer UI framework. While functionality of the page has not changed, it will provide additional future flexibility for login page content as well as the ability to do better error messaging and the like.

* Lab Controls now using updated UI framework

Lab Machine controls were re-implemented in a newer UI framework. This change should be invisible to users as we kept the same theming and other items.

* Minor updates to lab control behavior

An obscure now 'greys out' machine functionality during machine operations like startup, shutdown, and resets. We updated the timer to be incremented in hours only, as by the whole hour is how the time is consumed by our platform/cloud provider. A visually different timer used for the machine countdown timer.

* Updated timer information for Virtual Training offering

Machine timers are set differently for Virtual Training classes, but we had some legacy timer stuff in there that was incorrectly resetting the runtime on labs to something other than the Virtual Training default.

* Multiple-lab state selector

This feature is to support an upcoming course requirement that has different, disperate,
lab environments to use during the course. If the curriculum team uses this feature, it will be available in the lab controls, however, if it is not configured/needed, lab controls
will appear as normal.

* Lab hour consumption information in BETA

We added a beta feature which should appear on the lab controls page. This feature
will display the number of hours consumed on this class' labs. Let us know if it is not
reporting accurately. It is Beta. For RHLS-Basic customers, we added a BETA hours
consumed calculator to appear under the days remaining timer. RHLS-Standard uses
a different profile functionality, which is why the subscription-level consumption is
not reported there. (It's BETA, we are putting it in where we can easily do so.)

* New cloud region provider enabled

Courses are increasingly using virt-in-virt, we've added a new cloud provider to support
this usecase. RH318 (Red Hat Virtualization), DO380 (OpenShift Administration III) are
the courses configured to use this new region. Users should expect better virt-in-virt
performance for these labs, however, lab-start times for the lab machines are longer
than normal.

Notes: This update included a good bit of work that was completed on either
side of the holidays, and was our first update of the year.