Tuesday 31 March 2015

Welcome to Teacher Dashboard 2!

Teacher Dashboard 2 is now live! As of 31-March 18:30 NZT / 30-March 22:30 PDT, Teacher Dashboard Classic had been retired and TD2 is now the official interface of Hapara Teacher Dashboard. All users will be automatically directed to TD2 when attempting to access any instance of Teacher Dashboard.

Please stay tuned to this blog for updates and helpful tips throughout this opening week. To assist our users in the switch to Teacher Dashboard 2, we have compiled the following guide on our Support site: Getting Started with Teacher Dashboard 2.

We hope you enjoy the new interface! As always, please feel free to provide any feedback or suggestions to the “How can we improve this page field?” of any TD page and let us know of any issues by contacting us at support@hapara.com.

Thank You,

The Hapara Support Team

Thursday 26 March 2015

Release Notes - March 26, 2015

What’s New

Configuration link for admins
TD Admins will now see a Configuration link in TD2, just as in Teacher Dashboard Classic.

Bug Fixes

Resetting students’ passwords
Google sometimes rejects new passwords if they’re too weak, but TD2’s password reset tool didn’t indicate such rejections. That tool now reveals such errors and suggests how to avoid them.
Seeing multiple schools as a TD Admin
For multi-school TD Admins without their own classes, TD2’s All Classes tab displayed classes from only one school. That tab now has a drop-down menu that lets TD Admins access classes from all of their schools.
Showing class descriptions in TD2
TD2 now honors the setting to display class descriptions instead of class names in the My Classes tab, in the All Classes tab, and elsewhere. Class nicknames, however, still take precedence over class names and descriptions.

Miscellaneous

Teacher Dashboard Classic retiring on March 30
Still using Teacher Dashboard Classic (TDC)? Then you’ve probably seen our messages promoting TD2 on TDC’s home page, in Smart Copy, and in Interact. Try TD2 today by visiting www.teacherdashboard.com! Starting March 30, teachers will be redirected to TD2 automatically. For more information, see our blog.

Wednesday 25 March 2015

RESOLVED: Service Disruption for Teacher Dashboard

RESOLVED 4:34pm PDT:
Google has notified us that the issue with App Engine Over Quota errors affecting Teacher Dashboard classic was resolved as of 2:52pm on Tuesday 2015-03-24. We sincerely apologize for any issues you may have experienced. Thank you for your patience and understanding during this service disruption.

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UPDATE 2:15pm PDT:
Beginning at 1:05pm PDT Google experienced quota denial 503 errors from several App Engine instances, one of which hosted our Teacher Dashboard Classic application. Service performance has now returned to normal. Should users experience any lingering issues, please do not hesitate to reach out to support@hapara.com

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ORIGINAL POST:
We have received multiple reports of Over Quota errors for users using Teacher Dashboard Classic. Our developers are investigating this issue, and we will post updates to this blog as we progress. PLEASE NOTE: users using Teacher Dashboard 2.0 at www.teacherdashboard.com are unaffected. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Friday 13 March 2015

Release Notes - March 12, 2015

What’s New

Class Nicknames
Users can now nickname their classes without changing the official names in TD2. This lets teachers make more friendly alternatives to their school’s default class names, which may be long or confusing. 
Notes:
  • New nicknames can take a little while to propagate to all of Teacher Dashboard’s tabs.
  • Nicknames do not affect how classes are loaded into Teacher Dashboard.
  • Nicknames are specific to each individual teacher.

Improvements

Smart Share Progress Screen
Smart Share now shows its progress more clearly, even if you’re sharing files with students in multiple student domains. We’ve also updated its appearance to fit in better with the rest of TD2.

Bug Fixes

Loading a non-teacher’s classes in Teacher Dashboard 2
In TD2, non-teachers without classes on the My Classes tab would see a perpetual loading screen on that tab. Now the tab simply states that there are no classes on it.

Showing blog activity from multiple blogs for one student
For students with multiple blogs, TD2’s Blogger tab only showed the activity from one blog. Now, the Blogger tab shows recent activity from all of a student's blogs.

Miscellaneous

Promoting Teacher Dashboard 2 - Teacher Dashboard Classic Retiring March 31
Still using Teacher Dashboard Classic? Then you’ve probably seen our messages promoting TD2 on TDC’s home page, in Smart Copy, and in Interact. Try TD2 today by visiting www.teacherdashboard.com!  After March 31, teachers will be redirected to TD2 automatically. For more information, see our blog.  

Wednesday 11 March 2015

RESOLVED: Smart Copy / Smart Share Service Degradation

We’re happy to report Smart Share/Smart Copy functionality has been restored to normal levels. Improvements include:
  • Changes made to core parameters provided by our supplier (Google)
  • Changes and improvements to our code
  • Continuous testing and reporting in the interest of efficiency and consistency


Performance and reliability of this feature is our key focus, and we look to continuously improve our processes. We apologise for any inconvenience this issue has caused and greatly appreciate your continued patience.

Best regards,
Hapara Support

Friday 6 March 2015

UPDATE: Smart Copy / Smart Share Service Degradation

Introduction:
While significant improvements have been made, some customers are still experiencing issues regarding Smart Share performance. Our investigations have shown backend errors in our communications with student folders. This has caused a completion time that is beyond acceptable limits.  Restoring Smart Share to its original levels of dependability has, and will continue to be, our highest priority and we deeply apologize for the inconvenience this has caused. As we investigate, we would like to provide the following update and will post to this blog as new code fixes are released.

Where we are at:
  • Smart Share failure rates have been reduced; however, service issues continue to exist.  
  • A code fix was released to prevent timeouts, allowing for the eventual completion of the Smart Share job and auto-removal of the "temp_xxxxxx-xx-xxx-xx" files. While job completion times are still beyond desired levels (see below), Smart Share processes are now all expected to eventually complete successfully. While we are working to improve the process times, please refrain from attempting to share the document multiple times, as many of the jobs are still in process.
  • A script has been run to delete all "temp_xxxxxx-xx-xxx-xx" docs left in student folders from previous jobs. PLEASE NOTE: In order to prevent the inadvertent removal of student work in progress, the script intentionally leaves behind any documents edited after the parent Smart Share process.

Work in Progress:
  • We are monitoring the average job completion time on a daily basis in order to track improvements as code fixes are released.
  • We are investigating certain API request errors that may be leading to the extended job completion times.
  • As we work to resolve the issue, it is recommended that teachers push out documents overnight if possible to avoid peak usage times and allow for job completion.
  • Potential "temp_xxxxxx-xx-xxx-xx" temp files may still left behind. We have an auto-clean up process in place, but it will not remove a document if edited by a student after the Smart Share.

We sincerely apologize for the continued inconvenience, and thank you for your patience and understanding. Our support and development teams understand teachers’ needs for reliable tools and are working to restore performance to dependable levels as soon as possible. We will continue to amend this blog with further updates.

Thank You,
Hapara Support


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You can access our original post regarding this service disruption here.

Wednesday 4 March 2015

Scheduled Maintenance Alert for Gmail Viewer

Due to a Xen Security Advisory, our Rackspace server will undergo a reboot to install a security patch. The reboot will only take a few minutes, but users may experience service interruption for Teacher Dashboard's Gmail viewer during the times listed below:
  • March 5, between 10pm and 12am PST
  • March 6, between 1am and 3am EST
  • March 6, between 7pm and 9pm NZT
Thank you for your patience and understanding during this security update.