Release Notes 2023

27 June 2023 - Feature

Tbd

13 June 2023 - Maintenance

Improvements

Add navigation option to Sections in Forms - CR-19079
Give test-takers the freedom to take their exam in the order that works best for them, while staying in control of the overall exam delivery. With the new ‘Navigation in sections‘ feature, you can allow free navigation through the exam, but limit candidates to forward-only navigation within sections. This can help test-takers build confidence by tackling the questions they feel confident about first, and help reduce anxiety and stress levels.

Improved saving mechanism Office365 questions for candidates - CR-20314
Office already had the oppurtunitty to auto save your changes, however with our new update the latest changes a candidate make will be automaticly saved uppon submitting your answers at the end of your exam, without manually submitting your answers

Bugfixes

• General bugfixes on Timer per question and rational on Fileresponse/office question - CR-20498
• Checkmark gets removed (if several alternatives checked quickly) - CR-20809
• The link from the Dashboard to Assessments is broken - CR-20834

SLA: Reserved Maintenance Window - Sundays 03:00-05:30 AM

As part of our continual improvement and annual review, we have decided to introduce a recurring maintenance window during the time when usage of the Cirrus platform is neglible, further reduced by tailoring it to each region:

These windows are configured as AWS maintenance windows to enable regular low risk patching of some of our auxiliary services and infrastructure.

Still as regular service level cannot be guaranteed our upcoming SLA will be adjusted accordingly.

Additional disaster recovery backup in Stockholm for Premium customers

All Cirrus backups, also for non-Premium, are already being encrypted and geographic distributed over three data centres ("availability zones") in a AWS Region. Therefore this is just an additional daily copy with a retention period of 1 day.
Our Premium SLA and List of Sub-processors have been updated accordingly.

30 May 2023 - Feature

HTTPS/TLS Security improvements - Caution!

Supported Ciphers
TLS-AES-128-GCM-SHA256 (new), TLS-AES-256-GCM-SHA384 (new), TLS-CHACHA20-POLY1305-SHA256 (new), ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256, ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256, ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384, and ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384.

See also OWASP Transport Layer Protection Cheat Sheet and IT Security Guidelines for Transport Layer Security (TLS) v2.1 from NCSC-NL, guideline B2-1 to B2-4 and table 2, 4, 6 and 7 (in English).

Improvements:

Upgraded assessment overview + statistics- CR-20366

The upgraded assessment overview table will feature enhanced filtering and searching capabilities. Plus, you can effortlessly identify assessments that require updates, such as when items within them have been modified. This streamlined experience makes managing your assessments more efficient than ever!

You will also be able to update and publish assessments in bulk.

Use available assessments as Templates - CR-20053

Save time with assessment templates!
Introducing assessment templates! This handy feature allows you to build new assessments based on existing ones, rather than starting from scratch. With assessment templates at your fingertips, you’ll save valuable time when crafting multiple evaluations. It’s a game-changer for streamlining the assessment process!

Other improvements

• Reliability: Further improve background processing health check - CR-20740
• Reliability: Advance attempt generation (15 minutes) - CR-20309

Bugfixes:

• UI Fixes in the Improved Library (CR-19249) - CR-20409

  • Secondary header is not shown using login as - CR-20726
  • Notification overlap header - CR-20298

• Results cannot be published when workflow is changed - CR-20717

• Auto score schedule results cannot be found - CR-20744

16 May 2023 - Maintenance

Improvements:

• Improve publish assessment dialog - CR-20073
  • New prases
  • Auto-scored option will always be visible although not able to click when using manual scored question
• Rational in file response question + office365 - CR-20190
• Include office365 files and rationale to the PDF transfers - CR-20191

Bugfixes:

• [Marking>results>candidate overview] Disabled publish button when result can't be published - CR-20304
• Cannot print score report as an author - CR-20469

02 May 2023 - Feature

Timed auto feedback for results - CR-19083

Introducing a new 'assessment option'
When choosing to show any feedback when the exam has ended you can now setup a timed feedback session. Only possible when choosing the options for 'Show candidate results':

• After each attempt
• After last attempt

An extra option duration will be available and the max time will make sure that the candidate is directly able to see feedback after the exam for a fixed period. When time has passed, the results will no longer be available.
Of course in a later stage it's still possible to setup a candidate review session

Improvement:

• Updated Safe Exam Browser versions (added 3.5.0, dropped <3.2) - CR-20450
• Several further improvements of background processing for increased performance and resilience - CR-19115, CR-19119, CR-19942

Bugfixes:

• Multiple triggered webhooks for the same results - CR-20071
• Candidate feedback show warning if none of the users of the question item has an email - CR-20006
• UI Fixes in the Improved Library (CR-19249) - CR-20408

Safe Exam Browser 3.5.0 Released for Cirrus

18 April 2023 - Feature

Improved Library management - CR-19249

The library revamp will make it easier to organise and use items, while the new filters will give you better control and allow you to filter on a granular level.
Including:

• Introducing our table component to collections + statistics
• New 'add collection' screen
• New filtering + sorting
• Improved labeling management
  
  
  

Ensure the reliability and validity of your exams

Psychometric data gives you invaluable insights into the quality of your items and helps ensure the reliability and validity of your exams. In upcoming upgrades, we will will make several quality of life improvements to the Statistics tab:

• You will be able to set Angoff values, a widely accepted and reliable method for setting cut scores on high-stakes exams. Read more about Angof in our recent blog post.
• You will also be able to set the difficulty thresholds, which will automatically be displayed in your collections. This way you can easily keep track of the difficulty level of your items.

Timer per question - CR-16407

Allowing to set a time per questions in which the candidate can answer. We've added a new option in all question types (expect the mathematical question) to setup a max time allowed for the candidate to answer.

Improvements

• Performance improvements to Office365 file processing - CR-20148

Bugfixes

• Candidate cannot answer SFL due to resource file in very rare conditions- CR-20116
• When customer URL is incorrect > incorrect page is shown - CR-20084
• [Reports>Schedule/Assessment>Candidate tab] When Select all Flag for remarking is NOT applied for all results - CR-19860

4 April 2023 - Maintenance

• Preliminary report didn't work in all scenario's - CR-20252
• SEB Settings in assessment not copied to schedule when using API - CR-20251
• [Feedback Content management] Filter perper assessment fix - CR-20133
• Admin level 'labels' were not saved - CR-20114
• Candidate review dialog save button wasn't always saving - CR-20113
• Marking>Results>score report tab export button did not show - CR-19874
• Fix on filter 'view by candidate' - CR-19867
• Possible to open reveiw session page by using url - CR-20034
• Review session is locked when second user - CR-19882
• [Reports > Statistics] Select all checkbox is not shown - CR-19861
• Notification on Marking>result is shown while it should not - CR-19845
• Overview info is not shown when change PIN in active session - CR-19760
• Candidate are stuck in waiting room, due to versioning assessment - CR-20332

SOWISO maintenance - 01 April 2023

30 March 2023 - RC updated for HTTPS/TLS Security improvements

To give our customers ample time to test our HTTPS/TLS Security improvements.

21 March 2023 - Maintenance

Offline mode interrupted by Q43 using Heartbeat - CR-19854

Extra measures build in to be able to work in offline mode for a longer period.
Will not affect existing customers.

Creatio Integration: Safe Exam Browser (SEB) setting - CR-17178

Customers with an Creatio Integration can now control Cirrus' schedule level Safe Exam Browser (SEB) setting from inside CreatioGreen.

Bugfixes:

• Excel Export review session > the order of review session is the same as in UI - CR-19781
• Coordinator tab > schedul window time sensitive to DST > ST change - CR-19311
• Audio files within section able to restart - CR-20101

7 March 2023 - Feature

Candidate Feedback - CR-16974

As part of their continous improvement one of our customers needed to enable their candidates to report feedback on question items during their exams.
To minimize the administrative burden, Cirrus facilitates Candidate Feedback Adminstration from within Cirrus.

Improvement:

• Reliability: Improve (Result) API logging (for our support engineers) - CR-19376

23 February 2023 - Hotfix

See Hotfix on our status page.

21 February 2023 - Maintenance

Improvement:

• Marking > Improved loading spinner on marking submission screen - CR-19829

Bugfixes:

• When only permissions 'Delivering' and 'view candidate review tab' are ON unable to open candidate review tab - CR-19864
• Older questions not showing 'criteria scoring' on candidate result page for reviewing questions - CR-19496
• Clean-up/Compliance: Remove obsolete and unused Google Maps/Userguiding remnants - CR-19076/CR-19337

7 February 2023 - Feature

Turnitin support for Office365 - CR-18981

Cirrus' Turnitin integration now also supports our 'Office365 question type'.

On November 1 of 2022, we introduced a brand new integration with Turnitin for plagiarism detection in Essay questions. This powerful collaboration is now also supporting Office365 questions.

Score per alternative for MCQ - CR-18547

We made it possible to add a separate score per alternative in MCQ-Items, instead of only a score for the correct answer.

This enables you to add scores to other alternatives that are partially correct and thus be more flexible.

Enhanced touch screen support Virtual keyboard - CR-19395

If needed, Cirrus can add a virtual keyboard to your platform, to enhance touch screen support.

By default it's NOT active and will not have any impact on your platform.

Please be aware this will not change our system requirements.

Keyboard supports:

• Login (regular/keycode)
• Pin code
• During exam delivery following question types:
  • Fill in the blank
  • Numberic (only numpad)
  • Short answer

Our Servicedesk is happy to help you here in case you would like to know more.

Compliancy with respect to colours of feedback for Extended Match question - CR-19395

Improved the accessibility of our extended match question type by:

• Adding a legend in feedback
• Improving indicators to differentiate between the colours and their meaning.

Bugfixes:

• Export- candidate results - Topic and LO percentage is incorrect after rescoring when change score - CR-19875
• Reports > Exporting a report leads to error message for Safari browser - CR-19693
• Reports > Excel Export ignores filters - CR-19093
• Assessment options > Improved dialog for adding multiple hierarchies/clusters 'Available for scheduling by' - CR-19269

24 January 2023 - Maintenance

(Planned features have been postponed to February)
Improvement

• No impact on end-users: IPv6 Dual stack URLs for media - CR-19185. See also Platform URLs (and October 18th announcement).

Bugfixes

• Upon reconnecting to exam Flagged questions appearing unflagged - CR-19158
• Unable to manage clusters in admin, due to limit - CR-19223
• Cannot extract reports via reports when extracting data for more multiple pages - CR-19850
• For old questions the criteria scoring was not shown in candidate review sessions - CR-19857
• Several Re-marking improvements and fixes - CR-19407
• No Proctorio recording when login using Keycodes before starttime schedule - CR-19876
• 'Candidate review' sharing overview loading issue - CR-19821
• Keycode reset with every keycode slip print - CR-19881

10 January 2023 - Maintenance

Improvements

• Sort Topics on Score Report on alphabetical order (just like LOs) - CR-19243
• LTI Candidate Sync optional Sakai group filter [CR-19211]

Bugfixes

• Several improvements and fixes to Candidate Review Redesign released 27 dec 2022.