December 2024 Edition
The Product and Services Preview document replaces the former 60/90 day Review/Preview. Along with Release Notes (which cover near-term delivery plans for January 2024), the Product and Services Preview document covers February and March 2025 to provide product and feature delivery plans for the 90 day preview window.
To create a printable version of the Product and Services Preview information
- Highlight the feature announcement(s).
- Right-click and select Copy.
- Paste the content into a text editing document. This process copies over all text, images, tables, and links.
Enablement Information
Information about the default state of a released feature, function or change in a Brightspace site is included to provide additional information, supporting change preparation, or planning in your organization.
Availability (Enabled State)
Advanced knowledge about whether customers can control access to the feature, function, or changes. This allows Administrators, trainers and supporting roles in an organization an opportunity to know which items are controllable and which are not.
- On: Indicates that the feature’s default state is visible/on and that there is no override or setting to control this state by any user.
- Off: Indicates that the feature’s default state is hidden/off and that there is no override or setting to control this state by any user.
- On (Overridable): Indicates the features default state and that it can be controlled or overridden by a user. For example, a new permission that is automatically selected for specific roles, or an editable config variable default that is on both offer opportunities to configure or override the default states.
- Off (Overridable): Indicates the features default state and that it can be controlled or overridden by a Brightspace user. For example, a new permission that is not selected, a new setting or new config variable that is off by default both provide opportunities to review and enable if desired.
Site Actions (Enablement Method)
For any feature, function, or change that is controllable, how are they controllable. This allows Administrators, trainers, or supporting roles in an organization the opportunity to make decisions earlier and better plan for any work required to support any updates or changes. Some examples include;
- Role Settings
- Role Permissions
- Config variables
- In Tool settings (such as Grades Settings or Widget customization)
- In Application settings (such as Pulse Settings)
20.25.02
Course Management: Manage courses tool in non-production environments | New
Planned Release: 20.25.02 | Feature ID: AUT-10
Change and Enablement information:
- Role / Audience: Administrator
- Site Availability: ON for all customers in non-production environments
- Site Enablement Actions: None (Automatic)
Additional Information Overview:
A new Course Management Experience offers functional parity with the current tools and workflows in a easy-to-use user experience. Users are currently required to navigate between the Course Management, Import/Export/Copy Components, User Enrollments, and Bulk Course tools in order to accomplish their goals. With this new Course Management tool, users can:
- Create a new course
- Create a new course template or use the automatic Template creation functionality.
- Search for courses and templates
- Copy/re-offer an existing course
The new Course Management page page will be available in Test Environments in February 2025, and will be the default experience for all users in May 20.25.5
Brightspace Editor - Updated icon for the Accessibility Checker | Updated
Planned Release: 20.25.02 | Feature ID: SHIELD-9624
Change and Enablement information:
- Role / Audience: Instructor, Administrator
- Site Availability: ON for all customers
- Site Enablement Actions: None (Automatic)
Additional Information Overview:
Within the Brightspace Editor, the current Accessibility Checker icon appears as an eye symbol and checkmark, which is more widely used to show visibility of items such as activities. A new icon to represent our Accessibility Checker ensures that the icon is more recognizable and distinct, allowing users to more easily understand its purpose.
Data Hub - New Columns available in Quiz Attempts Log BDS | New
Planned Release: 20.25.02 | Feature ID: BORG-3873
Change and Enablement information:
- Role / Audience: Administrator
- Site Availability: ON for all customers
- Site Enablement Actions: None (Automatic)
Additional Information Overview:
Two new columns will be available in the Quiz Attempts Log Brightspace Data Set:
- UserId - Int, 4, not nullable
- IsDeleted - bit, 1, not nullable
IPSIS - Additional log message context for IPSIS errors | Updated
Planned Release: 20.25.02 | Feature ID: HYRL-2432
Change and Enablement information:
- Role / Audience: Administrator
- Site Availability: ON for all customers
- Site Enablement Actions: None (Automatic)
Additional Information Overview:
Additional log message context is now available to help administrators resolve IPSIS errors related to requests to create a user with a duplicate username or org defined ID.
In some cases, there are IPSIS errors that read Error creating user mapping, which can direct clients to a problem; however, IPSIS separately reports certain errors of that generic class of errors. Two relevant errors suggest that IPSIS received a record that could result in a duplicate user in Brightspace:
- User cannot be created. Errors: The username supplied is invalid or already in use. Please choose a different username.
- User cannot be created. Errors: The Org Defined ID is already assigned to a different user.
For these errors, the corresponding username or org defined ID that triggered the error message will be included in the metadata that’s shown along with the error message. Admins can use the username or org defined ID to search for the corresponding user in Brightspace and in their SIS.
IPSIS - Preserve rostering data after school year rollover | Updated
Planned Release: 20.25.02 | Feature ID: HYRL-2209
Change and Enablement information:
- Role / Audience: Administrator
- Site Availability: OFF (Customer override)
- Site Enablement Actions: In Tool/App settings
Additional Information Overview:
When PowerSchool's end of year (EOY) rollover process is complete, terms, users, courses, sections, and enrollments for the previous school year flow into Brightspace delete requests as part of the OneRoster Rest for GG4L integration. However, some institutions want teachers and students to remain enrolled in previous classes and want to keep course offerings activated to ensure the following;
- Instructors can go back to previous term courses to review learner progress or access course materials that they may want to bring forward into this year's courses.
- Learners can review previous progress and material
- Parents can have access to their children's progress from previous course terms.
With this update, IPSIS provides a new option to ignore certain deletion records after a semester ends. In the IPSIS Administration for OneRoster REST for GG4L source system > Configuration tab > Source System section, there is a Prevent deletion of semesters and associated courses, sections, and enrollments after the semester's end date option. The option is disabled by default. When enabled, IPSIS handles deletions as follows:
- Unenrollment requests are ignored for users enrolled in a course offering associated with a semester that has ended.
- Course deletion requests are ignored if received after the end of the associated semester. When the associated semester is active, a course deletion request is processed normally according to the configuration options under Courses and Sections.
- Semester deletion requests are ignored if received after the semester end date. If the delete request is received between the semester start and semester end dates, the delete request is processed.
- Requests to delete course templates and other org unit types are processed as requested; they are not checked against active semesters.
IPSIS - Reduced sync times with OneRoster REST systems | Updated
Planned Release: 20.25.02 | Feature ID: HYRL-2430
Change and Enablement information:
- Role / Audience: Administrator
- Site Availability: ON for all customers
- Site Enablement Actions: None (Automatic)
Additional Information Overview:
With this change, synchronization times with OneRoster REST systems are reduced through the expansion of incremental syncs to enrollments, which is the last data element type that pulled all records during each sync.
Currently, Brightspace requests the full data set of enrollments from OneRoster REST system (such as GG4L and Infinite Campus) during a sync. Over time, the number of enrollment records steadily increases which, in turn, means that the time for IPSIS to process the batch also steadily increases. With some customers having over 1 million enrollment records, IPSIS batch processing times exceed 3 hours.
This feature switches the synchronization of enrollment records from full to incremental. Each night, IPSIS will process several hundred enrollment changes which drastically reduces the nightly batch synchronization times.
Lessons/New Content Experience - Topic descriptions provide context for activities | New
Planned Release: 20.25.02 | Feature ID: EP-1259
Change and Enablement information:
- Role / Audience: All
- Site Availability: ON for all customers
- Site Enablement Actions: None (Automatic)
Additional Information Overview:
This change introduces the ability for users to view topic descriptions in the New Content Experience/Lessons in the same panel as the content. Adding topic descriptions can be important to help set the context of the activity or explain why the activity is required. Instructors can also edit the topic description on the edit page.
Topic descriptions are available for the following topic types:
- LTI links
- Web links including Google Drive. MS OneDrive, and Capture
- Files, except for HTML files
- SCORM including content service, imported, and Learning Object Repository (LOR)
- LOR including URLs and files
For topics that include the option to display inline or in a new tab, this option is moved to the secondary panel to all for space to edit descriptions.
LTI/External Learning Tools - LTI Links BDS includes the Created Date and Deployment ID | New
Planned Release: 20.25.02 | Feature ID: MAJ-1342
Change and Enablement information:
- Role / Audience: Administrator
- Site Availability: ON for all customers
- Site Enablement Actions: None (Automatic)
Additional Information Overview:
The LTI Links Data Set now has the Created Date (1.1 and 1.3), and Deployment ID (1.3 only). This will help customers better understand LTI activity within their organization.
Quizzes - Instructors can filter Quiz Statistics by Section or Group
Planned Release: 20.25.02 | Feature ID: BORG-3693
Change and Enablement information:
- Role / Audience: Instructor
- Site Availability: ON for all customers
- Site Enablement Actions: None (Automatic)
Additional Information Overview:
Two new filter options are available on the Quiz Statistics page:
20.25.03
Awards - Display and hide Certificate ID for Awards sharing | New
Planned Release: 20.25.03 | Feature ID: LURV-2633
Change and Enablement information:
- Role / Audience: Instructor, Administrator
- Site Availability: OFF
- Site Enablement Actions: Configuration Variable (Org Unit)
Additional Information Overview:
Administrators can enable or disable the configuration variable that controls whether the the CertificateID field displays or is hidden when viewing the certificate and when sharing awards to to public spaces, such as the Public Award page, LinkedIn, and export digital credentials.
Awards - Add Issued Date to Issued Awards model | New
Planned Release: 20.25.03 | Feature ID: LURV-3112
Change and Enablement information:
- Role / Audience: Instructor
- Site Availability: ON for all customers
- Site Enablement Actions: None (Automatic)
Additional Information Overview:
Instructors who manually issue awards to learners require the ability to back date the issue date. This ability is currently only available using the API, and cannot be done using the user interface, which limits the instructors who are not familiar with API technology.
With this update, the Issue Date field will appear on the Award dialog so any instructor manually issuing awards can edit the Issue Date in the user interface.
Data Hub - Additional field in Award Issued BDS | New
Planned Release: 20.25.03 | Feature ID: LURV-4090
Change and Enablement information:
- Role / Audience: Instructor, Administrator, Data Administrator
- Site Availability: ON for all customers
- Site Enablement Actions: None (Automatic)
Additional Information Overview:
The CertificateID field now appears in the Award Issued Brightspace Data Set for issued certificates
Lessons - Adjust depth of content within the content hierarchy | Updated
Planned Release: 20.25.03 | Feature ID: KAIJU-66
Change and Enablement information:
- Role / Audience: Instructor
- Site Availability: ON for all customers
- Site Enablement Actions: None (Automatic)
Additional Information Overview:
The New Content Experience/Lessons currently does not allow Instructors to move content between different depths within the hierarchy. Instructors must either temporarily enable Classic Content or use Course Builder.
This update introduces the ability to move topics and modules to a different depth.
Lessons - Previous and Next buttons to navigate between content topics | Updated
Planned Release: 20.25.03 | Feature ID: EP-1316
Change and Enablement information:
- Role / Audience: All
- Site Availability: ON for all customers
- Site Enablement Actions: None (Automatic)
Additional Information Overview:
In the New Content Experience, this update introduces Previous and Next buttons to navigate between content topics
Safe Harbor Statement
The information provided herein is confidential and proprietary to D2L Corporation and its affiliates (“D2L”) and may not be shared without the written consent of D2L. Nothing herein should be construed as legal, human resources, insurance, tax, or other advice for any particular issue, including compliance with relevant laws. You must consult a professional advisor that is familiar with your particular factual situation for any such advice. The information provided herein could include inaccuracies, typographical and other errors. The information provided herein is subject to change at any time, at the discretion of D2L, and D2L makes no commitment to update the information.
TO THE GREATEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE INFORMATION PROVIDED HEREIN IS PROVIDED “AS-IS” AND WITHOUT WARRANTY, AND ALL WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, COMPLIANCE, RELIABILITY, SUITABILITY, NON-INFRINGEMENT, TITLE AND ANY WARRANTIES RESULTING FROM CUSTOM OR USAGE OF TRADE, OR COURSE OF PERFORMANCE OR DEALING ARE HEREBY DISCLAIMED, AND YOU AGREE TO WAIVE SUCH WARRANTIES. D2L reserves all of its rights with respect to the information provided herein.