Web site change history

onCourse Web changes

onCourse web undergoes continuous improvement, adding new features, enhancing speed and fixing bugs. This page shows features added over time.

February 2010 (version 21 – release 4126)

• Web visibility of Sites can be turned on or off.
• Better display of class timing when sessions are at different times.
• Tuning of SecurePay interface.
• AMEX card numbers are now refused if AMEX is disabled.
• Enforce limit of 40 characters on credit card name.
• Spam trapping for online forms.
• Improved tutor detail lightboxes.
• Improved quick search and advanced search.
• Better sorting of class lists.
• Menu bug fixes.
• Other assorted bug fixes.

December 2009 (version 20 – release 4096)

• Fix search bugs, including correct display of weekday/weekend and daytime/evening.
• Improved behaviour of the selected classes / shortlist.
• Set correct FROM address of SMS messages if set for the college.
• Better support for college-customised CSS in pages and subject lists.
• Fix browsing by class tag, eg term dates.
• Improvements to search.
• Other assorted bug fixes.

October 2009 (version 19)

• A new layout for the list of classes gives you more information in a more compact and attractive layout, without having to click to reveal details. An easier path to enrolments, with fewer clicks and less uncertainty.

• The printable class detail page now contains all the information available for a student attending the class, including the address and a Google Maps tool to give directions.

• New search engine gives more consistent results when browsing and searching, and is a better foundation for future search plans such as full text search.

• Web Admin page list view provides quick access to recently edited pages, unpublished pages, searching by name and a number of other tools to speed up and ease the task of the web site administrator. Also there is now a warning message if you are editing on the staging site to remind you that any changes will not appear in your live site.

• Student/Tutor state is now displayed in the contact profile or when creating a new student. This is automatically filled in from the entered suburb and postcode.

• Tag descriptions entered in onCourse client are now optionally displayed beside the tag name in your list of subjects for your courses, controller by the “showtopdetail” parameter in the {tags} markup. Also you can now define in the markup how many columns of subjects will appear across the page.

• New colleges now have a default home page that contains a list of their courses, and instructions for editing their web site.

• Sites page at /sites/ now shows a map displaying the locations of all your sites and a compact list of all sites, with the ability to show where that site is on the map or show directions.

• Improvements to the concession editing process.

• Sub-sites on a single host name (eg www.my.college.com/mysubsite/) are now full web sites, each with their own pages, navigation, blocks, CSS, overrides and so on.

• The printed version of the web pages are now more printer-friendly.

• Menus with sub-menus are now indicated visually in the navigation, without having to hover over each menu item to find which ones have sub-menus.

• Required Fields – each college can now define which fields are mandatory for enrolling students. First name, last name and email are always mandatory, but you can now define other fields such as phone number, postcode or date of birth. Students will be prompted to enter these and cannot proceed to enrolment until all mandatory fields are filled.

• Tutor Class Roll is now formatted much better, without the problems of long email addresses pushing the list into the sidebar.

• Credit card numbers can now be entered with spaces or other formatting, which will be ignored. Also if a student enters a phone number without an area code, the area code will be added automatically from their postcode or state.

• Class Session Calendar timeline has been improved, now showing sessions in a table form as well.

• A number of bug fixes, including fixing page aliases containing spaces and workarounds for incorrect Internet Explorer security alerts.

August 2009 (version 18)

• Considerable effort has been put into ensuring cross-browser compatibility of all sites. This means that users of older browsers should find their experience a happier one.

• Short List To avoid confusion, the short list is now cleared after a successful enrolment.

• Login Screen Some text is added to the login screen telling students that they do not need to log in to enrol in a class.

• Auto Area Code When enrolling, or when editing your details, if you enter a six-digit phone number, your area code will be added automatically from your state or postcode.

• Pre-publication Page View Now a web administrator can choose whether or not a page is published. New pages are set to “unpublished,” and will only be viewable by a logged in web administrator, who can view their content and see them in the navigation. Normal viewers will only be able to see these pages when the administrator marks them as published.

• RSS Feeds You can now mark a page as an RSS feed. When you do this, all the children of that page will be published as an RSS feed. As well as this, all the RSS feeds you define this way will appear in the browser bar in all your web pages, allowing your visitors to subscribe to any of the feeds in your site.

• Permalink Redirect Having a permalink like /page/123 is important so that you can have links to this page in other pages that never change, even when you change the name of the page. However, you want your visitors to see the menu URL you have defined, such as /news/august. Now when a visitor goes to /page/123 the browser will display the user-friendly menu URL.

• Opt-in Marketing Options When enrolling, the marketing options for email, SMS and mail are turned on by default. Students can uncheck these checkboxes if they wish.

July 2009 (version 17)

• Faster Pages You want your visitors to see your courses quickly. We have done a lot of tuning to reduce the size of the first page and make it load more than twice as quickly.

• Days and Times A neat little widget in the course list view now shows on which days your classes occur and whether they are day and/or night time.

• Advanced Search styling improvements The advanced search panel and the results now look better than ever.

• Quick Search improvements The quick search results is now quicker and simpler showing a much shorter list.

• Sub-sites if your college has multiple business units, but they all want the same host name, you can now have completely independent styling and navigation for each unit, eg www.megacollege.com/sport and www.megacollege.com/arts.

• Automatic Postcode Now when a student starts typing their suburb, a list of suggestions appears automatically. Selecting one fills out the postcode as well.

• Duplicate Contacts Enrolments for duplicate contacts can now proceed, so the college can manage the duplicates rather than stopping the student from enrolling.

• Log Out The “My Account” section now updates properly after logout, no longer giving the impression that the logout has not happened.

• Web Admin Improvements Quite a few improvements to the admin interface, especially better editing of Web Blocks.

• Google Analytics improvements to the tracking of e-commerce statistics.

June 2009

• Tagging of Web Pages – once you have defined your tags in onCourse, you can use your web site admin tool to tag your pages with any tags. You can use this in conjunction with the {page} markup (see next item).

• Random Page Content – you can now use the {page} rich-text markup to embed specific or random content in any web page. You can specify an exact page, or all pages with a certain tag.

May 2009

• Random Course Markup allows you to insert course summaries, links or text in any of your web pages. You can specify the exact course, or all courses with a specific Tag, and can optionally limit the list of candidates based on whether they have any current classes or even to those matching the current advanced search. See the documentation for details.

• Clever Browsing using {tags} – previously, the {tags} rich text markup allowed you to show your tag hierarchy on any web page, and your visitors could click on a tag to list all courses or classes with that tag. This is now extended so that you can limit the displayed tags to those with current classes, and even limit it to show those that have classes that match the visitor’s advanced search parameters.

• E-Mail Templates were introduced last month, but now the documentation will help you work out how to use them.

• Enrolment Improvements – the online enrolment process has been streamlined, with improvements to in-page calculation and display of discount and concession prices. This includes a fix for a security warning that only occurred in Internet Explorer.

• Student Concessions – if you have discount prices that are based on concession types you defined in onCourse, the concession pricing is displayed wherever the class price is shown. Students can edit their concessions when logged in, and new or existing students can add concessions while enrolling.

• Web Admin is now cleaner and easier to use.

• Bug Fixes – as always, our process of continuous improvement has led to many minor bug fixes, especially in the areas of waiting lists and enrolments.

April 2009

Advanced Search Panel

• The new Advanced Search allows visitors to find exactly the courses they want, at a time and place suitable for them. Each part of the advanced search can be turned on separately for your web site:
  • Keywords the same search words you are currently using in the search panel. Now they go further, matching the course name, course or class code, or any text in the course description.
  • Subjects these are the top-level subjects on your home page.
  • Priced to try to find a course with classes that cost no more than this.
  • Near or Within xx km of The visitor can specify a postcode or a suburb. When they start typing, a list of options will appear, from which they can choose with a click. Courses will match if they have classes at a Site within that distance (default 2 km).
  • Days Choose the days of the week, or just choose Week days or Weekends.
  • Time Any time, Day time or Evening. Your choice.
    Search Results
• You don’t want your visitors to get the dreaded “Sorry, no matches” when they go looking for their dream class. And you want them to see how the results match their criteria. That’s why the new Search Results list has two parts: the perfect matches at the top, then not-so-perfect matches shown below a “you may also be interested…” message. And each match shows how well it matches your criteria: green for a perfect match, brown for a partial match (e.g. just outside the requested value), red for not a match. And if you click on the “locations” icon at the top of the page, a map appears showing all the perfect matches plus your location. If you click on a site in the search results, the browser smoothly scrolls to the top of the page and shows the relevant site with an information window. The colours of the site icons also display how well classes at that site match, and clicking on them opens an info window with the option of getting the address and directions.

• Filtered Browsing If your visitor has already said they want courses under $100 near Balmain, this should apply whether they are searching or browsing through your subjects. Now both searching and browsing use the new advanced search results format, so visitors can see the browsed classes that match at the top of the page.

March 2009

Quick Search

• New Quick Search assistant on the search field lets you see what you will get without reloading the page
• Automatic generation of sitemap.xml for up-to-the-minute Search Engine Optimisation
• The student portal now shows status and outcomes for completed or in-progress classes
• New Rich Text tag to include MP3 audio
• The enrolment process is clearer, with irrelevant options sliding away until needed
• Tutors can view and mark the roll for their classes
• Web page editor is clearer and easier to use
• Each web page now has separate controls for being accessible at all and appearing in the navigation menu
• Email-from-Web template allows the onCourse client to send HTML emails using content from the web site
• Can now specify the CSS class in Rich Text image tags so you can format them as you like
• Each college can now specify the disclosure confirmation link in the enrolment page
• Each college can enable display of concession prices and allow students to define their concession card details

Regression fixes

• Web page and web block editor bugs fixed
• Gracefully handle bad entry such as an invalid country name or birthday
• Fix bug that stopped enrolment in free courses
• Fix paged results page number inconsistency
• Fixes to make login and student portal more consistent
• Disabled inline PDF-as-image because of lack of wide browser support
• Removed auto-login for security reasons
• Many minor bug fixes to improve consistency with the onCourse client

December 2008 – Pre-Christmas

• Allow students who are not enrolling to pay online
• Fixing email confirmations templates parsing (synchronised template keys with onCourse)
• css styling overhaul
• Enrolment confirmations date/time are now timezone aware for emails
• Added the ability to stage website menu items
• Update tutor confirmed via website (in addition to the already sent email)
• Lots of minor bug fixes for a better user experience

Regression fixes

• Fix Discounts – only applied to relevant classes
• Fix Discounts – overall price reduction calculations
• Fix password reminder email sending
• Fix replication of binary attachments

December 2008 – onCourse 1.6 Compatible New Features

• Students can select their concession type in their student portal (concession types can be defined by the college in onCourse 1.6)
• Single login for tutors who are also students
• Single iCal calendar for tutors who are also students
• In their enrolments portal, students can now see outcomes for courses in which they are enrolled, and achieved outcomes for completed courses
• Concessions, Outcomes, Attendance, Certificates, Session tutors added to replication
• Contacts rather than Students tied to webservice credit card payments

December 2008

• Hide ‘Enrol Now’ and ‘Add to Shortlist’ if student is already enrolled
• List of sessions for a class is now included in the class detail page, and handles all combinations of missing room and site names
• Sessions and classes now display duration and number of sessions
• Concession warning in enrolment form is now hidden if the college has no active concession types
• Fixed bug where half-configured tag could result in a list of all courses for that tag instead of those belonging to it
• Fixed editing of visibility of web pages and included a checkbox for this in the site map
• Added autocomplete=“off” to credit card number, name, ccv and expiry fields so they do not autofill when the browser has autofill turned on.
• Rationalisation and repair of CSS and Javascript
• Removed confusing “Cancel” button from the enrolment form
• Fix password validation for new student joining a waiting list
• Fix password creation and validation for student and tutor profile in the portal
• Fix bug where courses marked as not web visible were displayed
• Allow Google Maps to display an alert if the requested host name does not have a Google Maps host key
• Improved display of web page editing tools, minor bug fixes
• Refactoring and bug fixing of the enrolment process

November 2008

• Fixed bug where certain invalid URLs were giving an exception instead of “page not found”
• Removed invalid /page/(number) web page aliases from all web pages, fixing “page not found” in internal page navigation
• Site and room directions can now use Rich Text tags
• Fixed problems with image tags for newly added attachments
• Fixed “Email a Friend” link
• Added suggestion in enrolment form to use the same email address as previously used
• Improved password reminder functionality
• In student/tutor profile, allow entering of date of birth if not already defined
• Fixed time zone skew of calendar timeline and possible 12-hour error
• Login form now auto-focuses on the login name
• Added option to send waiting list and mailing list confirmation emails as HTML or plain text
• Added tools to insert Rich Text image tags from any attachment without having to attach it to the page
• Added ability for tutors to mark attendance for their classes

October 2008 – onCourse 1.5 Compatible New Features

• Web pages can now be edited in-place on the web site by web administrators
• Web administrators can define blocks of rich content that are shown in various regions on all pages
• Online waiting lists for students. More information…
• Online mailing list subscription management for students and tutors. More information…
• Student Portal is expanded to include the following tools:
  • Contact Details
  • Enrolments
  • Mailing Lists
  • Waiting Lists
• Tutor Portal is expanded to include the following tools:
  • Contact Details
  • Classes
  • Mailing Lists
• iCalendar published class sessions for students and tutors
• Location map and directions laid out for faster page loading
• Rich Text tag enhancements for video and image

October 2008

• webservices replication ordering fixes
• waiting lists limited to relevant courses
• fixing enrolment confirmation reference number
• unique codes added to contact for communication and subscriptions
• updated allowed attachments to include excel documents
• page editing with attachments fixes
• testing new contacts with enrolments
• web themes allowing for enhanced styling
• ensuring subjects and tags are sorted by weight and name
• web editing now via a separate page
• adding unique number to binary data for rich text links
• hiding deleted session from class calendar
• support monitoring enhanced
• fixes for web blocks, hiding deleted blocks
• fixes for naming related uploaded attachments
• fixes for orphaned web nodes
• urls made editable with aliases
• enabling attachments for web nodes
• web services mark II going live (backwards compatible)
• fixed discount being applied to zero dollar classes
• beginnings of allowing uploading attachments
• beginnings of web block and web page region editing

September 2008

• beginnings of migrating students and tutors to unified contact
• NRT logos shown for relevant courses
• enrolment confirmation fixes for student names
• tutor portal styling for contact input fields
• web services fixes for binary attachments
• email notifications limited to valid recipients
• url speed and handling improvements
• discount replications fixes
• webservices replication mark II testing
• fixes for enrolment and payment confirmations
• allow course title wrapping to add additional images for example
• site detail page enhancements (delay loading directions for usability)
• added preference for amex (default to off)
• web services for waiting list, message templates, tags replicate in both directions now
• YouTube video rich text option made available
• allow gender updates via the website
• google analytics scripting updates (latest api changes)
• beginnings of iCal integration
• duplicate results filtered from fetching
• online editing of webpages wrapping standard pages
• further performance enhancements for faster list browsing
• synchronised avetmiss questions and options with onCourse

August 2008

• beginnings of online web editing with live previews
• deployment enhancements for versioned updates
• performance enhancements for various slowish queries
• per college preferences with defaults added for rapid site skinning
• web services replication update testing
• waiting lists added to portal linked to the relevant courses
• Adding class location and web url to enrolment confirmations
• batched fetching of avetmiss populated data for replication
• beginnings of notification templating for mailing and waiting list confirmations
• fixes for discount lookup online
• fixing web-services discount calculation
• add preferences to determine default tutor confirmation emails
• enabling payment gateway and enrolments per college preferences

July 2008

• beginnings of web services replication reworked
• fixes for money amounts calculations and rounding
• web services: enabling payment resends for network timeout
• case insensitive login and look up for students/tutors
• Tutor portal request: showing class price
• Rich Text form layout improvements (field sizes and alignments)
• initial support for Rich Text form redirection on success
• Allowing multiple email addresses for Rich Text forms

May 2008

• the short excerpt of the course description (teaser) visible on the course list now better breaks at the end of a word
• fixed issue where tutors could sometimes not log in
• AVETMISS titles, logo for VETAB, and modules display on course detail page
• rich text text areas can now have embedded tag groups (see Making use of tags). This allows you to (say) insert the ‘term’ tag group onto any page on your site; the web site then displays the list of terms and clicking on each term takes the user through to a list of classes for that term.
• url handling for rich text tags
• google analytics upgraded to the new reporting mechanism
• list page optimisations (places available)
• bread crumb updates

April 2008

• login reliability
• money calculation updates
• pdf attachments can now display in the browser
• duplicate enrolment safety
• content preview strips rich text image/form data
• preparation for per site side bar overrides (feature to come)
• class info label change from Location to Map & Address
• cc obfuscation insurance
• maintaining search during list page navigation fixes
• shortlist updates/fixes
• web searching updates (handling non alphanumeric characters)
• rich text testing/fixes + form submission updates
• staging tag updates
• /page alias for webpages

March 2008

• discount entry updates
• cookie handling updates
• course titles subtitle added for accredited courses
• label updates for places available
• session fixes
• VETAB logo preparation
• list batch navigation glitch fixes
• initial mockup of accredited courses info auto-populated
• tutor/student portal data update fixes + confirmation message added
• added staging tag (to stage content before putting live)
• rich text form message delivery safety
• rich text form fixes
• documenting rich text forms
• rich text forms + validation logic updates
• front page supporting images

February 2008

• rich text forms functionality/styling/testing
• isWebVisible for tags. Tags and webpages can be optionally hidden via onCourse.
• Course title re-use (preparing for meta-info e.g., avetmiss)
• tutors (companies) login support
• per site meta info in html pages
• tutor portal showing classes not yet available (for confirmation)
• google analytics transaction info compatibility
• payment processing improvements
• tutor portal class confirm form updates
• enrolment validation fixes
• tutor port labeling (confirmed)
• bug fixes for enrolment counting
• tutor portal emails use standard subject prefix ‘[onCourseWeb/TutorPortal]’
• updates for filtering publicly available content
• tutor portal class roll styling
• tutor portal showing min/max places
• confirmation message for emails sent from portal
• auto-assign passwords for login if not previously set
• payment processing safety (handle multiple payment attempts)
• tutor portal email confirmation fixes
• backtracking cache management updates
• safeguards for google analytics generation
• qualification and module course relationship replication
• Tutor and class relationship fixes
• adding logout ability
• timeline link style updates
• tutor portal class labelling updates (cancelled,started,finished,enrolling,not open for enrolments)
• password reminder for contact login
• class status labels clarified (cancelled, etc)
• Tutor Portal improvements (class rolls, tutor confirmations, etc)
• messaging template parsing for new template keys
• bug fix for gender entry
• room page shows site detail + room detail
• elementary support for refunds
• payment/enrolment status updates for onCourse
• discount tax/non-tax calculations
• timeline info updates (dates, times, locations, link to site, room)
• discount view styling updates
• discounts calculation for non specific class discounts
• discount entry styling updates
• payment conflict safety

January 2008

• general style updates
• rich text forms first cut
• time zone debugging/fixes
• Message template usage debugging/updates
• remote requeueing support
• payment gateway response handling improvements (dealing with outages)
• multiple tutors for classes (+ replication)
• utilising onCourse record id for urls (when ids are used)
• payment page updates (cvv info, and enrolment requirements)
• using college from email address in confirmation emails as defined in onCourse
• stripping html from list content preview
• replication testing/debugging
• stress tested bug fixes
• using preferences from onCourse for per-site custom logic

General Improvements

• entity aliasing
• url handling
• rich text image styling
• payment processing
• Enrolment student entry

December 2007

• General stability testing/updates for holiday season
• Google analytics for payment result
• Google ranking help (page title bread crumbs)
• timeline date display updates
• recursive menu updates
• payment replication
• list item preview
• student input hints (e.g., mobile number allowing sms)
• page layout updates
• list item styling updates
• email a friend added
• general stability updates
• rich text image styling updates
• timeline element alignment updates

November 2007

• Rich text image tooltips
• handling page not founds (returning nice page not found page)
• replication optimisations
• SMS updates (validation)
• random rich text image support improvements
• blank image provided when embedded image not found
• tutor resume preview
• basic tutor list support
• list navigation paging sometimes linking to all courses fixed
• discounted price strike-throughs
• rich text image links
• Google map directions added for sites
• Web services updates
• titles and links for timelines updated
• timeline population for list pages
• adding page attachments (as defined in onCourse)
• binary data serving
• rich text image support + styling (for courseclass,course,tutor,tags)
• hours.minutes.seconds added to timeline
• enrol now discount optionally shown
• discount entry styling + validation
• per-site static overrides improvements
• list page flexibility (dealing with any type)
• tag name spaces converted to ‘+’ for url generation
• user-friendly urls generation + handling (dynamic handling)
• Course isWebVisible support added
• discounts per enrolment info
• auto-sorting various lists of records, such as courses and classes

October 2007

• added labels to classes to indicate started, completed, cancelled.
• Student login
• Tutor login + limiting to current classes
• tutor and student cookies (e.g., unique cookie hashing + remember me)
• Shortlist sorting
• reference tracking number distinctions between onCourse and onCourse Web (prefixing with ‘O’ or ‘W’)
• improved messages for validation (e.g., why enrolment is disabled)
• Timeline addition for classes and sessions. This graphical interface makes it easy for students to visually see when their classes are scheduled.
• ensure checkout pages are always securely accessed no matter how the user reached those pages
• 2 digit years converted to 4 upon entry
• Payer auto selected during enrolment
• Room location/site styling improvements
• Shortlist Web-2.0 updates (adding/removing from shortlist)
• Student prevented from enrolling in class if they are already enrolled
• Totals for payment update as data typed
• Popup hints added to entry fields
• Enrolment ‘student add’ validation logic improvements
• improve styling of input validation
• Simple student add form (hiding by default AVETMISS questions)