For many years Flash has been the key to interactive and engaging web content, however with newer technologies and security requirements, its time to say "goodbye".

Ongoing issues with Flash’s functionality and compatibility with modern browser are getting worse with each browser release and in some cases are presenting issues that are unsolvable. Within the next year, browsers will begin actively blocking Flash content in ways that users with limited access to their workstation settings will be unable to overcome.

In August 2016, we alerted customers that the end of Flash was in sight and made a recommendation to begin re-publishing all Flash content to HTML5 before time ran out.

In November 2017, we alerted customers that new Chrome settings would make it harder for users to run Flash content and again reinforced our recommendation to republish all Flash content to HTML5.

Well, the time is now.

ICS Learning Group Support can no longer provide any debugging or support for Flash content due to these issues. It is known to be problematic and insecure and is no longer an appropriate delivery mechanism for web content. If your users are experiencing issues with Flash content, replace it with re-published HTML5 content to first verify if the issue has been solved and only if not, submit a ticket for support.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Asentia Release 1.14

Release Date: December 16, 2018

New Features:

• Added "dashboards" for users, groups, courses, learning paths, and instructor led training objects.
• Improved workflows for editing users, groups, courses, learning paths, and instructor led training.
• Enhanced the overall look and feel of the system to provide a more visually appealing user experience across multiple devices.
• Added the ability to create HTML-based email notifications.
• Added email notification events for "User Registration Request Submitted" and "Course Enrollment Request Submitted."
• Added the ability to allow users to opt-out of email notifications.
• Added the ability to replace a course module's content package without resetting module data for enrolled learners.
• Added the ability to mark course modules as optional.
• Added the ability to apply an expiration interval to learning path enrollments.
• Added the ability to jump back to the current month on all calendars.
• Added the ability to import a spreadsheet to fill in completion information and synchronize an instructor led training session's roster.
• Added an instructor led training session widget to the dashboard to allow learners to view all their upcoming instructor led training sessions in one place.
• Added learner's name to the printable view of their transcript.
• Added "email" as a search option to the "GetUser" API method.
• Added the ability to "permanently delete" deleted users.
• Added the ability to enroll in a single instructor led training session when enrolling in a course that contains an instructor led training session as a module.

Changes:

• Enhanced the course catalog's course details view to make it easier to view upcoming instructor led training sessions associated with the course.
• Enhanced certificates to allow for "portrait view" for certificate backgrounds that are designed to be higher than they are wide.
• Enhanced the instructor led training session date picker to auto populate the session's end date when configuring meeting times for a session. The end date will now default to the start date you have selected.
• Enhanced "merge user" functionality to also copy user profile files from source user to destination user.
• Enhanced the instructor led training roster print view to look more like a sign in sheet so that it can be printed and used to log learner attendance.
• Removed the requirement that all fields must be populated when configuring a portal’s footer.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where instructor led training email notification were being sent to instructors instead of learners.
• Fixed a bug in the message center requiring a message recipient to be entered twice when composing a message.
• Fixed a bug where the "Catalogs" header would be shown even though there were no catalogs available to view.
• Fixed a bug where "Account Settings" were not being saved properly.
• Fixed a bug where deleted documents were being shown in the "Documents" widget.
• Fixed a bug where email address would not return search results in logs.
• Fixed a bug where the expanded calendar view would not be shown on iPad.
• Fixed a bug causing old versions of object avatars to be cached in the user's web browser.

Asentia Release 1.13

Release Date: July 29, 2018

New Features:

• Added integration with OpenSesame course marketplace.
• Added the ability to merge user accounts.
• Added the ability to assign more than one instructor to an ILT session.
• Added the ability to create “shortcodes” for linking directly to courses, learning paths, and ILTs in the Catalog.
• Added the ability to “create new users only” (ignore existing users) when performing a user batch upload.
• Added the ability to manually edit the manifest of a content package.
• Added the ability to create ILT-specific email notifications.
• Separated ILT session “waitlist” events from “enrolled” events, allowing for different email notifications to be sent for “waitlist” and “enrolled” users.
• Added “session_instructorfullname” placeholder to ILT session email notifications to allow instructor name(s) to be included in ILT session email notifications.
• Added certificates listing to the catalog details page for a course that will show all certificates associated with the course.

Changes:

• Modified ILT sessions so that a session can be created in the past.
• Removed “Module Data Recovery” options from account settings. The Asentia SCORM API now recovers all orphaned data automatically upon the learner exiting the SCO.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug affecting the sorting of sent email notification logs.
• Fixed a bug where unconnected flow lines were being shown on the administrator menu for users who did not have permissions to all menu options.
• Fixed a bug that was causing enrollment marked as completed by an administrator to rollback to an incomplete status.
• Fixed a bug where tooltips for grid navigation buttons would remain on screen after page change.
• Fixed a bug where an impersonated user would still appear to be “online” after the impersonating user reverted the active login to their own account.
• Fixed a bug where the “Pending User Registration” widget could not be turned on in some portals.

On May 25^th, 2018 the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect. If you are located within or provide service or store data for any users located within the European Union, then you are subject to the GDPR requirements. Below, we’ll review some key points of the GDPR that you need to know and how our software can help you comply.

Note that the GDPR is not technical in nature – it does not regulate firewalls, encryption, security, or other technical aspects of our software or networks, but rather organizational, defining requirements for disclosure and transparency that you (the “controller” of the users’ data) must communicate to your users about what data you collect from them and how you will (or will not) use it. In short, GDPR is a regulation for you; while we provide the functionality within the software that will allow you to meet the GDPR requirements related to those areas that the software deals with.

While all the following features are available or soon to be within our software, this is not legal advice and we cannot answer questions regarding GDPR and your business; your own legal counsel is the only appropriate source for advice for your specific situation regarding your compliance with GDPR.

Consent to Process Users’ Data

Under Article 6, you need a “lawful basis” to process a user’s data. Lawful basis can be established by receiving the user’s consent, therefore you should use the “User Agreement” feature. In accordance with GDPR, describe what data you’re collecting from the user and what you plan to do with it along with the other GDPR disclosures that may be required here (such as contact information for data deletion or corrections). It would be best to consult with your legal counsel to review the GDPR requirements and determine everything that you will need to include here to be compliant.

Shortly, a new feature will be available that, if you choose to activate it, will force users who have not self-registered (those that were created by administrators or imported from data files or Active Directory) to accept the User Agreement upon their first login to the software.

Special Types of Data

Article 9 defines special categories of data that come with additional requirements for you, as the controller and additionally us as the processor (in certain cases). Special categories include racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade-union membership, genetic data, biometric data, health data or any data concerning a user’s sex-life or sexual orientation.

Because these special categories are not related to learning or content mastery, we will soon be removing from the software any user fields that collect this information and shall not allow any user-defined fields to be created that attempt to collect it.

Right to Deletion

Under Article 17, users have the right to erasure (“right to be forgotten”). Should a user request that they be deleted, simply delete their user account and all records related to that user are permanently deleted.

Be sure that you have provided users with appropriate contact information where they can request deletion of their data. Typically, this would be in the User Agreement mentioned earlier.

Shortly, a new feature will be added that you can activate that will allow users to delete themselves. If you do not need to comply with GDPR or would rather users contact you for deletion, you may leave this feature turned off.

Questions/Concerns

If you have any questions regarding these features or others that may be required to comply with GDPR, please contact our Support Staff by visiting http://support.icslearninggroup.com and submitting a support ticket.

Improvements to the Asentia LMS are on the way!

We will be making some updates and improvements to Asentia this month, and it will require some downtime. Asentia will be down on Sunday May 13th, 2018 for about 2 hours starting at 8:00pm EST. Here is what you have to look forward to after we push this update:

New Features:

• Added the ability to restrict portal access to certain IP addresses.
• Added redundancy to SCORM API data saving procedures to reduce and mitigate issues when client-side errors occur.
• Added event email notification type for “New Moderated Message” to allow discussion moderators to receive an alert when a new message has been posted for moderation.
• Added the ability to prevent a user from logging into the system via the LMS’s log in form. This is intended to be used when a portal uses single sign-on and wishes for that to be the only method for the user to log in.
• Added the ability to view detailed information about a sent email notification through the system email log.
• Added the ability for a lesson to retrieve extended user profile data through the LMS SCORM API. Note that this requires a lesson to be specifically programmed to retrieve the data.
• Added “long description” and “objectives” fields to ILT modules.
• Added the ability to report on certificates attached to courses through the Course and Catalog Information dataset.

Changes:

• Modified SCORM package upload verification to warn the administrator when a SCORM package’s manifest doesn’t meet SCORM specification 100%, and to only fail on manifest errors that would prevent a package from running at all.
• Modified the Administrator Menu to open on click, instead of hover.
• Modified user batch data validation so that in addition to validating against global rules and constraints, it will also validate to constraints configured within a portal’s “User Field Configuration”
• Modified the WYSIWYG editor used for the Asentia home page editor, and object description fields to apply Asentia CSS styling so that objects in the editor appear more closely to how they will appear when displayed in Asentia pages.
• Modified some aspects of the backend rules engine, and reporting engine to speed up those processes.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where single quote characters in reporting filters were causing a failure in report generation.
• Fixed a bug where a learning path’s due date was not being displayed when viewed through the user’s enrollments page.
• Fixed an issue where drop-down fields configured through User Field Configuration were not displaying items alphabetically when “Sort choices alphabetically when displaying” was checked.
• Fixed an issue where the Award Certificate popup was displaying certificates that have been marked as deleted.

If you have any questions or concerns, please submit a ticket at http://support.icslearninggroup.com. Thank you for your patience as we work to improve your experience with our products!