Community release notes - 7.6.0

Requirements

7.6.0

Upgrading notes

A new setting cfg_site_address has been added to ExamSys, it should be set to the full path to your ExamSys installation. We require it to be set during upgrade, if you are doing a command line upgrade you can avoid being prompted for it by using the -s flag, for example:

php cli\upd.php -u username -p password -s https://examsys.example.com

There is also a new script that should be configured to run regularly that will e-mail anomaly reports out:

cli/mail.php

New features

• ExamSys now supports and require PHP 8.1

• Staff can now add notes to questions (thanks to Get John)

• You can now optionally see the history of changes to previous instances of a question (thanks to Get John)

• PHP mailer can be used to configure e-mail

• Incorrect answers can now be added to hotspots (thanks to Get John)

• Hotspot and extended matching questions can now be globally configured to display the option letter, rather than the co-ordinate in hotspots, or the option value in extended matching questions (thanks to Get John)

• Anomaly detection. ExamSys will now record potentially suspicious activity happening on a paper that can be reviewed by administrators if cheating is suspected on an exam.

• The rounding method for answers in calculation questions can now be selected, existing questions will continue to use the same rounding method as before. This will have been different depending on the calculation engine:

  • PHPEval will have used half round up

  • RServe will have used half round even

Improvements

• There should be improved clarity around the validity of the duration shown on the class totals report when a user has late log entries

• The System information administration page now flows better and displays information about the status of ExamSys data directories

• Information about IP address problems in labs should now provide more clarity to administrators

• The command line install scripts will now send better exit codes when something goes wrong

• Images in exams should now load more smoothly

Bug fixes

• CSV reports should not break when an extended matching question contains multiple answers

• Fixed a crash when adding a random question to a paper that you are not a team member on

• Fixed various bugs caused by a race condition between the page loading and JavaScript initialising on a page (this presented as pages sometimes working and sometimes not working correctly)

• The fail save timeout now works as intended again (this should ensure that if something goes wrong it fails more quickly)

• The previous attempts link will now only display if a student has at least one previous attempt on a paper

• Banners should save more reliably

• Fixed an issue with timers on summative exams

• Fixed an issue where special characters in text box questions could be double encoded

• Fixed an issue where Likert questions using the N/A option would not work

• Correction mode for fill in the blank questions should now only display relevant answers

• Stopped invalid stats breaking the frequency and discrimination report

• Fixed frequency and discrimination stats for fill in the blank questions when they contain html

• Fixed an issue that would cause issues in labelling questions if a label was dragged too far down

Behind the scenes

• Made it harder for there to be issues with exam times when PHP and the database are not configured to use the same timezone

• Removed code that linked to a decommissioned University of Nottingham system from ExamSys

You may view all the tickets in the release