21 October 2016, 14:58

Hello Mahara community,

The last release cycle saw a lot of activity and improvements for Mahara. So we are very happy to be releasing Mahara 16.10 today alongside a beta version of our new mobile app, Mahara Mobile.

Like usual, there were lots of people who have been involved in this release, and we would like to thank everyone who's contributed to Mahara reporting and fixing bugs, creating new features, testing patches, translating the software and showcasing Mahara.

You can get the code at

https://launchpad.net/mahara/16.10/16.10.0

Highlights in Mahara 16.10 include:

• SmartEvidence: Align portfolios to competency frameworks
• Mahara Mobile (beta)
• Duplicate groups
• Manage all groups via CSV

Other notable new features include:

• Connection manager in web services
• Copy "tagged journal entries" configuration
• SimpleSAMLphp is managed dependency
• Auto-creation of SSO accounts on multi-tenanted sites
• Hide deleted comments when not needed for context

View the Mahara user manual for these new features as well as changed functionality.

See the full list of new features and bug fixes here:

https://launchpad.net/mahara/+milestone/16.10.0

You can check out a recent presentation or its recording for an overview of the new features.

How to install / upgrade

You can find instructions on how to install a new Mahara site or upgrade an existing one on our wiki:

https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/System_Administrator's_Guide/Installing_Mahara

https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/System_Administrator's_Guide/Upgrading_Mahara

If you are looking for translations, have a look at this page:

https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Language_Packs

Supported releases

Mahara 15.04,  15.10 and 16.04 are still supported for security updates. The support for Mahara 15.10 will end with the release of Mahara 17.04 in April 2017, and the support for Mahara 15.04 will end in October 2017 along with the end of support of Mahara 16.04. The support for Mahara 16.10 will end in April 2018.

Since the 15.04 release is the last one before moving to Bootstrap, we extended the support for it to 2.5 years instead of the usual 1.5 years.

For more information, please see https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/SupportedVersions

If you are running a Mahara site lower than 15.04, we highly recommend you upgrade to 16.10 as that gives you the longest support time frame at the moment. Users of Mahara 15.04, 15.10 and 16.04 can stay on their versions until that support runs out.

All site administrators running a supported version of Mahara are encouraged to subscribe to our security announcements:

http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/view.php?id=43

Support and bugs

If you find any bugs in this new release, please feel free to use our bug tracker to report them:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+filebug

And if you need help with anything, the support forum is the best place to ask your questions:

http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/view.php?id=2

The user manual has been updated for Mahara 16.10. New features are listed under the "New in Mahara 16.10" index entry.

http://manual.mahara.org/en/16.10

Credits

A number of organisations around the world supported this release through funding new features, bug fixes or contributing their own code that made it into Mahara 16.10. We want to thank the following organisations (in alphabetical order) for their continued support:

• Athabasca University
• Australian National University
• Catalyst
• PH Bern
• SWITCH
• Tiroler Schulnetz
• Université du Québec à Montréal

We also wish to thank the people who contributed code to this release. The code contributors are listed according to the number of changesets:

And the organisations they work for or are associated with:

Contributors to Mahara Mobile are Matthew Holloway and Aaron Wells (code), Evonne Cheung (design), Kristina Hoeppner (small language changes).

The most complete translations at the time of writing (at least 90%):

• Basque (Contributors: Abel Camacho, Asier Iturralde Sarasola, Ibai Oihanguren Sala, Iñaki Arenaza, Juan Ezeiza)
• French (Contributors: Alain Benoit, Alexandre Croteau, Anne017, David Truong, Dominique-Alain Jan, François Lizotte, Hélène V., Jean Marc, londumas, Melvin Romero, Pascale Hyboud-Peron, Paula Caterino, Philippe Petitqueux, Pierre Guinoiseau, sic, Stéphane)
• German (Contributors: Andy Hediger, Christian Kleinhanss, Daniel Winzen, Dennis Baudys, eledia, Ernst Artner, finnnns, Heinz Krettek, Jan Behrens, Jürgen Friedrich, Kristina Hoeppner, Marcel Debray, Mathias, Michael Wuttke, Moritz Ringler, Nico Verse, Patrick Neumann, Ralf Hilgenstock, Stefanie Berger, Steffen Pegenau, Tobias Bannert)
• Japanese (Contributor: Mitsuhiro Yoshida)
• Slovenian (Contributor: Gregor Anželj)

For a full list of translations and contributors, please see

https://translations.launchpad.net/mahara-lang/

And finally, thanks also go to the security researchers who help make Mahara secure.

Cheers

The 16.10 Release Managers