29 April 2020, 19:50

Kia ora Mahara community,

It's the end of April, spring is starting in many parts of the world whereas other parts are preparing for autumn like we here in Aotearoa New Zealand. We are proud to be delivering this version of Mahara to you amidst all the disruptions we've been dealing with over the last few weeks. We hope you are all staying safe.

This version of Mahara has a number of new features again that we want to invite you to make use of. There are usability improvements as well as a series of administration improvements that will facilitate the management of Mahara sites, in particular when using single sign-on.

Highlights in Mahara 20.04 include: 

• Language toggle in the navigation bar
• Priority for institution members for sharing portfolios
• Personal group labels
• Default group settings
• Combined export
• Experimental PDF export
• Restriction of file type upload
• Moving of account to an SSO institution without administrator
• Automatically assign roles to people logging in via SSO
• Automatically create institutions based on SSO parameters
• Cover images for pages and collections

Other notable new features include:

• More prominent SSO button
• Display sign-off and verification details
• Exchange the term 'user' for something more applicable
• Bulk export in other export formats besides Leap2A

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

See the full list of new features and bug fixes.

You can check out the feature release video.

Download the code or access it via Git.

How to install or upgrade

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

If you are looking for translations, have a look at the language packs information page.

Supported releases

Mahara 19.04 and 19.10 are still supported for security updates. The support for Mahara 18.10 ends now. Support for Mahara 19.04 will end in October 2020, Mahara 19.10 will be supported until April 2021. Mahara 20.04 will receive updates until October 2021.

For more information, please see our release cycle.

We recommend you upgrade to 19.10 as that gives you the longest support time frame at the moment. If your organisation uses Mahara 18.10 or 19.04, you can stay on either version until their support runs out.

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

Support and bugs

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

If you need help with anything, the support forum is the best place to ask your question.

The Mahara manual has been updated for Mahara 20.04. New features are listed under the "New in Mahara 20.04" index entry. Some updates are still in progress, in particular new screenshots for the changes in language around the site.

Credits

Many organisations contributed to the release of Mahara 20.04 through funding new features and bug fixes and discussing the platform in general. We want to thank the following organisations (in alphabetical order) for their support of this release:

• Cambridge Assessment
• Catalyst
• Center for Applied Linguistics
• Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga Ministry of Education Aotearoa New Zealand
• Mitstek
• OpenEDU
• PHBern
• SWITCH
• Te Rito Maioha Early Childhood New Zealand
• Waitematā District Health Board

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

 Fun statistic on the number of changed lines, which changes the picture a bit:

And the organisations they work for or are associated with:

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

• Arabic: Contributors over time: Cambridge Assessment, Muhammad Aljaber
• Basque. Contributors over time: Abel Camacho, Asier Iturralde Sarasola, Ibai Oihanguren Sala, Iñaki Arenaza, José Miguel Andonegi, Juan Ezeiz, Ramón Ovelar
• Czech. Contributors over time: Viktor Fuglík, David Mudrák, Adam Pátek, Matouš Trča, Veronika Karičáková, Marek Drahovzal, Lukáš Kotek, Jiřina Nováková, Tomáš Jeřábek
• Dutch. Contributors over time: Balaam's Miracle, Bas Brands, Eric, Jeroen Hendrickx, Joost Elshoff, Koen Roggemans, M Kerkhoff, Marinka van der Kolk, Raoul Dorrisen, rmob, Snicksie, Volker Schmidt
• French. Contributors over time: Alain Benoit, Alain Bolli, Alexandre Croteau, Anne017, Aurelien Besson, Cmathieu, David Truong, Dominique-Alain Jan, Emilie Lenel, Équipe StudiUM, François Lizotte, Giulia Vighetti, Hélène V., Jean Marc, londumas, Melvin Romero, Pascale Hyboud-Peron, Paula Caterino, Philippe Petitqueux, Pierre Guinoiseau, sic, Stéphane
• German. Contributors over time: Andy Hediger, Anne Spindler, Christian Kleinhanss, Daniel Winzen, Dennis Baudys, eledia, Ernst Artner, Ettore Atalan, finnnns, Gunnar Staniczek, Heinz Krettek, Jan Behrens, Jürgen Friedrich, Kristina Hoeppner, M. Ehlers, Marcel Debray, Mathias, Michael Engel, Michael Wuttke, Moritz Ringler, Nico Verse, Patrick Neumann, Ralf Hilgenstock, Ralph Ballier, Silas Zahner, Sonia Coiro, Stefanie Berger, Steffen Pegenau, Stephan Woidowski, Tobias Bannert
• Japanese. Contributor over time: Mitsuhiro Yoshida
• Te Reo Māori. Contributor over time: Ian Cormack
• Slovenian. Contributor over time: Gregor Anželj

There are many more translations of Mahara at varying stages of completeness.

The translators of the Mahara manual:

• French: Didier Baltazart, Dominique-Alain Jan, Jean-Marc,  londumas, Matthieu Vion, Pascale Hyboud-Peron, Phan Hoang, Philippe Petitqueux, Stéphane
• German: Dan Cooper, Daniel Winzen, Dirk Meyer, eledia, Ettore Atalan, Michael Wuttke, Ralf Hilgenstock, Stefanie Berger, Stephan Woidowski, Tobias Bannert
• Japanese: Masayuki Kuwada

Big thanks also go to the people who contributed to Mahara 20.04 as business analysts, UX researchers, graphic designers, testers, documentation writers, system administrators, developers improving supporting infrastructure, and security researchers.

Kia ora!

The 20.04 Release Managers at Catalyst