Features, Improvement, and Fixes

These Release Notes contain a summary of changes made for the June 28-29 2023 release of EchoVideo. For changes made in previous deployments, see the other Deployment Notes articles located in this Topic group, or support@echo360.com.

New Features

Administrator Bulk Actions for Captures

Bulk Administrators now have more bulk actions for captures. In addition to deletion, completed captures can now be bulk transcribed, captioned, reprocessed, and assigned a different owner.

See Bulk Actions for Captures for Admins in EchoVideo for more details.

New User Management for Administrators

User The Users page has a new look and feel! In addition to the revamped interface, we have also added the ability for Administrators to make bulk updates to add or change roles, add enrollments, etc. Even more new features include the ability to add users to Collections, see a user's last login time, as well as assigning Designated Administrators and Schedulers to levels of the Institution Hierarchy without having to leave the Users page.

See the following articles for more details:

User Caption and Transcript Permissions

User Individual, non-administrator users can now be given the permission to send their content out to be captioned and/or transcribed without elevating their role.

See Manage Caption and Transcript Permissions in EchoVideo for more details.

More Caption Configuration Options

Caption Institutions are no longer limited to one caption configuration! Unlimited configurations are now possible across one or more caption providers. These new caption configurations can also be set up for Organizations, Departments, and Sections so that published content is automatically sent out for captioning.

EchoVideo now listed on Webex Marketplace

Administrators can now configure a Webex integration through the Webex Marketplace.

See Integrating EchoVideo with Webex for more details.

Auto-Publish Webex meetings to Sections

When an Institution has the Webex integration set up, and users have opted-in to the automatic ingestion of their Webex meeting, Instructors and TAs now have the ability to map their recurring meeting to be automatically published into EchoVideo Sections.

See Automatically Import Your Webex Recordings Into Your EchoVideo Library for more details.

In-App Notifications for Instructors

In-App notifications for Instructors are here! In addition to existing email notifications, Instructors now have the ability to opt-in to in-app notifications for events within EchoVideo. We've also added two new notifications for Content Management and Engagement.

Institution Copyright Policy

Administrators now have the ability to set an Institution-wide Copyright Policy that will be visible to all users from the Legal page.

See Adding a Copyright Policy in EchoVideo for more details.

Apply Copyright to Media

Copyright Media If the new Institution Copyright Policy has been set up, administrators and content owners can now apply a copyright to individual pieces of media which will be displayed to viewers in the player. Once the copyright has been applied, users can additionally restrict downloads and unauthenticated viewing of the copyrighted content.

See Apply a Copyright to a Piece of Media and How the Copyright Appears in the Player for more details.

Spherical (360˚) Video upload support now Generally Available

The ability for users to upload spherical (360˚) video is out of beta! This feature is now Generally Available and can be enabled at the Institution-level.

See Spherical Video (360° Video) in EchoVideo and Enable or Disable Spherical Video (360° Video) in EchoVideo for more details.

Recycle Bin for Everyone

The Recycle Bin now appears for all users to access and recover their soft deleted content. If enabled at the Institution-level, users will also be able to access and recover their archived content. Because the Recycle Bin now appears for everyone, we have also added a manual Archive action to the Media Details page that can be performed if the user also has the ability to Delete content.

See the following articles for more details:

Improvements

We have made some improvements to our backend services so that data will no longer get out of sync due to large imports and will be properly reflected in the interface without re-indexing.
User Account Settings pages have been updated to have a consistent UI.
The Create button now appears for all user roles. The options available in the Create menu are driven by your Institution toggles.
We have started to introduce our new branding colors throughout the platform, with more to come over the course of the year.
Updated colors on the Admin Captures page for accessibility.
Institutions can now enforce TLS restriction for appliances. When turned on in Institution Features, all appliances will no longer be able to use anything below TLS version 1.2.
We have upgraded the version of OpenSSL used in Universal Capture software from version 3.0.7 to 3.0.9 to address vulnerabilities. Note that the old OpenSSL library will be in the backup folder after updating to the latest software version and may still be flagged by security tools.
Improved processing of restarted and incomplete captures.

Fixes

Resolved an issue where the alternate login flow was not allowing users to select a secondary institution. The institution ID may now be directly appended to the URL:
https://<echo-base-for-region>/directLogin?institutionId=<desired-institution-id>
Resolved an issue where copying a piece of media was not copying an associated transcript file.
Resolved an issue where clicking into various Admin Dashboard Report Tiles was resulting in misaligned elements, causing the data to be difficult to discern.
Resolved an issue where, in a very specific scenario if content was reused from year to year in different LMS sections, then when we rolled up the section data to find the last viewed date it was not being calculated correctly and could cause content to become archived incorrectly. This went out as a hotfix on June 5th.
Resolved an issue where Instructors were not seeing an option to create a new Section in EchoVideo when setting up their LMS course, even if the Institution toggle to allow this was turned on.
Resolved an issue where, in very rare cases, certain captures were not able to be played because they were not processed correctly after upload.

In Case You Missed It

New Look and Feel for Participant Section Pages

EchoVideo Classes tab in the Student view EchoVideo Classes tab in the Instructor view

We were aglow with excitement for EchoExperience2023. To celebrate, our participant (student-facing) Sections pages have been updated with the fresh, vibrant colors featured in our new UI. We can’t wait for you to experience this preview of the enhanced look and feel of EchoVideo.

What has Changed

Functionally, nothing has changed about any of the Section pages or tools. We have updated the colors, changed some text fonts, and in some cases, replaced the icons. In most cases, the new icons are just updated versions of the previous ones (e.g., the Q&A icon still looks like a chat bubble, the edit icon is still a pencil, etc.), however, a few of the icons are brand new. See below for a mapping of the old icons to the brand-new ones as well as behavior descriptions:

OLD Icon	NEW Icon	What it indicates
		For Students, Raspberry Icons indicate you have not yet entered this class or viewed this media. The left "Media button" icon is for video/audio media. The right "Presentation screen" icon is for presentations/slides.
		For Students, Black Icons indicate you have entered this class to view the media. For Instructors, the content icons are always black.
		The box with the lightning bolt indicates interactive media. This is media that has polling questions embedded into it. These questions will appear during viewing and require you to respond in order to continue viewing the video. As with the other media icons, raspberry indicates you have not entered this class to view the media; black indicates you have entered the class.
		If you see a class with one raspberry and one black icon, that indicates that you entered the class when one of the two items was available to view, but the other media was added later. This is common if you enter a class during class time to view a presentation, but the video of the class isn't posted until later.
		For Instructors, a Dark Media Icon indicates either an unavailable piece of media OR a "placeholder" for an upcoming scheduled recording. Since the capture schedule needs to have this spot to put the completed recording, you cannot use this slot for any other video. After the recording is done, you may be able to remove or replace the video. A Raspberry Plus Icon allows you to add media to this class. When shown WITH a media icon, the blue plus enables you to add a presentation to the class, to accompany the future recording. If shown alone for a class, you can add a video, a presentation, or a piece of interactive media.
		The LIVE badge indicates that this class is or will be streamed live for viewing in real time. If the badge is raspberry, that means the class is happening right now, and if you enter the classroom, you can view the live stream. The gray badge for a future class that is scheduled to be streamed live has not changed.