We decided to build eFront from scratch in order to replace our eFront codebase that was getting long in the tooth and to be a great foundation to build upon for the next decade.
It wasn’t an easy task: we had to rewrite legacy code, to re-think the architecture and UI, to make it more modular and speedy, and to learn and adapt new technologies. It also involved a lot of hair-pulling and head-scratching, in order to come up with the best solutions to the challenges we faced.
Yep, it wasn’t easy. But, as hard work is known to do, it paid off. You’ve seen it yourself, in the faster pace that major eFront updates arrive, with the first one landing just a month after our first release. And then another.
Well, it’s time to introduce our freshly baked latest update, eFront 4.1.0, and the goodies it brings to the table.
Curriculums
You know Branches, Groups, Audiences, and the rest of eFront’s logical groupings, they are here to help you organize your e-learning deployment in the way you like, and avoid repetitive manual tasks.
eFront 4.1 introduces “Curriculums”, a way to bundle several courses together to handle as a single package. You can offer a whole curriculum for sale (like selling courses), assign a curriculum to a user or a group, see aggregates reports for the whole curriculum and award certificates upon a curriculum’s completion.
Certificates
The new version builds upon the Certificate features of the previous one, adding several significant new features. Besides being able to award certificates based on curriculums (see above), you now also have the option to have self-expiring certificates that can be re-assigned automatically to the students upon (or even before) expiration. Last, but not least, we’ve also added a new reporting page for certification related statistics.
Automatic content conversions
To make online content creation faster and less tedious, we’ve automated content conversion by integrating EncodeMagic to eFront. You can now upload all kinds of videos, audio files, presentations, etc, knowing that they will be automatically converted to formats that your users can open, with the optimal encoding and delivery for all web-enabled devices (laptops, tablets, phones etc).
Tests
This version allows you to automatically create variations of your tests with the new “Randomized” question type, that can select multiple random questions from a question pool. You can select how many questions out of the pool you want to use in each test.
We’ve also added question timers, for time sensitive tests, as well as the option to re-use questions across lessons.
Payments
You asked for it, you’ve got it: version 4.1 adds the (not so long) awaited support for Stripe payments.
SEO URLs
If you’re running your eFront service publicly, you’ll love this one: all eFront URLS are now SEO friendly, for better Google placements and more traffic coming your way.
Login with Facebook
Third party authentication is all the rage these days, especially from the big-3 providers (Facebook, Google, Twitter). Well, you can now let your users register and login with their Facebook account.
Reports
Reports weren’t a major focus for this update, but we still managed to squeeze in a number of reporting improvements and a few new report types.
More documentation
Last, but not least, we revamped our eFront documentation, nearly tripling it in size. Besides entries for the new features in this update, you’ll also find several mini how-tos guiding you through common tasks, answers to frequently asked questions, technical guides for installing, securing and taking care of your eFront deployment.
You can check the ongoing eFront documentation here.
Oh, and that’s not all. There’s also a tutorial on creating your own themes, for the HTML/CSS savvy types, and an API guide integrating it with your other systems and services.
Finally, the documentation includes an extended Plugin Guide, you may use to extend eFront to fit your needs.
