1. What’s new in Mahara 22.04?

Mahara is being improved from version to version. On this page, you see the highlights for the latest release of Mahara.

You can see a list of all new features on Launchpad or check out the features via the new in Mahara 22.04 ‘New in Mahara 22.04’ index entries.

1.1. Elasticsearch 7

Elasticsearch 7 is available as plugin to perform fulltext search and report indexing functionalities. It can be used instead of Elasticsearch 5 or 6 and comes with a few more settings.

1.2. Similarity check with Ouriginal in Moodle

Using the Mahara assignment submission plugin (web services) and additional functionalities in the Ouriginal Moodle plugin, it is possible to submit portfolios to Ouriginal via Moodle for a similarity check. In Mahara, web services need to be enabled along with a new export format.

1.3. Institution support administrator role

People providing support for an institution, e.g. helpdesk or hotline support, can now receive the ‘Institution support administrator’ role, which includes all permissions from the ‘Institution staff’ role and the possibility to masquerade as a regular institution member and as institution staff.

1.4. Install languages in the site administration

Site administrators can install any translation of Mahara directly in the site administration area. Languages can also be updated there. The translations make the interface available in languages other than English. No matter the interface language though, account holders can type text in any language.

1.5. Set up portfolio completion in group collections

If a group is created in an institution that allows the use of the portfolio completion functionality, you can set up group portfolio templates that add this page. Learners can then copy the template and have the page ready to go on their personal portfolios.

1.6. Prevent changes to ‘Sign-off’ block on copied templates

To prevent accidental changes to the ‘Sign-off’ block on portfolios that are copied from a template, the block settings are not available to portfolio authors once they made a copy of the template.

1.7. Download SmartEvidence framework

If you created your SmartEvidence framework on your Mahara site instead of uploading it as a JSON file, you can now download it from the SmartEvidence framework management page and upload it to another Mahara site. This makes sharing of frameworks easier and doesn’t require that they are uploaded first, but they can be created directly in Mahara.

1.8. Limit the number of groups in an institution

Site administrators can limit the number of groups that can be created in an institution in the institution settings. This allows for greater control over groups on multi-tenanted sites.

1.9. Upload files via web services

If you want to upload files directly into accounts via a third-party application, you can do so using the new file upload web services connection. It allows you to send a file from a third-party application with the consent of the account holder to Mahara.

1.10. Résumé changes

Education and employment histories are now separate menu items to be able to deal better with dragging and dropping files.

You can attach files on an education or employment history item or an achievement either directly from your Mahara files area or by uploading a file from your device.

1.11. Delete accounts from specific institutions in bulk via CLI

When you have a multi-tenanted site, you may wish to delete accounts based on certain criteria for more than one institution, but not all. This is now possible with the additions to the CLI script that allows you to delete accounts in bulk.