Page Comparison

A lot of the changes in MyTimetable 2.5 involve 6 'merging' multiple data sources, further expanding the multiple data source support from version 2.4. Many small improvements to the user interface have been done, further refining the MyTimetable user experience. Most of the changes were sponsored by the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (thanks!polishes' the 2.5 release and adds a couple of new features and enhancements. Also, we now support Capita UNIT-e as timetable source (thanks to Plymouth College of Art).

All work involved in upgrading to the latest MyTimetable version (configuration, building, testing) is free of charge for our customers with a Software Assurance or All-In support agreement.

Functional changes

• Merging support — It is now possible to transparently 'merge' timetables from multiple datasources. This makes it possible to combine, for instance, two data sources containing semester 1 and 2, without any action from the user. The merging can be done using a per-entity configurable field, like the host key or the name.
• Deduplicate events — Support has been added to deduplicate events over multiple timetables. This option is enabled by default and removes duplicates activities from different timetables, which occur if programme of study or group timetables overlap.
• Avoid concurrency support for staff timetables — Staff timetables can now also incorporate the avoid concurrency information available in Syllabus Plus. When enabled, a staff timetable will also show the activities of 'avoid concurrent' staff members.
• Subscription limit changes — The fixed limit on the number of added subscriptions has been removed. Instead of this, a limit has been set on the number of timetables that can be shown at the same time. This limit has been set to 25 by default.
• Mobile location and zone timetables — It is now possible to view location or zone timetables from the mobile interface when the user is logged in, previously this was only possible for guest users.
• Highlight options — It is now possible to highlight certain events using a Syllabus Plus tag. The exact styling of a 'highlighted' event will be determined together with the customer.
• Location group timetable support — Support has been added for Syllabus Plus location group timetables.
• Timetable filter memory — An option has been added to save the last-chosen value in drop-down boxes. This is a global/per-instance MyTimetable setting and is disabled by default. The last-chosen value is saved in a 'cookie' on the local computer.
• Per-group options — 'Select / deselect / remove all' options have been added.
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• ActivityDepartment timetable filter — A new staff filter has been added. This filter shows a list of departments and filters the staff members by the departments of their associated activities, instead of their own department. By default, this filter is not in use, but we can replace your existing department filter if you think the new filter option is better.
• Activity details — On-click in the day or week calendars, a dialog will pop-up with the activity details. This was already the case for the other views, and adding this functionality to the day and week view makes the user experience more consistent.
• Configurable time slot height — The height of the time slots in the graphical day and week calendar is now a configuration option. Using this option it is possible to increase the height of all 'event boxes', making it possible to view all necessary information at once.
• List view display limits — The maximum number of student sets, sections, staff members and locations shown in the list views now defaults to 5. This improves the clarity of the user interface. All associated items can still be seen by clicking on an item.
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• Module viewer (individual timetables) improvements — The 'Show personal timetable' option now also works in 'List by location' and 'Availability' views.
• Caching improvements iCalendar feed — A 'cache breaker' token has been added to all iCalendar feed URL's. Because of this, re-adding a timetable to Outlook or Google Calendar will always refresh the data, instead of using old cached data. This should limit the number of cases where a user has to use the 'reset links' option. 
• Configurable data source range — The start and end date of a data source can now be overridden, removing any activities outside of the configured range.
• Link to mobile timetable by host key — An option has been added to directly link to a mobile view of a timetable, using the (configured) host key field of the timetable. Details can be found at the URL parameters page.
• Host key / subscription key added to API — Various API responses now include host key and subscription key information, the API documentation has been updated to reflect this.
Invalid iCalendar token HTTP response code —  The iCalendar feeds now return an HTTP 404 (Not Found) instead of an HTTP 403 (Forbidden) code if the authentication token is invalid. This should prevent Outlook from incorrectly showing popup windows asking for a password.
• Event type group filtering per subscription — Users now have the option to filter a timetable by activity type (event type group). Configuration of this feature depends on the specific wishes of the client, so this feature is disabled by default. Development of this feature was sponsored by Twente University (thanks!).

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• New add timetable menu design — Data sources are now fully 'expanded' by default. Optionally, it is possible to define a data source as a 'secondary data source', which moves the timetable type selection to a sub-menu:

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• Dynamically scaling graphical calendar — The size of 'activity boxes' in the graphical day and week calendars now dynamically scales depending on the size of the browser window.
• Department-based 'draft activity strategy' added — Activities can now be marked as draft based on a date set in a (user text) field of the associated Syllabus Plus department (thanks to the Karel de Grote-Hogeschool for this feature)
• Mobile interface accessibility improvements — Several changes have been made to the mobile interface, improving screen reader support for visually impaired users (changes sponsored by Hogeschool van Amsterdam, thanks).
• UNIT-e timetable provider added — It is now possible to read timetables from the Capita UNIT-e database. This implementation is still a bit 'rough', and will be further improved in upcoming MyTimetable versions.
• CSV export week label changes — Previous MyTimetable versions always included the ISO week numbers in the CSV exports, even if these week numbers were hidden in the MyTimetable web interface. This has now been fixed and the CSV export shows the same week numbers as the main interface. In some cases this will mean two columns of week numbers will be shown (timetable provider week numbers and ISO week numbers).
• Authorization based on the name of the API user — It is now possible to limit availability of certain timetable types to (specific) API users.
• Set user roles when accessing using the API and an elevated API token — This fixes issues where user-role restricted timetables were not available through the API.
• Disallow changes in non-removable subscriptions — Previously it was possible for users to change the student set or activity selection for automatically added (non-removable) subscriptions. Since these subscriptions are usually tailored to the user, it should not be possible to change these subscriptions.
• Allow excluding of named availabilities (terms) for a certain datasource — Thanks to Hogeschool van Amsterdam for this addition.
• Couple of help page improvements — Some outdated parts were removed and information on the Office 365 update interval was included.
• Fixes for student set selection in combination with jointly taught activities — Previously it was not possible to select student sets for JTA's.
• Improved UTF-8 support
• Option added to redirect SAML logouts to a specific URL — Using this setting, we can redirect users to an IdP-provided logout page, which ends the session, providing a better logout experience if SAML single logout is not available.
• Tablet users are now redirected to the mobile website — Our mobile website works better with tablets than the regular site. In the future we will be introducing a more responsive design, that scales well to all sizes. (2014-07-15)
• Removed the 'cache breaker' token for iPhone users — The cache breaker leads to duplicate subscriptions, and is not useful to iPhone users, since the iPhone offers the users an option to refresh the feeds. (2014-09-30)
• Subscription limit configurable per timetable type — The subscription limit introduced in version 2.5 has been further enhanced and can now be set per timetable type. The maximum number of module subscriptions has been increased to 35, and the maximum number of zone subscriptions has been decreased to 5. (2014-10-07)
• As usual, many small bug fixes and changes are included in this release. 102 47 issues were fixed in 126 97 commits.

Non-functional, technical and back-end changes

The following changes have been made to the MyTimetable backend and underlying software, and have no direct impact on MyTimetable functionality:

• Ensure user prefs exist when adding default subs
• Google Web Toolkit was upgraded to version 2.5.1 and the RPC mechanism was switched from the deprecated deRPC to GWT-RPC. This should lead to faster response times in up-to-date browsers (Chrome, Safari, recent Firefox version) since less data has to be transferred. For some older browsers, Internet Explorer 7 and 8 notably, this may lead to 'slow script' warnings. If you get these errors, try removing some timetables from your profile or try a different browserThe c3p0 connection pool was replaced by HikariCP. This introduces a new datasource configuration format, explained in /wiki/spaces/MYTT/pages/3100246014. We believe this change leads to fewer, faster and more stable database connections.
• Dependencies upgraded:
  • Spring MySQL connector (35.21.530)
  • Spring Mobile (1.1.0)

Removed and deprecated features

The following features from earlier MyTimetable versions have been deprecated, removed, or partially removed and are not supported anymore:

• The BBCourseLink.jsp page was removed. As far as we know, this page was not in use by our customers. The new URL parameters give plenty of options to link to MyTimetable, and in case a different scenario is still necessary we will happily assist you to create a solid URL-based integration with your other systems.
• Opera Presto (Opera 12 and before) support has been deprecated and will be removed in a future version. Currently, about 0.10% of our users use this browser. Since our front-end framework (Google Web Toolkit) is dropping support for Presto, we cannot support this browser in the future. Windows and Apple users are encouraged to upgrade to a newer Opera version, which uses the Blink rendering engine instead of Presto. Linux users, for which Opera 12 is the latest version available, will need to find another browser at the moment, although an Opera Blink Linux version is under developmentMemory usage of the application has been reduced. Per-request memory is now freed as early as possible, leading to better application scalability. (2014-10-07)

Removed and deprecated features

None.