Page Comparison

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A lot of the changes in MyTimetable 2.5 involve '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!).

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

• Merge support
• Deduplicate events
• Hostkey info to API
• Subscriptionkey in API
• Staff merging avoid concurrency
• Subscription limit removed, limit on concurrency enabled subscriptions added (25 default)
• View location/zone timetables in mobile interface when logged in
• Highlight events using a tag
• Location group support
• Timetable filters remember last value
• Select/deselect/remove all per subscription group
• ActivityDepartment timetable filter
• Show details dialog on click in day/week calendar
• Configurable time slot height
• Limiting of student sets and sections in list calendars (5 default)
• Limiting number of staff members and locations in list calendars also detauls to 5
• Show personal timetable also works in List by location and Availability views
• Cache breaking token iCal feed
• Configurable data source range
• Hostkey link mobile: URL parameters

• 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.

• 'Noindex' of exports — An X-Robots-Tag and robots.txt was added to prevent search engine bots from indexing the PDF exports. (2014-05-08)
• SAML authentication memory usage fixes — By flipping a couple of switches, we managed to decrease memory usage for SAML sessions by 90%. Previously MyTimetable would hit session memory limits after ~5000 concurrent logins. (2014-05-13)
• Moduleviewer error page improvements — The group label is now shown if a timetable has not yet been scheduled, and the error header better reflects the message (2014-07-07)
• As usual, many small bug fixes and changes are included in this release. 193 issues were fixed in 258 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
• GWT 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 browser.
• Dependencies upgraded:
  • Spring (3.2.5)
  • 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.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 development.