MyTimetable 3.1 release notes

MyTimetable 3.1 contains some features that have been moved from 3.0, and some changes in the way data providers are handled, making it easier for customers to migrate to other timetabling products.

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

• Support for Semestry TermTime was added — MyTimetable now features support for Semestry TermTime. Not all features have been implemented yet, but we will work with Semestry's customers on adding as many features as necessary for a great user experience.
• Web Room Booking support in S+ provider — The Syllabus Plus provider now offers the possibility to show a user's web room bookings in the interface as a separate timetable (based on the username included in the web room booking).
• API: deduplicate activities by default — Previously activities returned from API requests would not be deduplicated (i.e., each activity always belonged to one subscription/timetable key). This has now been fixed. We do not anticipate any issues for existing API users as the data format has not been changed.
• API: /api/v0/databasedetails call added — This call allows to query the names of the available MyTimetable source databases.
• API: Custom location attributes added — The API is able to return additional attributes with a location, making it possible to show things like the location address in API consumers (e.g., mobile apps).
• API: parameter added to exclude resource timetables — The parameter excludeResourceTimetables was added to the /api/v0/timetable call. This allows API-clients to exclude any location/zone/equipment timetables, which is usually the expected behaviour for portal integrations.
• Mobile: synchronised subscriptions management — It is now possible to manage the list of subscriptions synchronised to external systems (e.g., iCal, Exchange) through the mobile interface.
• Excel export added — An export to Excel XLSX format was added, similarly to the CSV export. At the same time, the default separator for the CSV export was changed to a comma, as the semi-colon was only a workaround for Excel oddities.
• PDF font improvements — The PDF exports now use proper bold and oblique fonts.
• Admin: custom role assignments — The MyTimetable administrative interface now offers the option to define custom roles for users. This option has to be enabled separately, as it has to be included in the authentication flow which requires some configuration.
• Several URL parameters added — highlightConcurrency, ignoreConcurrencyWithinModule and term were added to the desktop website. See URL parameters for more information.
• 'Close browser' page added — A default 'Please close your browser' page was added (at /closeBrowser), which can be used when your SAML IdP does not support single logout.
• Information on last synchronisation added to iCal-feed — The details of the events in the iCalendar-feed show the date of generation of the iCalendar-feed, so a user can know whether or not the feed is up-to-date.
• Option to show department name added — A configuration option was added to show the department name with the activities.
• Option to show student set names in iCal event title added — A configuration option was added to show the names of student sets in the summary (title) of synchronised timetables (e.g., iCal, Exchange, O365, Google).
• Activity-highlight based on sections added — It is now possible to 'highlight' certain activities in the interface depending on S+ sections attached to these activities.
• Various bug-fixes — The month calendar was sometimes missing an event at the end of the month, and some location view exports incorrectly returned the regular timetable.
  
  

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:

• Many dataprovider specific configuration properties have been renamed. This allows us to publish timetables from different software products in the same MyTimetable instance.

• 'Orphaned' external calendaring synchronisations are now automatically cleaned up.
• SAML IdP metadata can now be read from a file instead of an URL.
• Custom roles are now properly supported when using Windows (Waffle) authentication.
• Various performance improvements were implemented, which should lead to less deadlocks in the user preferences database and overall faster request processing.
• Many dependencies were upgraded, the most important ones:

  • Spring (4.2.7)

  • Spring Integration (4.2.5)
  • Spring Security (3.2.9)
  • Commons Collection (3.2.2)
  • Jackson (2.7.5)
  • Active MQ (5.13.2)
  • Guava (19)
  • Joda Time (2.9.4)
  • Flyway (4.0.3)
  • HikariCP (2.4.7)
  • Logback (1.1.6)
  • Slf4j (1.7.21)
  • CXF (3.1.5)
  • Waffle (1.8.2)

Removed and deprecated features

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

• Support for Scientia RDB versions before 3.2.0 was dropped.