Log Message:
Update to 3.8

Upstream changes:
Moodle 3.8 release notes

Releases > Moodle 3.8 release notes

Release date: 18 November 2019

Here is the full list of fixed issues in 3.8.

If you are upgrading from a previous version, please see Upgrading in the user docs.
Contents

    1 Server requirements
        1.1 Database requirements
    2 Client requirements
        2.1 Browser support
    3 Major features
        3.1 Analytics
        3.2 H5P integration
        3.3 Forum summary report
        3.4 Forum export
        3.5 Forum grading
        3.6 Forum UI improvements
        3.7 Assignment
        3.8 Question bank
        3.9 Course relative dates (experimental)
        3.10 Course overview
        3.11 Emojis
        3.12 Usability improvements
    4 Other highlights
        4.1 Functional changes
        4.2 For administrators
    5 For developers
        5.1 Web services additions and updates
        5.2 Component API upgrades
    6 See also

Server requirements

These are just the minimum supported versions. We recommend keeping all of your \ 
software and operating systems up-to-date.

    Moodle upgrade: Moodle 3.2 or later
    PHP version: minimum PHP 7.1.0 Note: minimum PHP version has increased since \ 
Moodle 3.6. PHP 7.2.x and 7.3.x are supported too. PHP 7.x could have some \ 
engine limitations.
    PHP extension intl is required since Moodle 3.4 (it was recommended in 2.0 \ 
onwards)

Database requirements

Moodle supports the following database servers. Again, version numbers are just \ 
the minimum supported version. We recommend running the latest stable version of \ 
any software.
Database 	Minimum version 	Recommended
PostgreSQL 	9.4 	Latest
MySQL 	5.6 	Latest
MariaDB 	5.5.31 	Latest
Microsoft SQL Server 	2012 (increased since Moodle 3.7) 	Latest
Oracle Database 	11.2 	Latest
Client requirements
Browser support

Moodle is compatible with any standards compliant web browser. We regularly test \ 
Moodle with the following browsers:

Desktop:

    Chrome
    Firefox
    Safari
    Edge
    Internet Explorer

Mobile:

    MobileSafari
    Google Chrome

For the best experience and optimum security, we recommend that you keep your \ 
browser up to date.

Note: Legacy browsers with known compatibility issues with Moodle 3.8:

    Internet Explorer 10 and below
    Safari 7 and below

Major features
Analytics

    MDL-64739 - Analytics models may be restricted to category or course contexts
    MDL-65588 - Insights about students who have not logged in recently
    MDL-65562 - Report on the actions executed by users on predictions
    MDL-65633 - Allow targets to limit the analysis interval to a specific \ 
interface or parent class.
    MDL-66234 - Extra garbage collection for analytics
    MDL-66254 - Require enrolments to be active for most of the analysis interval
    MDL-62191 - Add bulk actions for analytics' insights
    MDL-66536 - Insight notifications improvements
    MDL-60949 - Analytics models should be sorted by name and not last modified
    MDL-66004 - Allow the Python machine learning backend to run from a separate \ 
server
    MDL-58992 - Add multi-class capabilities to prediction processors
    MDL-65585 - Global on/off switch for analytics

H5P integration

    MDL-66388 - Create a new button in Atto to add H5P content in anywhere from \ 
hp5.com and h5p.org external URLs
    MDL-66398 - Improve H5P filter to allow internal H5P content URLs
    MDL-66593 - Implement backup and restore process for H5P content
    MDL-67059 - Add Admin UI to manually upload H5P content-type libraries
    MDL-67057 - Create a capability to update H5P content-type libraries
    MDL-67058 - Create a task to install H5P content-type libraries
    MDL-66609 - Create the basic skeleton, library and interfaces for rendering \ 
H5P content
    MDL-66399 - Improve H5P Atto button to upload content
    MDL-66397 - Create a new filter to convert h5p.com and h5p.org URLs to embed code

Forum summary report

    MDL-66153 - Forum report: Basic skeleton
    MDL-66298 - Forum summary report option to message selected users
    MDL-66268 - Groups filter in forum summary report
    MDL-66373 - Dates filter in forum summary report
    MDL-66297 - Link forum summary report to export of each user's post content
    MDL-66694 - Add columns for word count and character count to the forum \ 
summary report
    MDL-66768 - Add the ability to download the forum summary report

Forum export

    MDL-66075 - Forum export functionality
    MDL-66631 - Dates filter in forum export
    MDL-66808 - Forum export options for human-readable dates and removing HTML

Forum grading

    MDL-66074 - Create forum grading interface
    MDL-66358 - Display grading form in the grading panel
    MDL-66365 - Add a button to display the entire discussion for a post being graded
    MDL-67116 - Make 'require grade' an activity completion criterion for the forum
    MDL-66381 - Forum grading user search
    MDL-66360 - Forum grading option to send notification to student
    MDL-66906 - Forum view grades option for students
    MDL-66359 - Support restricting the user list to a specific group

Forum UI improvements

    MDL-66477 - Create settings side drawer for new discussion view
    MDL-64821 - Create new discussion view for forum
    MDL-66481 - Update display of discussion in discussion list table
    MDL-65129 - Search starred discussions only option in forum advanced search

Assignment

    MDL-63349 - Assignment: Annotate PDF - Rotate submitted image automatically
    MDL-66537 - Annotate PDF - Right-to-left UI - The rotate buttons order is \ 
confusing
    MDL-63878 - Enable the saving and printing of annotated PDFs from previous \ 
attempts
    MDL-64811 - Assignment: Add warning about students falling into Default \ 
group if group submissions are enabled but not required
    MDL-65797 - Performance improvements for user / group overrides for mod assign

Question bank

    MDL-66553 - Display ID number and tags in the question bank UI
    MDL-66816 - Question bank: replace the row of edit icons with an Edit menu
    MDL-67153 - Allow question types to add extra actions to the Question bank \ 
edit menu

Course relative dates (experimental)

    MDL-66147 - Assignment due date relative to the student course start date
    MDL-66144 - Weeks format relative dates
    MDL-66143 - Course relative dates mode setting
    MDL-66148 - Option to override the assignment due date in a relative dates course

Course overview

    MDL-64901 - block_myoverview: Add admin setting to control the available layouts
    MDL-66016 - An admin can set which filters are available for users to select \ 
in their Dashboard course overview
    MDL-66017 - An admin can specify a course custom field as a filter for users \ 
to select in their Dashboard course overview
    MDL-63612 - Course card pattern colours may be specified by an admin
    MDL-65621 - Courses with course visibility set to hide should be labelled \ 
'Hidden from students' in the course overview
    MDL-64860 - block_myoverview: Improve pagination widget
    MDL-64094 - Change 'Hidden' to 'Removed from view' in the course overview

Emojis

    MDL-65896 - Add emojis to messaging
    MDL-46779 - Atto should support full emoji

Usability improvements

    MDL-34498 - Session Timeout alert
    MDL-61043 - Provide a more consistent and better way of selecting and \ 
deselecting all items in a list
    MDL-48610 - Show alphabet filter in grader report even when there are less \ 
than 100 users
    MDL-38555 - Forms do not prevent same data submission multiple times
    MDL-59639 - Browser back button should work as expected in the \ 
administration menu with Boost theme
    MDL-57208 - Let users set their default homepage
    MDL-66178 - Participants list - Filter users with no roles
    MDL-65671 - Calendar view selector enables users to switch between month, \ 
day and upcoming events
    MDL-66563 - Improve drag and drop question accessibility in high-contrast mode
    MDL-64032 - The UI for setting enrolment end date/duration should be consistent
    MDL-65406 - Boost Theme accessibility: Nav drawer should be marked up as list
    MDL-65915 - Better progress display while re-grading quiz attempts
    MDL-67048 - Drag and drop upload progressbar invert inner and outer

Other highlights
Functional changes

    MDL-64745 - Administrative setting to show/not show "hide" feature \ 
in online users block
    MDL-62835 - The description should be displayed when viewing a Book, Lesson \ 
or IMS content package
    MDL-66496 - Option to include author information when importing entries into \ 
a database activity
    MDL-66740 - Make "course request" capability category context \ 
instead of system context
    MDL-65093 - Users should be informed that they can't block a user who has \ 
permission to message all users
    MDL-64002 - Add send message buffering
    MDL-66226 - Show plain text in Messages summary pane
    MDL-61649 - Several core emails provide only text format
    MDL-35773 - Include files option in backup settings
    MDL-63453 - VideoJS upgrade to 7.6.5 including HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) and \ 
Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH) support
    MDL-56549 - Add support for FLAC files
    MDL-62836 - Make awarding badges groups/groupings compliant
    MDL-60916 - Global Search: Replace course search form with global search
    MDL-64438 - Display course category in course related block
    MDL-66326 - Global search: Delete from search index when courses are deleted
    MDL-65183 - block_timeline can cause JSON parse error on dashboard when \ 
activities are saved with newline characters
    MDL-66612 - Calendar course event icon is different from course icon
    MDL-66775 - Add new Mobile setting for forcing a minimum app version to \ 
access the site
    MDL-66375 - Option to disable the "Forgotten password" feature in \ 
the app
    MDL-66753 - The People block is no longer needed and should be removed from core

For administrators

    MDL-66034 - Log role changes in more detail
    MDL-66570 - Allow disabling of cron output when capturing logs
    MDL-61804 - Let the admin control if lists of courses should be pre-sorted \ 
by visibility or not
    MDL-66133 - Let the administrator configure which user filters are shown by \ 
default
    MDL-63643 - Add ability to search/filter users by Last IP Address
    MDL-66119 - Disable GUI plugin uninstalls (eg $CFG->uninstallclionly \ 
similar to $CFG->disableupdateautodeploy)
    MDL-65201 - Automated backup course ordering
    MDL-65404 - Add column for enrol start dates to Upload users CSV
    MDL-40669 - Upload users via text file should include the optional user \ 
field 'disable notifications'
    MDL-66705 - Add an example csv file for bulk uploading of users
    MDL-59470 - Option to duplicate a user tour
    MDL-65622 - Add a new event when a grade item has been created
    MDL-65369 - Include changed course settings in course_updated event
    MDL-65492 - Cache admin UI: make it easy re-purge the cache you just purged
    MDL-63127 - Redis Cache: implement compression
    MDL-66428 - Allow Redis cache to use PHP extension Zstd
    MDL-46317 - Private files space setting should use MB not Bytes
    MDL-7339 - Change 'Open to Google' setting to 'Open to search engines'
    MDL-65208 - Add cli upgrade option to test if an upgrade is required
    MDL-58439 - Admin pages login as guest and then throw Access denied error \ 
(should prompt for login) require_admin()

For developers

    MDL-66675 - New $CFG->behat_pause_on_fail option added
    MDL-46267 - The $CFG->httpswwwroot was removed
    MDL-66335 - New steps to navigate straight to any plugin web page. Plugins \ 
must implement their own resolver between page types and URLs.
    MDL-65349 - Profiling included and excluded URLs now are matched from start. \ 
Some adjustments may be needed.
    MDL-66633 - Quiz: quiz attempt API should let you create an attempt for a \ 
different user
    MDL-66709 - Components other than activity modules should be able to backup \ 
and restore question attempt data
    MDL-66754 - Question engine: report methods should not require a list of slots
    MDL-62497 - Add a new transpilation tool for ES6
    MDL-50346 - Remove the restriction to forbid subdirectories in the templates \ 
directory
    MDL-66327 - $DB->get_records uses a lot of Peak RAM (with Postgres)
    MDL-66173 - Add hooks to extend all forms with /login/
    MDL-66367 - Caching of templates should use a new templaterev variable
    MDL-66304 - Allow support for xsendfile in alternative_file_system_class \ 
independently of local files
    MDL-66166 - Improve the moodlebot user agent and expose a function for \ 
plugins to use
    MDL-65646 - Move dependencies and subplugins to JSON
    MDL-55751 - Remove the CSS chunker from Moodle
    MDL-65438 - Allow themes to alter the core css url's
    MDL-65747 - Removed unused Pear_Crypt_CHAP library

Web services additions and updates

    MDL-65794 - Make some web service calls idempotent over http GET
    MDL-67043 - Web service to enable H5P offline access in the Moodle app
    MDL-64254 - New Web Services for updating a forum post (or a discussion \ 
topic post)
    MDL-65017 - New web service to delete forum posts
    MDL-64588 - New web services for adding and deleting comments
    MDL-66376 - Enforce app security by using tokenpluginfile.php instead \ 
webservice/pluginfile.php
    MDL-65400 - Blocks Web Services (for course and dashboard) should return the \ 
block settings

Component API upgrades

    admin/upgrade.txt
    analytics/upgrade.txt
    blocks/recentlyaccessedcourses/upgrade.txt
    blocks/starredcourses/upgrade.txt
    blocks/upgrade.txt
    cache/upgrade.txt
    calendar/upgrade.txt
    comment/upgrade.txt
    course/format/upgrade.txt
    course/upgrade.txt
    customfield/field/upgrade.txt
    enrol/ldap/upgrade.txt
    enrol/upgrade.txt
    lib/mlbackend/php/upgrade.txt
    lib/mlbackend/python/upgrade.txt
    lib/upgrade.txt
    media/upgrade.txt
    message/upgrade.txt
    mod/assign/upgrade.txt
    mod/book/upgrade.txt
    mod/feedback/upgrade.txt
    mod/forum/upgrade.txt
    mod/glossary/upgrade.txt
    mod/lti/upgrade.txt
    mod/quiz/report/upgrade.txt
    mod/upgrade.txt
    mod/wiki/upgrade.txt
    mod/workshop/upgrade.txt
    question/type/upgrade.txt
    question/upgrade.txt
    search/upgrade.txt
    theme/upgrade.txt
    webservice/upgrade.txt