Pearson Connexus Release Notes for Connections Academy Schools – Pearson Connexus Support

October 19, 2020

We fixed a bug that caused some words to be cut off at the top or bottom of some Student Log fields and menus.
We fixed a bug in the Student Log Quick List that caused long class names to be cut off.
We fixed a bug in the Student Log that caused long class names to be cut off in Class menus when users created manual log entries.

October 15, 2020

We enabled students to upload documents to CheckMyWork multiple times.

October 14, 2020

We adjusted the log-out behavior of MyPortal. Now, when users log out they are redirected to the familiar Pearson Connexus sign in page instead of the minimal sign-in interface (below).

October 13, 2020

We updated the Communication Tools tile in My Portal to route users to Outlook Web Access rather than the Communication Suite Application.

October 8, 2020

We fixed a bug that prevented users with the new corporate_counselor, corporate_admin_assistant, and corporate_spec_ed_director roles from accessing the Student Activity Tracker.

September 29, 2020

We fixed a bug that prevented active meeting rooms from displaying in the PCx Overview Tool for Tutors.

September 28, 2020

We fixed a bug that caused long category names to incorrectly display in the Category dropdown menu on the Log entry creation screen.
We decreased Polaris assessment score wait times after students submit assessments.

September 25, 2020

We added a National Clubs & Activities tile to MyPortal for students, Caretakers, and Learning Coaches, and we applied minor User Interface changes.

September 24, 2020

We enabled LiveTutor, a virtual tutoring service for students looking for additional help with their studies, and added a LiveTutor link to students' LiveLesson page.

September 21, 2020

We moved the Contextual Help Text section to the right on the Enrollment Document Sections page of the Enrollment Portal to improve the user experience.
We added a Username Check button to the Create your login screen to assist Caretakers with entering their username by identifying whether their selected username is available prior to submitting credentials when creating an account within the Pearson Connexus Enrollment Portal.
We fixed a bug that prevented teachers from reviewing quick check assessments of students who changed sections.

September 17, 2020

We added a domain setting that allows domains to hide the Insert YouTube video buttons in the rich-text editor, Clipboard, and Activity editors.
We made the User menu available to users while in an activity, including the About and Logout menu options for all users and the View as option for teachers and admins. 
We added a Course setting for Continuous enrollment courses that, when enabled, causes activities within a folder to have the same auto-generated due date.
We updated the Agenda screens to display the day of the week in addition to the Agenda calendar date to easily tell what day the agenda is for. 
We improved styling of multiple choice and multiple answer questions in the question editor.
We enabled the SIS Sync to automatically create an FTP folder when users open the SIS Sync screen in a domain that is configured for a sync. 
 We fixed a bug that caused users to be taking to Home when selecting the warning link rather than the prerequisite activity if the activity was set to open in a new window.
We fixed a bug that sometimes caused users to be taken to Home when selecting anchor tags in assessment templates.
We fixed a bug in the Objective-Set Tree screen in the admin app that prevented the Subject picker from populating the set's subjects.
We fixed a bug caused the browser to stop responding when users opened the Calendar after opening the rich-text-editor draw tool.
We fixed some alignment and highlighting styling issues in rubrics.
We fixed a bug that prevented a customer application name from displaying.
We fixed a bug that caused spacing between multiple choice labels and options to be deleted in assessments.
We fixed a bug in the Manage groups screen that prevented the display of groups with long names.
We fixed a bug that caused some embedded iframes in managed content to display with a width of 0, making the content appear invisible.
We fixed a bug in the Activity Editor that prevented Google docs from launching when playing an activity when users switched from an LTI activity to the Google doc.
We fixed a bug that prevented users from viewing some content.
We fixed a bug that caused users to be taken to the Home page rather than the prerequisite activity when selecting the warning link if the activity was set to open in a new window.

September 16, 2020

We fixed a bug that caused a "No Email Address Found" message to display next to user names in the Connexus Mail Active Directory for all users, not just those without email addresses in the system.

September 15, 2020

We fixed a bug that prevented some teachers from opening Connexus Mail.

September 14, 2020

We enhanced the Pearson Connexus Enrollment Portal Registration Page to ensure margins and fields are visible on all mobile devices.

September 12, 2020

We removed the Reply All button from student Connexus Mail when responding to a group email the teacher sent.

September 11, 2020

We fixed a bug that caused Time to Talk links for several courses to display for students enrolled in a single Time to Talk course.

September 8, 2020

243849

We removed the California Connections Academy logo from the Pearson Connexus login landing page. We also added a message for California Connections Academy users to log in to http://www.connexus.com.
244014

We added a message to MyPortal directing CalCA families to sign in at www.connexus.com.
240662

We fixed a bug that caused student classes to appear more than once in the course dropdown list for CheckMyWork.
237829

We enabled Partner School Tutors, Service Providers, and Shared Services teachers to see the same LiveLesson page in the LMS as Partner School Teachers.
237625

We improved keyboard tabbing in the main toolbar, Course home, and Activity player screens.
We enabled teachers to choose a Grading category for gradable tasks from the Clipboard. (You must define a gradable task, based upon completion status, and either define a whole-course task or select students from the same course before you can choose the grading category.)
We fixed a bug that prevented the spacebar from toggling to a custom, boolean metadata field in the admin app.
We fixed a bug that caused users to sometimes be taken to the Jump To toolbar if students selected the tab key while taking assessments.
We fixed a bug that caused course agendas to be deleted when switching from a course with an agenda to one without.
We fixed a bug that prevented activity instructions from displaying when activities contained no content.
We fixed a bug that prevented users from accessing the add or delete enrollment buttons in the toolbar from the teacher People > Manage enrollments screen.
We fixed a bug that prevented users from dragging images into emails.
We fixed a bug that prevented the Hide the ability for students to send mail setting in Domain settings from remaining selected.
We fixed a bug that sometimes prevented activities from being excused after students completed formative assessments.
We fixed a bug that prevented the Activity grader from properly displaying in full-screen mode using the Publish Anywhere tool.
We fixed a bug in the SIS Sync that caused domains to be inaccurately reported as created or updated when in the Validate-only mode.
We fixed a bug that sometimes caused the SIS Sync to crash when OneRoster CSV files contained no content.
We provided accurate accessibility labels for some icons and buttons that were inaccurately read by screen readers as Application.
We fixed a bug that caused users’ Course Notes to be deleted if they navigated away without saving.
We fixed a bug in the Gradebook that prevented content from displaying in tables for courses with empty grading tables.
We fixed a bug that allowed users to attempt to drop images onto the Create Task and Edit Journal Post screens in the student app, but would not load.
230835

We provided OBL staff with access to Learning Coach Central (LCC), adding a Learning Coach Central tile to their MyPortal page. Staff can use the LCC content to support schools and learners.

September 3, 2020

We temporarily removed inaccurate assessment submission dates from some assessments.
We fixed a bug that caused School and Staff members to receive an error message when logging out of the Salesforce Support Community rather than being taken to the Pearson Connexus log in page.
We added a popup window that displays a definition when users hover over a word in courses containing glossary terms.

September 1, 2020

We fixed a bug that prevented teachers from entering grades for manually graded assessment items.
We fixed a bug that prevented assessment submission score denominators and percentages in some courses from displaying when quick checks were submitted with all incorrect answers.

August 31, 2020

We added a feedback form to MyPortal.

August 28, 2020

We added course selections to the Student Information System (SIS) under the reporting > Course Request Table.

August 27, 2020

We fixed a bug that sometimes caused mismatched timestamps to display in student Log entries.
We fixed a bug in the Student Log that caused text in dropdown fields to be cut off.
We increased the character limit and added a character counter to the Student Log.

August 20, 2020

We fixed a bug that prevented users with the new Corporate Principal role from accessing the Student Log.
We fixed a bug that caused Report Card documents to erroneously display to Caretakers as verified after Corporate staff updated the documents as Invalid-Not Current School Year.
We added the question Has your student ever been enrolled at Connections Academy? and its correspondent field under the General Student Information section for all schools within the Pearson Connexus Enrollment Portal in the Salesforce Community Support for Corporate and School staff to identify if a student was previously enrolled in the Connections Academy school they are applying for, to communicate with the family if there were any concerns regarding their previous enrollment and to better assist families during enrollment.
We added warning text and a confirmation checkbox to the confirmation prompt when deleting domains, courses, and users.
We added a validation option to the SIS Sync screen for users to validate OneRoster .zip files before running the sync.
We improved tabbing navigation for assessment questions in the Grade editor.
We added the ability to hide the SIS Sync menu (with XML).
We fixed a bug that sometimes caused the SIS Sync to time out.  
We fixed a bug that allowed activities marked hidden from students to be visible when teachers viewed as a student.
We enabled the icon picker for choosing icons in domain settings to open below the field, to accommodate small screen sizes.
We fixed a bug in the Syllabus that caused folders dragged from My library into a Choice folder to duplicate activities in the folder.
We fixed a bug that sometimes prevented activity time from being recorded when users closed the browser without selecting the STOP button.  
We fixed a bug in the teacher course Gradebook that sometimes prevented the needs-grading icon from clearing when teachers quick-edited a score.
We removed an extraneous scrollbar in the dropbox comments editor. We improved Objective Mastery Gradebook styling to accommodate objectives with long IDs.
We added the ability to hide the LTI settings card in the user's Settings screen. 
We fixed a bug that caused the TextHelp menu to display on the Editor screen when teachers previewed an activity from the Editor and selected the TextHelp icon.
We fixed a bug that caused users to be taken to a blank, uneducable area of the screen rather than the dialog buttons when selecting Print from the student Gradebook.
We added a message to notify users attempting to load Final grades containing no data that there is no data to display.
We fixed a bug that prevented users from filtering students when printing assessments for Publish Anywhere.
We added hideSisSync=""true"" to the feature element in domains' application settings:

</settings>

August 19, 2020

We fixed a bug that caused LiveLesson sessions to crash.

August 13, 2020

We updated the categories and sub-categories in the Student Log to better align with the log entry categorization needs of our customers.
We retired the old Activity Player and its accompanying feature switch, so all students now use the new Activity Player.
We added a new Manage subscriptions permission to the Domain Permissions screen.
We enhanced the Admin app to remove leading and trailing white-space characters from External ID fields of all entities (e.g., domains, courses, users, objectives, and enrollments) when users edit them.
We retired the old Syllabus Editor and its accompanying feature switch, so course authors will only use the new Syllabus Editor.
We darkened the red color for below-passing scores, overdue assignments, and other alert text.
We enabled the Personal note-taking feature by default for all domains.
We enabled the Student blackout dates feature by default for all domains.
We added a You've been excused from this activity message next to the Submit button in the Activity Player > Submission card after students are excused, also adding score-status text such as Excused or Submitted next to the score.
We enabled the Submit my work button to display as Resubmit my work when students have already submitted the work.
We fixed a bug that prevented users from accessing toolbar buttons by tabbing with the keyboard when in List view.
We fixed a bug in the Edit SIS settings that prevented role pickers from displaying the role changes made in the current session without a manual refresh.
We fixed a bug that prevented the Enable browse button in the Activity Player from enabling browsing for Sharable Content Object (SCO) activities.
We enabled the Clipboard > Quick list to accommodate long list names.
We improved toolbar usability for the Send mail > Message editor.
We fixed a bug that caused missing scrollbars in the Resource Library Welcome Page and the Welcome Page editor.
We fixed a bug in the Activity Player that erroneously caused the Remove activity button to display for Caretakers and Learning Coaches.
We fixed a bug in blogs and journal activities that caused the New post button to erroneously display for Caretakers and Learning Coaches.
We fixed a bug that prevented Caretakers and Learning Coaches from navigating to announcement details from a student's activity stream.
We improved the activity layout for Digital library preview.
We fixed a bug that caused Course icons to overlap when course nicknames were too long.

August 7, 2020

We corrected Student Log entries that were erroneously logged with a July 1, 1900 date.
We fixed a bug that prevented teachers from saving Student Log entries containing course metadata.
We ensured students enrolled in courses with Time To Talk will see the Time to Talk link on their LiveLesson page.
We fixed a bug that prevented teachers and students from accessing LiveLesson links.
We fixed a bug that prevented the SIS tile from displaying for Learning Coaches.

August 5, 2020

We added an option in the header for users navigating with keyboards to Skip top navigation, which puts them in the body of the screen.
We removed the requirement for administrators to have Proxy or PostDomainAnnouncement rights to see the SIS Sync menu.
We improved accessibility in several places throughout the LMS.
We added the ability for domain administrators to import IMS OneRoster .zip files to automatically import and synchronize domains, courses, users, and enrollments from a Student Information System (SIS).
We fixed a bug in the SIS Sync screen that prevented the the OneRoster .zip file field from clearing when a sync starts.
We updated the Edit SIS Sync Settings screen to validate email addresses.
We fixed the display of warning messages in SIS Sync Status screen.
We fixed a bug in SIS Sync Status screen that caused the summary fields and download log link to display while the sync was running.
We fixed a bug that caused overdue activities to display as Up next on students' Course Home pages.
We fixed a bug that caused questions to display as answerable to teachers when they used the view practice question activities as a student feature.
We enabled overflow for long titles of long group names in the group filter text in the Activities toolbar.
We fixed a bug that prevented the Enter key from activating Course card toolbar buttons.
We fixed a bug that intermittently caused errors when rendering math questions.

August 4, 2020

We created a new field on the Student's Program Enrollment record within the Salesforce Support Community that enables corporate staff members to identify the Household's assigned Family Enrollment Counselor.
We implemented a double opt-in triggered for SMS messages to send to Caretakers who opt-in to SMS communications during their registration.

August 3, 2020

We fixed a bug in the Enrollment Portal that sometimes prevented families from adding students on the application process.
We fixed a bug in the Student Log that intermittently prevented users from creating and saving log entries.
We fixed a bug that prevented interactive content from displaying in some courses for users when using Firefox browsers.

July 30, 2020

We corrected a typographical error within the Add a Student section on the Pearson Connexus Enrollment Portal.
We fixed a bug that prevented Caretakers from reactivating student enrollments within the Pearson Connexus Enrollment Portal.
We fixed a bug that prevented documents from displaying in Document Central for Caretakers within the PCx Enrollment Portal when corporate staff members selected certain document statuses.
We updated the answer options for the question Please indicate your participation in this survey located in the Household Income Survey section for Caretakers during the application process within the Pearson Connexus Enrollment Portal. We replaced the value option "I choose not to provide my income information" with "I choose not to provide my income information and know this may impact the school’s Title I funding." This change was also made on the corresponding field within the Salesforce Support Community.

July 22, 2020

We enhanced the LiveLesson login process, allowing teachers and students to view their LiveLesson credentials and login instructions, and adding a Copy button that allows users to copy their credentials and paste them into the username field.

July 21, 2020

We enabled Pearson Connexus teachers and tutors to use the Overview tool to log participation grades in the Connexus V2 Gradebook.

July 15, 2020

Connexus Mail

The new Connexus Mail provides accessible, streamlined personal communication for students and teachers. Users will access Connexus Mail from the Communication Tools tile on the MyPortal Page. Connexus Mail includes the following features:

Works well from all mobile devices.
Sends and receives messages from current students and teachers.
Ability to send attachments with messages.
Enhanced message filing allowing users to mark messages important or archive them.
Ability to view sent messages.
Robust searching of messages based on words or attachments.

LiveLesson Enhancements

We added an Overview button to the LiveLesson page that provides teachers and tutors access to the Overview tool. They can use the Overview tool to view students in meetings and navigate to students' Gradebooks to enter participation grades.
We enabled teachers to use the Overview tool to go to students' Dashboards when selecting a student's name.
We enhanced the LiveLesson login process, allowing teachers and students to view their LiveLesson credentials and login instructions, and adding a Copy button that allows users to copy their credentials and paste them into the username field.

Enrollment Enhancements

We enhanced the student enrollment reactivation process by updating all placement-related fields within the student's record.
We enhanced the Student Required Documents Assignment process within the Enrollment System Portal. Now, Caretakers will see documents only within the school Document Submission open dates and within the proper stage of the application process. Before this enhancement, all school-required documents were shown upon student account creation, which did not comply with some Partner Schools' compliance requirements.
We updated the URL in the user welcome email to the new my.pearsonconnexus.com domain.

Assessment Enhancements

We added a Submitted column on the Assessment Results Manager that will display the date and time (in the user's local time) that the assessment was submitted.
We enabled teachers to view the amount of time each student spent taking an assessment when grading the assessment.
We displayed the total elapsed time on some assessments in Pearson Connexus for users who do not have scoring permission.

Customer Support Enhancements

The Customer Support Release includes new tools for Caretakers including the debut of Learning Coach Central, Chat, and various performance improvements.
Learning Coach Central provides a robust community of resources for Caretakers, allowing them to access focused Help documents, Webinars, and Connections Academy related social media.
Chat will provide Caretakers with access to support directly from their accounts. We also gave the Support Center a fresh look and feel for a more streamlined experience throughout the site.

July 13, 2020

We removed Khan Academy content from the Digital Library.
We enabled the Enter key to initiate searches in the Digital Library.
We added a Draw and Advanced image editing tool to the rich text editor.
We increased the Buzz user report max from 1,000 users to 10,000 for Admin app > Reports > User activity > Domain user activity > Filter the data > Maximum number of users.
We added a discussion board option allowing teachers to require students to post a message before they can view others’ posts.
We changed the title of the Domain Settings > LTI credentials card to Domain Settings > LTI 1.1 tools.  
We fixed a bug that prevented Choice folder settings from being retained when duplicating a folder in Editor > Syllabus.
We fixed a bug in the Editor that prevented current, highlighted activities from displaying when users returned to a filtered Activity list.
We improved usability of the upload image screen.
We fixed a bug that prevented cards on the Calendar > Blackout dates editor from adjusting to accommodate new dates without users refreshing.  
We added a missing tooltip to the Remove activity icon button in the Clipboard.
We fixed a bug in the Domain Settings that sometimes prevented the Add dialog box from opening when users selected the Add in the Scoring objectives card.
We fixed a bug that caused the filter bar to be cut off in the Editor > Activity list when the screen width was restricted.  
We enhanced the new Editor to remember previously set Activity list filters when returning from an edited activity.  
We added the following warning message when users change filename extensions when uploading course resource files: "If you change the file-name extension, the file may become unusable."
 We fixed a bug that sometimes prevented users from exporting course Gradebooks.
We fixed a bug that caused the Print dialog box to remain open after timed assessments' time expired.  
We fixed a bug in the Admin app that caused text to overlap in the Add objective dialog.
We added required-field validations to the Move enrollment and Move domain dialog boxes.
We fixed a typo in the Objective map list page.
We fixed a bug that sometimes caused a non-normalized URL to be sent to Google Analytics (e.g. /student/12345678/activity/abc123 instead of /student/:enrollmentid/activity/:itemid). 
We fixed a bug in the Editor > Syllabus that prevented users from using the Move To function to move activities into selected empty folders.
We fixed a bug in the Activity Gradebook that caused the settings screen to briefly display the previously visited screen when users edited HTML metadata.
We fixed a bug that prevented image tools from displaying in an Activity editor rich text editor when users switched from rich text editor full-screen mode.
We fixed a bug that prevented image tools from displaying in an Metadata card of the Activity editor for rich text metadata.
We fixed a bug that caused overlapping and misalignment of fields on the Landing page.
We fixed a bug that that prevented admins from editing Gradebook settings from the Student Gradebook > For Me screen.

July 10, 2020

We enabled the SIS's Instructional Modification Notes field for special population students to be available in the LMS for teachers and admins to review from the Instructional Education Program field in the Student Details page.
We added a View accommodations popup window to the LMS Student Performance Dashboard to display teachers' Individual Education Program notes.

July 9, 2020

We removed the message on MyPortal notifying users that some applications were temporarily unavailable.
We added a link to Pearson Connexus System Requirements in the footer of the Pearson Connexus Login Landing page, and we also made minor text changes.

July 8, 2020

We fixed a bug that caused incorrect affiliations between a small number of students and Caretakers migrated from Connexus, which enabled some Caretakers to view data for students other than their own.

July 1, 2020

We fixed a bug that prevented HTML text from correctly displaying in Web Design course test questions.
We updated the message under the Enrolled Student Tile within the Enrollment Portal from "An email will come soon with next steps for (student name)" to "We have sent an email with the next steps for (student name)."

June 30, 2020

We added a message to MyPortal notifying users that some applications (e.g., the Learning Management System and the Student Information System) are temporarily unavailable.

June 29, 2020

We fixed a bug in the New Enrollment System that intermittently prevented Caretakers from adding students during registration.

June 23, 2020

We added a Calendar tab to the Users screen of the admin app for viewing students' calendars.
We updated the various screens with filters to use outline styles around the filter box.
We added a search progress indicator when returning course enrollment results in the Editor > Viewing as feature, so teachers know when the results are complete.
We improved validation of range values for question variables in the Assessment editor.
We fixed a typo in the empty state message for the Domain > Roles screen.
We removed scrollbars that erroneously display in Editor dialogs accessed with Safari browsers.
We added the missing tooltip of the Remove button on the Student Reports screen.
We fixed a bug that caused objective links to display twice in the Student Objective Mastery screen.
We improved the filter bar on the Community resource library results page.
We added Choice activities to the Activity list tab of the Editor.
We increased the Metadata rich-text editor height to prevent the add link popup from being cut off.
We fixed a bug that prevented the "Please wait message while the file is uploaded" message from displaying when users added a file-attachment activity.
We fixed a bug that prevented users from previewing choice activities from the Activity Editor.
We fixed a bug that prevented Journal activities from displaying in the Syllabus Editor > Preview function.
We fixed a bug that prevented non-breaking spaces from correctly displaying in Math assessments.

June 16, 2020

Pearson Connexus 2.1 Goes LIVE!

We are pleased to announce the release of Pearson Connexus 2.1, which promises an optimal user experience for students, Caretakers, Learning Coaches, teachers, and school staff. Starting with a new login page containing clear tiles for users to select, Pearson Connexus 2.1 also introduces the following state-of-the-art features:

Pearson Connexus Education Management System

LiveLesson

Students in appropriate courses will have access to TimeToTalk buttons to join appropriate queues for that service.
Students can join queues for TimeToTalk. Queue managers can place students in the right room in the order in which they join.

Teacher Workflow

Teachers can assess student progress via People pages and drill down to compare/contrast progress across all courses.
Teachers can customize their course content by adding or removing modules inside of the Buzz editor app.
Student experience improvements on past-due activities and auto-assigned zeroes.
Added a gradebook search button.

Other student experience improvements on past-due activities and auto-assigned zeroes.

If a student receives an auto-assigned zero score for an activity whose due date is removed or extended the zero will be removed.
The student’s To-do List will display activities that have been allowed a retry or have been automatically assigned a zero for being past due, but the grace period has not expired
All gradable activities will now get displayed in the student’s To-do List.

Pearson Connexus New Enrollment System (NES)

The New Enrollment System (NES) is the first piece of Pearson Connexus, launched in March 2020 to support 2020-2021 school year enrollment. Created and built with the driving goal of supporting families’ journeys through the enrollment process, NES provides the following improvements on the traditional Connections Academy Enrollment Process:

Enrollment information can be completed in a “choose your own adventure” style, allowing users to provide information in the order that best suits them.
A new initial screening of basic student information is provided, allowing immediate notification to families if their student is not eligible for a selected school and grade level.

A new user authentication method better protects customer data in an online environment.
An in-site option to “snap” photographs of documents for immediate upload.

Support Teams can access case management, knowledge base articles, and an optimized user platform.

Student Information System

Our Student Information System, located in MyPortal, is a robust one-stop shop for:

Detailed Staff/Caretaker/Learning Coach/Student information:

Class Schedule
Attendance
Bio Information

Medical Information
Related Contacts
Incidents
Activities
Student/Household files

Specialty Tags

Course and Class information:

Course/Class Name
Grade Level
Terms

Assigned Teachers
Number of Students per Class
Class Tags

Streamlined Student Placement and Sectioning

Post-Enrollment Forms and Processes

Graduation Plans and Tracking
Templated and Customizable Reporting

Academic Eligibility
Class Roster
Graduation Tracking

Student School Attendance
Student Parent Information
Many more!
Report Cards
Transcripts

New Support Community

Our new Support Center provides full-service, wide-spectrum Help ranging from how to enroll in Connections Academy to specific role-based Help.

Online Help

Caretakers, Learning Coaches, Students, Teachers, and Staff can access a robust community of support content for Pearson Connexus.

A library of help articles sorted by intended audience, topic, and your specific school, and is searchable by key words.
Teachers and school staff can view the articles written for Caretakers, Learning Coaches or students to provide guidance on where to find helpful documentation.

Ticketing system provides on-demand assistance

When users cannot find what they need in the Help documentation, a new ticketing system allows Students, Caretakers, Learning Coaches, Teachers and School staff to submit tickets.
Users can communicate directly with the Support team to get the help they need.