April

See April 2020 release notes.

May:

SHOWCASE

Work by graduating students from the Class of 2020 are featured in a virtual showcase, using media uploaded to their Portal profile galleries. The new showcase is searchable by name and filterable by program and/or focus.

July

ACADEMIC CALENDAR REVAMP

The academic calendar page has a new design, making it easier to find important dates for the current year. Show/Hide buttons for each term have been added for a more flexible display.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Land Acknowledgement involves publicly recognizing and respecting those who have continuously lived upon this land since time immemorial. Portal is putting this into practice in the following ways:

• Portal now includes a version of CCA’s land acknowledgment statement on the site footer.
• Logged-in users now have the option to include a land acknowledgment statement when generating their CCA email signature.
  

ACADEMIC PROGRAM NAME CHANGES

We’ve implemented changes to reflect recent and upcoming program name changes. Program/subject filters in the directory, course schedule, and the events calendar are updated to reflect these changes.

Please note that some of these changes only take effect as of Fall 2021.

August

HOMEPAGE REVAMP

Portal’s home page has a new look! We’ve better aligned the design with other new features/pages in Portal. In addition to this general revamp, changes include the following:

• Upcoming Events - The events feed now features two tiles previewing the next two upcoming events. You can still get to the full events calendar from a link on the page.
• Featured Pages - Just below the Portal search bar you’ll now find a set of featured pages, highlighting new or relevant Portal content. These pages will change over time, so keep checking back!
• Gallery Spotlight - Profile gallery content from staff, faculty, and students now displays in a “Gallery Spotlight” on Portal’s home dashboard. The Gallery Spotlight changes daily, so keep checking it to see new and amazing content from the CCA community.

SECONDARY NAVIGATION MENUS

Get to where you’re going faster! We’ve added secondary navigation menus for a streamlined browsing experience.

Hover over any of Portal’s landing pages in the site header, such as “Thriving” or “Essentials.” The resulting menu lists all of the sections within that landing page. You can still browse landing pages as before by clicking the topmost menu item, such as “Browse Thriving.”

PORTAL SEARCH IMPROVEMENTS

We’ve updated our Portal search algorithm so that we’re surfacing better results for your search queries! Here are the highlights:

• Search indexes (accounts for) additional page data fields so that queries pick up more relevant results.
• We’ve retooled keyword weighting to improve page rankings in search. Portal search now evaluates a page's relevance to a particular keyword more meaningfully and in context with other pages that may also use that keyword.
• Certain page types receive a boost in search rankings to more accurately reflect their relevance (useful for important pages that contain fewer indexable fields).

VIRTUAL EVENTS

With all of CCA’s events happening virtually this year, we’ve made changes to the event page templates to better support remote offerings/listings:

• We’ve added new location categories for Virtual and Hybrid events, visible as additional filters for end-users browsing the events calendar.
• Physical location fields (like address) are not required for virtual events.
• Online platform details and even direct links to virtual events can now be added for both virtual and hybrid events.

HELP DESK CHAT ENABLED

Help Desk Chat is a new way for you to easily connect with CCA’s technology Help Desk. Access this new chat using the teal chat icon in the lower-right corner of technology-related pages on Portal (such as Help Desk, Tech Services, or Academic Technology).

October

APPOINTMENTS WIDGET

Portal now integrates with Workday’s student appointments feature. Students or staff with scheduled appointments will be able to see upcoming appointment details from a widget on the Portal dashboard (when logged in).

Please note that as of March 2021, the Workday appointments feature is not currently in use.

WAGTAIL 2.9 UPGRADE

We’ve upgraded Wagtail! In addition to some minor bug fixes, the upgrade protects Portal against potential security vulnerabilities and enables some new site configuration options. You may not notice a difference, but we thought you might like to know!

November

SHOWCASE (2.0)

In May, we rolled out a virtual showcase tool for CCA’s Class of 2020. We’ve expanded upon the original version in a few key areas:

• Eligibility to participate is now based on Workday graduation data.
• The showcase gallery is now separate from the Portal profile gallery.
  • This means that showcase images/media, narrative statement, name, and pronoun(s) (as they appear on a participant’s showcase page) can all be distinct from their Portal profile.
  • Upon initially creating their showcase page, participants have the one-time option to import images from their Portal profile gallery.
• Participants can now set any of their showcase images as their featured image (it no longer has to be the first image).
• Display of particular semester cohorts is controllable. This means:
  • Students can draft and even preview their showcase gallery before it goes live to the showcase itself.
  • The showcase can launch in phases (for example, showcase may launch at first for fall grads only, followed by spring and summer grads).
• Multiple showcase pages can exist at the same time, so the previous year’s showcase is still viewable when the next year’s showcase launches.

January

AUTOMATICALLY REDIRECT ALL PORTAL PAGES TO HTTPS

This change improves Portal security by ensuring encryption between client and server when a user attempts to access any page on the site. In short, this change helps keep you and our website safe!

February

ACADEMIC CALENDAR IMPROVEMENTS: IMPORTANT INFORMATION FIELD

We’ve enabled configurable text for the top of the academic calendar page to communicate important information over the course of the year.

"MY CLASSES" WIDGET FOR STAFF

The “My Classes” homepage widget has previously been visible only for logged-in students to see their upcoming class sessions. Staff who are registered in CCA courses can now see this widget when logged in as well.

March

LOGIN, PROFILE, + SITE INDEXING ENHANCEMENTS

We've implemented a number of changes to how we handle new, incoming, and private user data. We have also improved their overall user experience when logged in to Portal:

• Incoming staff, faculty, and students will be able to log in to Portal to access their course information and edit their Portal profile before the term starts.
• Incoming users continue to be excluded from the directory until after their start date.
• Incoming faculty names are visible in the course schedule, but without a profile link (until after their start date).
• When logged in, incoming faculty, staff, and students see special messaging related to the visibility of their directory information.
• Fixed an account activation issue preventing indexing of some new staff, faculty, and students in Portal directory and search.
• Students who have opted out of directory inclusion now have access to a version of their profile page when logged in.
  • This page contains messaging about managing privacy settings, but not other information or editable fields.
  • This page is only accessible by the student when they are logged in.

WAGTAIL EDITOR ICON MOVED

For those who edit technology-related Portal pages, we’ve now scooted the Wagtail editing icon up the page so it is no longer obscured by the Help Desk Chat icon!

SOCIAL MEDIA BUG FIX

Users can now add social media handles containing special characters to their Portal profiles. Previously, social media usernames containing certain special characters failed to authenticate upon save.

PORTAL COURSE SCHEDULE IMPROVEMENTS

We smashed some bugs and made some display tweaks to make Portal's course schedule more user-friendly:

• We fixed a bug affecting how course codes displayed for History of Art and Visual Culture and Critical Ethnic Studies sections. We also updated the course subject page links for both, which were also affected.
• We have made display improvements to account for mostly online/hybrid course delivery:
  • The Campus search filter now displays both Delivery Mode and Location, so users can search for offerings by how the course is being delivered and where any in-person component will take place (if there is one).
  • We've also improved display of delivery mode, location, and meeting time information across the course schedule.

NEW ACADEMIC CALENDAR TEMPLATE

We’ve introduced an improved design for the academic calendar, including the following changes:

• Calendar periods and dates are now fully customizable, no longer dependent on Workday Academic Period dates, which didn’t capture the nuance needed for academic calendar events.
• Floating “Jump to” links for each period in the calendar, so users can find the dates they need more quickly.
• Multiple calendar pages can now exist simultaneously. This means users will have access to upcoming and even archived calendars (when available).

GALLERY SEARCH

Users can now filter by “Has gallery images” in the People directory, so you can more easily find CCA community members who have added gallery content.

GALLERY SPOTLIGHT BUG FIX

Users can now use the “Featured Image” functionality to dictate the gallery image to include in the Gallery Spotlight on the Portal dashboard.

CARD TEXT CHARACTER COUNTER BUG FIX

The character counter on Portal pages' card text field is now accurate, regardless of whether styling (such as bolded text or the inclusion of links), has been applied. Use those 175 characters wisely!