SLK 1.8 is now officially released We’ve got customers who have been running on it for over a year so the earlier functionality is pretty stable. The beta was released in April, and I’ve fixed a couple of bugs since then, and one new piece of functionality – markdown syntax for urls.

Download from CodePlex.

SLK 1.8 is supported on SharePoint 2010 and 2013, both Foundation and Server. There’s install documentation in the release zip file, but other than that all documentation is on this blog:

https://blog.salamandersoft.co.uk/index.php/tag/1-8/.

In addition to a load of bug fixes, the main changes are:

• Turns urls into links in assignment descriptions.
• Markdown link syntax supported in SharePoint Learning Kit assignment descriptions
• Learner comments as well as instructor comments
• Instructor comments box expands on focus
• Show local time on lobby page
• File upload dynamic check boxes & option to include original file
• Unlimited number of submitted files – previously a limit of 5
• Can edit previously submitted files before submitting
• Site title only option in ALWP
• Option to Hide points when using grades
• IfEmpty column in ALWP
• Sticky sort in ALWP
• Open submitted files in OWA in same window
• Option to not email instructors on submission
• Added option to automatically check Email Learners box for new assignments
• New placeholders for returned emails
• Date Modifier Macros for ALWP
• Fix XSS vulnerabilities in ALWP
• ALWP to work in non-compatibility mode in IE
• Custom Properties for assignments
• Open Office documents in iPad Office Apps
• Office Mix & Sway support
• New build process for language packs
• Language Pack Release Any problems just report them on the CodePlex discussion page.

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I’ve now release SLK version 1.8 to a beta release. We’ve got customers who have been running on it for over a year so the earlier functionality is pretty stable, but I’ve added functionality in up until last week, so that will be less tested.

Download from CodePlex.

SLK 1.8 is supported on SharePoint 2010 and 2013, both Foundation and Server. There’s install documentation in the release zip file, but other than that all documentation is on this blog:

https://blog.salamandersoft.co.uk/index.php/tag/1-8/.

In addition to a load of bug fixes, the main changes are:

• Turns urls into links in assignment descriptions.
• Learner comments as well as instructor comments
• Instructor comments box expands on focus
• Show local time on lobby page
• File upload dynamic check boxes & option to include original file
• Unlimited number of submitted files – previously a limit of 5
• Can edit previously submitted files before submitting
• Site title only option in ALWP
• Option to Hide points when using grades
• IfEmpty column in ALWP
• Sticky sort in ALWP
• Open submitted files in OWA in same window
• Option to not email instructors on submission
• Added option to automatically check Email Learners box for new assignments
• New placeholders for returned emails
• Date Modifier Macros for ALWP
• Fix XSS vulnerabilities in ALWP
• ALWP to work in non-compatibility mode in IE
• Custom Properties for assignments
• Open Office documents in iPad Office Apps
• Office Mix & Sway support
• New build process for language packs
• Language Pack Release

Any problems just report them on the CodePlex discussion page.

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SLK 1.8 automatically turns urls in the assignment properties description field into hyperlinks. So if you create this assignment:

The when it is displayed to the learner, the url www.salamandersoft.co.uk will be turned into a link, giving

This is on by default and automatic, so no configuration is required.

It’s a fairly simple implementation using a regular expression to find the urls, so it won’t work in all cases. The urls which are supported start with:

• http://
• https://
• file://
• ftp://
• www.
• ftp.
• mix.office.
• sway.

and the rest of the url is validated as well.

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In version 1.8 I’ve added support for adding custom fields to an assignment, If you’ve ever felt the need to add more details for an assignment, you can now do it.

Here’s an example of an assignment with four extra properties:

This assignment has four custom properties:

• String Value: A simple one line of text.
• MultiString: A text value over multiple lines.
• Choice: A drop down list of values.
• Url: A url.

Here’s the student view of the same assignment:

Implementation

The implementation is based on storing the custom properties in a list on the site the assignment is assigned to. You configure the name of the list in the SLK settings, then SLK will look for a list of that name in the site. If it finds it, then it adds the columns in the default view as custom properties.

The name of the property is the name of the column and the columns types supported are:

• Single line of text
• Multiple lines of text
• Choice
• Hyperlink

These will be rendered as above, with the url type rendered as a url to the student. All other column types will be ignored, as will the Title property.

If there isn’t a list in the site with the configured title, then assignments for that site won’t have any custom properties. This allows you to have different custom properties for each site.

If the column is marked as required in the list, then the custom property will be required.

SLK will handle access to the list so you don’t need to give your users permissions to access it, in fact it’s probably preferable for them not to have access to it directly.

The ordering of the custom properties is controlled by the order of the columns in the view. So if I change the view to:

then the student view will be

and the instructor view will change similarly.

Setup

To set up and enable custom properties:

Download and install the latest version of SLK 1.8.

Set the name of the list which will hold the properties in SlkSettings.xml and update it in Central Administration. This is set in the CustomPropertyList attribute on the root Settings element.

 

Here it will look for a list called SLK in the assignment’s site.

Then create the lists in each of the sites where you want the assignments to have custom properties. Add a column to the list and default view for each custom property you want, and order the view to get the desired display order. Set required on any columns that you want to be required.

And that’s it, from now on the custom properties will be added to every assignment in those sites with appropriate lists.

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