What's New - Overview

Previous Version

This is a previous version of the Ed-Fi Dashboards. Visit the Ed-Fi Tech Docs home page for a link to the current version, or the Ed-Fi Technology Version Index for links to all versions.

This section provides a summary overview of the major improvements, updates, enhancements, fixes, and changes made in v1.4. The Release Notes section of this documentation has a complete list of changes.

New Dashboard Features

A few new features were added to the latest version of the Ed-Fi Dashboards. This section provides a summary of the enhancements.

Dashboard Usage Module

The latest release of the Ed-Fi Dashboards includes a Dashboard Usage Module built with the Dashboards Plugin Architecture. The Usage Module allows users at all levels of an education organization to view meaningful reports about how the dashboards are being used, and by whom. A view of the interface follows:

See the Dashboard Usage Module technical article for feature and implementation details.

Enhancements to the Plugin Architecture

The Plugin Architecture of the Ed-Fi Dashboards was enhanced in v1.4. Improvements were made to reduce the amount of work implementers are required to do when updating to new versions of the dashboard. Several bug fixes were incorporated to increase reliability and improve performance. A summary of the enhancements follows.

Enhancement	Description
Action Filters	Enables the creation of a Plugin Context class that can be populated on each request and shared by all modules in the plugin.
EdFiControllerFactory Area Registration	Makes both non-Area and Area controllers available when an Area-based request is made, as well as ordering the plugin, apps, and core controllers correctly.
Embedded Image Provider	Makes images embedded in the plugin available at the URL @Url.Content("~/PluginContent/Your.Plugin.Name/Images/your-image.png").
Embedded Resource Provider	Supports plugins' ability to include scripts and style sheets as embedded resources. The embedded style sheets and scripts will be automatically included in the site layout page.
Metric Template	Allows plugins to create new, and override existing, metric templates.
Multiple Security Hierarchies	Allows plugins to create alternate security hierarchies.
Plugin Area Registration	Allows plugins to create new ASP.NET MVC Areas.
Plugin Configuration-Specific Registration	Allows the plugin to provide configuration-specific IOC registration installers (e.g., for Debug, Release).
Plugin Extensions	Allows plugins to have extension assemblies in the same way that Core Dashboard Assemblies may be extended.
Plugin Security	Enables plugins to create their own Claim types, and use them to authorize Service calls.
Registration Assembly Scanning	Enables plugins to register Domain Metric Controllers.
RTF Result	Allows plugins to export data in Rich Text Format.
User Entry Providers	Enables custom Home Pages for particular user types to be defined in a plugin.

See the Plugin Architecture - v1.4 Enhancements (Code Snippets) documentation for more details.

Technical Improvements and Enhancements

In addition to the new dashboard features listed above, the latest version of the Ed-Fi Dashboard distribution includes a number of technical enhancements, including:

Fixing a bug that prevented Export All functionality from working properly at the district/LEA level (DASH-914).
Adding the ability for developers to extend the previous/next button for lists other than students, teachers, and schools (DASH-712).
Refactoring to support the ability for developers to extend the LevelCrumb service in accordance with SOLID design principles (DASH-700).