Publishing a podcast using the News Manager

EKP 5.6 provides RSS feeds both for public news on the login page and for personalized news on a learner's home page. (Note: RSS feeds are available only if your license includes API access.)

In EKP 5.6.0.129 we have added support for RSS enclosures. Roughly speaking, RSS enclosures serve the same purpose as email attachments—they make is possible to attach a file of arbitrary type to a text message. Probably the most interesting consequence of this change is that it's now possible to use the News Manager to publish a podcast. Here's how.

1. Record a podcast episode, edit it as necessary, and save as an appropriate media file (audio or video). There are many tools available for recording, editing and encoding media files. For audio, we suggest Audacity for recording and editing, with the LAME MP3 encoder to generate MP3 files.

2. Upload your media file to the Repository Manager.

   

3. Create a news article in the News Manager. For the File Attachment URL field, select the media file you uploaded in the previous step. Make sure the article is targeted to the appropriate audience, and publish as usual.

   

4. A listener/viewer can subscribe to an appropriate RSS feed using a “podcatcher” such as Apple's iTunes. The podcatcher will download new podcast episodes as they are made available. The episodes can then be played offline, and can also be synchronized to devices such as portable MP3 players and phones.

   

The API Explorer

EKP provides an application programming interface (API) that enables other applications and Web sites to interact with EKP—for example, to create user accounts and enrollments, and to obtain information about courses, catalogs, enrollments and training records.

We've always provided API documentation as part of the EKP distribution. However, in working with software developers, we've identified a couple of ways in which the documentation could be improved.

Firstly, the API changes between releases as new API functions are added. This means it's important to work with the correct version of the documentation for the EKP version you're developing for. However, keeping track of different document versions is a hassle.

Secondly, most developers learn more easily if they are able to call API functions interactively and generate actual responses, rather than simply reading dry documentation. However, calling API functions generally involves writing code.

With these points in mind, in EKP 5.6 we introduced the API Explorer. The API Explorer serves two purposes: it is both an online reference for the API functions, and a tool that enables developers to learn about the API by calling its functions interactively.

The API Explorer lists the API functions available. For each function, it provides information about how to invoke the function, including the URL and the expected HTTP method, parameters and authentication scheme. Where possible, it provides one or more HTML forms that can be used to call the API function directly from the browser. (Note: some API functions cannot be invoked from a browser.)

The API Explorer can be accessed by appending api/ to the base URL of your EKP site. For example, if your site is located at http://www.example.com/ekp/, then the API Explorer for the site can be accessed at http://www.example.com/ekp/api/. At the time of writing, an instance of the API Explorer is available at http://utest2.netdimensions.com/utest/api/.

Note: If you do not see the API Explorer at the expected URL, your Web server (e.g. Apache or IIS) might not be forwarding the requests to Tomcat. In the case of Apache, you can fix this by adding a directive like the one below to httpd.conf.

JkMount /ekp/api/* ajp13

Publishing a new course revision to learners who have already completed an earlier revision

EKP 5.5 introduced the ability to create new revisions of existing courses. This simplified the process of updating an existing course, and made it possible to keep track of which version of a course a learner was taking or had completed.

When you created a new revision of a course, EKP would automatically make the new revision available to learners who were enrolled in, but had not yet started, an earlier revision. EKP also provided the option to make the new revision available to learners who had already started, but had not yet completed, an earlier revision.

Since we released support for course revisions, several of you have told us that you also needed to be able to make new revisions automatically available to users who had already taken and completed an earlier revision of the course, so that those learners would see the latest content if they reviewed the completed course. So, as of EKP 5.6.0.122, there is a third option when creating a new course revision, which publishes the new revision to all learners, including those who have already completed an earlier revision.

We hope this makes course revisions in EKP even more useful.