Apereo Open Academic Environment adds Folders and Federations

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Sept. 26, 2014 - PRLog -- Version 9 of the Apereo Open Academic Environment was released September 25th, improving usability for the university collaboration platform with the addition of folders. The much-requested feature is likely to lead to a further increase in institutions using the multi-tenanted OAE for learning, research and administration.

“Folders are a necessity for many uses,” said Josh Baron, Senior Academic Technology Officer at Marist College in New York state. “But they often are done wrong and cut off creativity and options for re-use. I’m glad the OAE has taken the time to work with users and get this right.”

Folders can be shared with other people and groups, and have their own permissions and metadata. A folder also its own thumbnail based on the items inside it. And folders will generate helpful notifications and emails.

In line with the OAE’s prized fluidity, items are never bound to a folder. So items in a folder can still be used, shared and discussed independently. And items can belong to multiple folders at the same time, opening the door for re-mixing and allowing interesting new folders to be created from existing folders and items.

This version of the OAE also extends its Shibboleth support to access management federations and brings improvements to activities, (email) notifications and the REST API documentation.

Support for access management federations can dramatically simplify the process for adding a new institution to a deployment of the OAE. It becomes possible to set up an OAE tenant with full Shibboleth Single Sign On integration in a matter of minutes.

http://www.oaeproject.org