I’ve just released version 1.17.0 of the CUNY Academic Commons. Version 1.17.0 is one of our twice-yearly “feature releases”, where we package major new and overhauled functionality, in addition to our normal twice-monthly bugfixes.

The major features included in this release are:

• A new Group Library tool. The Library tab consolidates what used to be the Files, Docs, and Papers tabs, so that you can find all documents associated with the group in a single place. The interface makes it easy to filter, sort, and search through everything that’s been uploaded to a group. And, with the introduction of the Library, we’ve introduced a new type of library item: External Links, which can be a link to Dropbox, Google Docs, or any other third-party URL. The Group Library is a custom tool, with a front-end UI based on the Vue.js JavaScript library, built by the Commons team. See https://github.com/cuny-academic-commons/cac-group-library.
• Site Cloning. When creating a Site or a Group+Site, users will have the option to clone their new site from an existing site of which they are the administrator. The clone process means that the new Site will have the same settings – theme, navigation menus, etc – as the source site. Administrator-owned content will be copied over, too. This new tool will make the site creation process easier for faculty who reteach a course across multiple semesters, or anyone who needs to spin up a new site based on an old one. The Site Cloning tool was developed by the CAC team especially for the Commons.
• Improved accessibility and keyboard navigation for the BuddyPress Group Email Subscription user settings UI.
• The ability to accept multiple group membership requests in a single click.
• Improved password strength tools during registration.

Read more about the 1.17.0 release in our official News Blog post, or by visiting the 1.17.0 milestone in our Redmine bug tracker.