Canvas Public Syllabus Search - You can now index and search for publicly available Canvas syllabi using a custom link for your institution. When a search is executed, a list of matching syllabi will be displayed, including each syllabus's semester, course name, title, and a snippet containing the search terms. Clicking on the syllabus title opens it in a new browser tab within Canvas.
Brightspace role configuration in the admin settings - Admins can now manage LMS role permissions directly within the search tool settings. The admin settings include text fields to customize roles for admin, instructor, and student users, with default values pre-populated for convenience.

Bug Fixes

Improved Download for Large Find and Replace Results - Previously, large data sets (500,000+ entries) in Find and Replace search results could not be downloaded due to size limitations. We have increased the limit and reworked the import process to ensure that these files can now be downloaded successfully.

Version 24.10

Production - October 1, 2024

Features

Non-course org search in Brightspace - We’ve added the ability to search non-course organization content. This functionality is available by default when accessing search through an organization's homepage. However, content at the organization level will not be indexed automatically.

To begin indexing non-course org content:

Navigate to the search feature on the organization's homepage.
Run a search, and click on the "Include this org" button in the banner that appears on the search results page.

In search results, if the content is from a non-course org, the org type will be displayed in parentheses before the org name. By default, searches will return results only from courses in the selected org, but you can change the search scope to "My Orgs" to include all organizations.

CSV Download of All Matches Before Replacement - You can now download a CSV containing all matches before performing a Find and Replace operation. After running a Find and Replace search, you'll find a button to download the results on the right-hand side, above the list of matches. Clicking the button triggers the download, which may display a loader briefly. The generated CSV file will contain all matches, except those that have been rejected.
Open Search results in a new tab in Brightspace and Blackboard - Clicking on a search result in Brightspace or Blackboard now opens the result in a new browser tab.
Include Find and Replace Expressions in History Download - We've added a replacement preview to the CSV download when performing a Find and Replace with regular expressions. Each match now has its own row in the CSV, along with the corresponding replacement expression.
Index unreferenced Brightspace files for Teacher Search - Files in Brightspace can have different URLs depending on whether they are accessed from the Manage Files UI or referenced as a topic. Both URLs are now stored, and when a file is referenced, the link in the search results will direct students to the topic version. Files that are uploaded but not linked in the Table of Contents (TOC) are tagged as "unlinked" in search results. You can also search and match text content within unlinked files, such as HTML and PDF documents.

Version 24.09

This month’s release focused on security patches, system updates, backend enhancements, and performance improvements.

Production - September 3, 2024

Features

Add publish status to search results CSV - A new column has been added to the search results CSV, indicating the published status of each result.
Validate regular expressions in Find and Replace - We now validate regular expressions during the Find operation and display an error for any invalid input.

Version 24.08

Production - August 6, 2024

Features

Support using find and replace on item titles - You can now find and replace content in your item titles for all supported content types.
Undo changes from the find and replace history - You can revert a past replace in the history view by clicking the undo button to revert changes. Reverted actions will update to say the changes were reverted in the status column of the history view.

Add warnings and messaging to the find and replace workflow - Improved messaging has been implemented to enhance the user experience of the find and replace workflow. Additionally, warnings have been added for certain actions.

Add updated styles to the admin settings page - We have updated the styles of the admin settings menu to reflect our current designs.

Add find and replace page access to the search results screen - We have added a link above search results in the search results page to access the find and replace page for easier navigation.

Install using LTI dynamic registration in Canvas - We have added support for installing Atomic Search using LTI dynamic registration in Canvas. To learn more, please see our installation guide.

Bug Fixes

Fix history view in Brightspace - This release resolves an issue with the find and replace history view failing to launch in Brightspace accounts.

Version 24.07

Production - July 2, 2024

Features

Additional content types for Find & Replace in Canvas - Additional support has been added to find and replace HTML within Quizzes, Quiz Questions, Assignments, Discussions, and Announcements
Find & Replace for Brightspace—Use Find and Replace to search and edit HTML content in your Brightspace courses in bulk using the Atomic Search course index. Note that Find and Replace is off by default for instructors and on by default for Admins. To enable this feature for instructors, please file a support ticket.
- To use Find and Replace, click the new Find and Replace option on the search landing page. Users must authorize Brightspace before using the new feature.
- Enter your search criteria and desired replacement text in the corresponding fields.
- Preview and remove search results before initiating a bulk replacement. Click 'Replace All' to replace multiple items simultaneously.
- For individual item replacements, hover over the item in the results list and click 'Replace.' You can undo changes if needed.
In Brightspace, flag and do not display the keywords in context to students for items that have release conditions - Items with release conditions will not display the keyword in context search results to students if the release conditions have not been met. Additionally, these items will be flagged and labeled ‘Has release conditions' to indicate that to the student.
In Brightspace, do not display inactive course search results to students. This release restricts students from searching only active courses.
Add an app version number and LTI type in the settings for Search - Added the app version number and LTI type installed under the Admin Settings.
In Brightspace, restrict students from searching for topics that are hidden in a Module or sub-module - Restrict students from seeing Topic search results for Modules that have a status of 'Hidden' and topics that have a status of 'Visible'.

Version 24.06

Production Release: June 7th, 2024

Features

Account Level Find and Replace — Added the ability to use Find and Replace functionality across multiple courses by launching it from a Canvas account. It works the same way that it does when using it in a course.
Find and Replace History — When you access the Find and Replace you screen, you can now access a history report that displays a list of Find and Replace actions that have been performed. The report displays the details of the actions and allows you to download a report listing each item that was affected.download a report listing each item that was affected.

Version 24.05

Production Release: May 7th, 2024

Features

Course-level Find & Replace for Canvas—Use Find and Replace to search and edit HTML content in your Canvas course in bulk using the Atomic Search course index. Note that this feature is only available in Canvas, and Find and Replace is off by default for instructors and for Admins. To enable this feature for admins & instructors, please file a support ticket.
- To use Find and Replace, click on the new Find and Replace option on the course-level search landing page. Users must authorize Canvas before using the new feature.
- Enter your search criteria and desired replacement text in the corresponding fields.
- Preview and remove search results before initiating a bulk replacement. Click 'Replace All' to replace multiple items simultaneously.
- For individual item replacements, hover over the item in the results list and click 'Replace.' Undo changes if needed.
Manage integrations for Atomic Author - LMS admins can now configure, reauthenticate, and toggle the state for the Canvas Commons and Canvas Studio integrations used in Atomic Author. You can access this setting in the triple-dot menu next to the search bar in Atomic Author. Equella support will be added in a future release.

Version 24.03.0

Production Release: March 6, 2024

Features

Enhanced analytics — We modified how usage analytics are tracked and reported to ensure that dashboard and global searches are included.
Install enhancements — We added functionality to make it easier to configure options during the install process.
Broken access token detection — When the LMS access token is disabled that we use to index data and request user roles, it causes Atomic Search to stop functioning properly. This can happen when the LMS user associated with the token is disabled. We added functionality to automatically check the token and alert us each night if it is no longer enabled.
URL search support in Brightspace and Blackboard — We added support for searching URLs in Brightspace and Blackboard content. You can now search URLs in those LMSs using the syntax url:[url fragment] (e.g. url:kaltura.com). For more information, see: https://support.atomicjolt.com/knowledgebase/what-search-operators-can-i-use-to-conduct-more-complex-searches
Cumulative user count — Atomic Search licenses are typically based on an organization's FTE or maximum number of unique users per year. In order to help provide information about usage, we added data to our reports showing the cumulative number of unique users who accessed Atomic Search up to the report month. Our release next month will include additional reports.
Canvas Studio support — We enhanced the ability to enable support for indexing and searching Canvas Studio content inserted into Canvas rich content.
Authoring support — Added the ability to search, preview, and insert content during authoring Canvas rich content, pages, modules, files, assignments, and quizzes. We currently support searching the following sources: your other Canvas courses, Canvas Commons, Canvas Studio, and Equella. We are planning to add support for searching other sources.
Canvas Discussions support — Atomic Search now supports indexing and searching Canvas Discussion replies including student content. This feature is disabled by default. This is a premium feature that will incur an additional fee to use. You may request that this feature be enabled by filing a ticket in the Atomic Jolt customer support portal.

Bug Fixes

Removed 255 character search limit — Searches that were longer than 255 characters caused an error.
Canvas term order — When search results included a large number of Canvas terms, the order of the terms listed in the filter list was not correct.
Canvas TA users — When a Canvas user was a TA in one section of a course and a student in another section, they were able to search for unpublished content.
Admin searching — In some situations, when Canvas Administrators searched from their dashboard or the Global navigation, the scope defaulted to Current Account instead of My Courses

Version 8.0

Beta Release: December 11, 2023
Production Release: January 2, 2024

Features

Atomic Search is now available for Blackboard and Brightspace - Atomic Search can be installed into the Blackboard and Brightspace learning management systems using the LTI Advantage standard. If you want to learn more, please file a ticket in our support portal.
Clean up links recursively when content is made invisible to students - If you have content in Canvas that contains multiple levels of links, pages with multiple levels of links, hiding the initial link to that content will also hide all cascading links to content.
Add additional fields for URLs in the CSV download of search results - We have added three additional fields in the output to the results CSV file when you do a search using "URL:". The results file will give the resulting URL; this contains the Canvas item that meets the search criteria, including the actual URL that is linked to that Canvas item or the text that is clicked on to get you to that URL. We also include the match HTML tag (iframe, a-tag, images) if available.
Always show the search scope dropdown - We now always display the dropdown for scoping between the “Current course”, and “My courses”. Previously, we hid this dropdown in some launches of Atomic Search when there was only one context available to search but this was confusing when you wanted to broaden your scope.
Atomic Search Widget re-design - We have updated the styling on the optional JavaScript widget search box.

Bug Fixes

Embedded files would still show in student search results after reindexing when the page was unpublished - Files embedded within an unpublished Canvas page would still show the file in the student search results. This issue is now resolved after the course is reindexed.
External URL module items would still show in search results after deletion - External URL Module items would still appear in the search results after deleting the external URL and reindexing the course. These results are now removed during the reindexing process.

Version 5.8

Beta Release: May 18, 2022
Production Release: June 6, 2023

Features

Added the ability to search openEQUELLA content through the widget. We have added the ability to search openEQUELLA content directly through their API using the search widget by adding a dropdown to the widget where you can specify to search for “search openEQUELLA external content.” This search returns a list of results found directly in openEQUELLA.
Added searching openEQUELLA content through the Atomic Search page. We have added the ability to search openEQUELLA content directly through their API by adding a dropdown to the Search page's search box where you can specify the search for “search openEQUELLA external content.” This search returns a list of results found directly in openEQUELLA.
Improved indexing performance. We have added additional tests and made some backend configuration changes to help improve the speed of indexing content. We continue monitoring search performance to make further enhancements in future releases.

Bug Fixes

Sometimes consortium admins could not search across the consortium. In some cases, admins in a consortium were not able to search across the consortium instances because we were requesting and using the LTI user-id for that user instead of their LMS user-id which was needed to search across instances.
Searching using the search widget would cause an error when the Canvas course id had a tilde (~) in it. Searching using the search widget would cause an error and not return any results when the Canvas course id had a tilde (~) in it. This is common when searching for courses across different Canvas instances as part of a consortium.
Clearing the search term in openEQUELLA direct search would error. When you cleared a previously entered search term using openEQUELLA direct search, you would get an internal server error. This now clears the search so you can initiate a new search.
Sometimes searching using resource metadata for openEQUELLA content would not return any results. Occasionally, searching for resource metadata would not return the expected results for openEQUELLA content.
Sometimes the number of search results displayed did not match the number returned. Sometimes, the number of search results returned would not match the number of returned results displayed at the top of the results list.
Grouped search results did not show the full list of courses. Grouped search results show the first result match for the query and display information underneath the result on how many times that item appears across an account. Clicking on the “Show” link to expand the grouped results did not show the full list of all courses where that result was duplicated across the account.

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Version 5.4

Beta Release: December 12, 2022
Production Release: January 3, 2023

Features

Added group duplicate search results in an account. Atomic Search now groups duplicate results when searching at an account level.
- A grouped search result will show the first result match for the query and display information underneath the result on how many times that item appears across the account.
- You can click on the “Show” link to expand the grouped results and see the full list of all courses where that result is duplicated in the account. You can click on each of the course names in the expanded list to navigate directly to the file in the course.
- The way items are de-duplicated depends on the type (excluding modules). For example, if pages have the same text content (not including link location or other html attributes), they will be marked as duplicates. Any change to the text will mean it's no longer detected as a duplicate.
Improved performance. We have added additional tests and made some backend configuration changes to help improve the speed of returning search results and indexing content. We are continuing to monitor search performance to make further enhancements in the next release.
Improved accessibility. We have improved accessibility throughout the tool to better comply with WCAG accessibility standards. We have added additional aria-live announcements on the main search result page, improved the keyboard tabbing functionality for screenreaders, and adjusted colors where necessary.
Added a search context placeholder in the search widget. We have added placeholder text in the global javascript search widget to tell you what scope of results you can expect to be returned when executing a search.

Bug Fixes

Changing a course’s sub-account would not reflect that change in the search results. When you changed the sub-account of a course, and re-indexed the course, Atomic Search would continue to show the course as belonging in the old sub-account not the new sub-account.

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Version 5.2

Beta Release: May 23, 2022
Production Release: June 6, 2022

Features

Removed the "0 results" message that appeared while search results loaded. We removed the message that showed "0 results for (term)." This message would display before search results were loaded into the page. The results number will still appear once the results finish loading in.
Updated the account-level statistics to display calendar date. Updated the account level statistics to display data in calendar order starting with the current month.
Improved accessibility. We have added several enhancements to better support the use of screen-readers with Atomic Search.
- The Type and Term dropdown menus for filtering now allow you to tab between the options and hit the 'esc' key to close the dropdown menu. These filters have changed from checkboxes to single buttons.
- Components have prominent focus indicators with a black border of at least 2px, and acceptable contrast between both the component and the background.
- All buttons and menus have menu announcements that can be read using a screen reader.
Removed the "Export All Searches" option from the course search menu. We have removed the menu option, "Export All Searches" from the course level. To download search results use "Export Search Results."
Changed admin-level word cloud language. Under the admin-level settings, we updated the language for the word cloud toggle to "Allow courses to enable word cloud."
Removed scrollbars on the course analytics page. We removed the unnecessary scrollbars on the course analytics page.

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Version 4.1

Beta Release: September 29, 2021
Production Release: October 13, 2021

Features

Added support for searching link URLS. Whenever we parse a page, file, assignment description, or any other rich content descriptions and we find a URL, we now index those URLs so they can be searched. Search for a URL by typing “url:” before the URL snippet in your search term (url: *instructure.com). You can now search for the following types of URLs:
- iframe SRC attribute
- image SRC attribute
- a HREF attribute
- an assignment LTI launch URL
- a module item LTI launch URL
- module item that is an external URL

Added ability to download CSV containing search results. We added the ability to download a CSV of the first 5000 items of search results. You can download results by clicking the Save search results menu option in the triple dot menu in the upper right of the search results page. The CSV contains the item title, result URL, result snippet, item type, course name, course ID, term, and last updated timestamp.

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Version 3.6

Beta Release: May 24, 2021
Production Release: June 1, 2021

Features

Added Account Analytics to Atomic Search. Accessing the Atomic Search page in an account will show a new menu option “Account Analytics” in the upper right three dot menu. The results of the analytics are scoped to the account that you are launched in. These analytics are only available to Canvas admins.
- Analytics Table. Added a table that shows data for the past twelve months with the number of courses using Search, the number of unique users, and the number of teacher and student searches. This table can be sorted for each month of data.
- Analytics Graphs. Added three graphs showing the unique users, courses, and number of searches over the last twelve months. These graphs are displayed at the top of the Account Analytics page.
- Searches by Course. Added a link in the upper right of the analytics page named “Searches by Course.” This link will take you to a table breaking down the search counts by each course name and the last twelve months of data. This table is sortable by month or course name and is paginated when there are more than ten courses to display. Clicking on the course name will open that course in a new tab. If you would like to enable course level analytics, please file a ticket in the support portal for more information.

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Version 3.5

Beta Release: February 22, 2021
Production Release: March 1, 2021

Features

Updated Atomic Search Design. We have updated the styling throughout Atomic Search.
- Updated the styling on the search box and related buttons in the main search page and the results page
- Consolidated controls into one menu
  - We combined the menus under a single three-dot menu accessible by admins and teachers. The consolidated menu is located in the upper right of each Search page, and contains the Course Settings, Admin Settings, View Analytics, Reindex Course option (with a status indicator), Export all searches (to download a CSV file of course searches), and a link to the Atomic Search Documentation.
- Moved the search filters on the results page underneath the search bar and added the number of results.
- Removed the "Powered by Atomic Jolt" and "Documentation" links below the search box.
- Removed “Type” icons in the search results and created tags next to the result titles.
- Removed the cloud publish/unpublished icon and created an “unpublished” tag next to the result titles.
Updated the translated versions of Atomic Search to include the new UI changes. We updated the text for the translated versions of Atomic Search to include any new text or text changes.
Added an expiration to the trial versions of Search. We updated the styling for Atomic Search trials and added trial expiration pages and a banner that displays the time left remaining in a search trial. This change will only affect unpaid accounts.

Bug Fixes

The Settings popup could not be closed using the ‘x.’ Clicking on the ‘x’ button in the settings menu did not close the menu.
If a course term changed you would see results for the course’s previous term and not the course’s new term. If you changed a course’s term, re-indexed, and filtered the results by the course’s term, the results would display from the course’s previous term and not the course’s newly associated term.
When a search was executed via the widget, the search results page would get truncated when only a few results were returned. The results page would sometimes get condensed and show a scrollbar when a search was done through the search widget with few results found.

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Version 2.16

Beta Release: August 20, 2019
Production Release: September 3, 2019

Features

Modified the Atomic Search global javascript to target the course instance of Atomic Search when the tool ID is hardcoded. The global javascript file has been modified so that when searching in a course, it targets the course’s instance of the LTI when the tool ID is hardcoded in the global javascript.
Added ability to search with just the asterisk (‘*’) to returns results for everything in a course. When searching with just the star/asterisk/wildcard, Atomic Search will return a full list of everything indexed.
Added ability to search by recency. We have added a search criterion that allows you to search by relevance or by recency. Sorting by recency will prioritize content that has most recently been modified.

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Atomic Search Release Notes

Release notes for versions of Atomic Search, starting with the most recent.

Contents

Version 24.11

Version 24.09

Version 24.08

Version 24.07

Version 24.06

Version 24.05

Version 24.03.0

Features

Bug Fixes

Version 8.0

Features

Bug Fixes

Version 5.8

Features

Bug Fixes

Version 5.4

Features

Bug Fixes

Version 5.2

Features

Version 4.1

Features

Version 3.6

Features

Version 3.5

Features

Bug Fixes

Version 2.16

Features