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August 7, 2014
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The following information reflects what is new in the edX Platform as of August
7, 2014. See previous pages in this document for a history of changes.

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edX Release Announcements Mailing List
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These edX Course Staff Release Notes are always available and are updated with
each release of the edX Platform on `edx.org`_ and `edX Edge`_.

You can also sign up for the `edX Release Announcements mailing list`_ to get
an email message when we have updated the edX Course Staff Release Notes.

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edX Studio
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* When you add an Advanced component to a unit in Studio, an identifying name
  for every available component is now included in the list of **Advanced
  Components**. If the component does not have a defined display name, its
  category name appears on this list. Previously, components that did not have
  a display name did not appear as an option in the list.

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edX Learning Management System
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* On the Instructor Dashboard, the **Course Info** page now includes the number
  of students who selected each certification track (Verified, Honor, or Audit)
  in addition to the total number of enrollees in the course.

* For email messages sent from the Instructor Dashboard, two additional
  features are available.

  * On the **Email** page, you can now click **Sent Email History** to see a
    list of sent messages, and click on a message subject to review its
    complete text.

  * When you review a previously sent message, the new **Copy Email to Editor**
    option duplicates the title and body of that message so that you can use it
    as the basis for a new message.

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edX Data & Analytics
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* Daily event tracking data files are now available for download from the
  Amazon S3 storage service. Weekly, cumulative event logs will remain
  available for several weeks.

* A defect that caused session ID values to be duplicated for certain events
  has been fixed. All browser events, and server enrollment events, include a
  value for the session. (AN-2369)

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Coming Soon
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We're pleased to announce two upcoming features that will release in the next
few weeks:

* In Studio, new capabilities will make it easier for course authors to edit
  and publish content. We've simplified the publishing workflow and added clear
  indications to the UI so you'll know at a glance whether your content is
  published and released--and whether students can see it.

* In addition to the existing Discussion post type, course discussions will
  soon include a new Question post type. Students and course teams will also be
  able to filter posts to find unanswered questions easily.

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edX Documentation
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The following documentation is available:

* `Building and Running an edX Course`_ 

  Click **Help** in the upper-right corner of any page in the edX Studio
  user interface to access relevant sections in this guide. You can also
  download the entire guide as a PDF.
       
* `edX Research Guide`_

  Recent changes include: 

  The new `Data Delivered in Data Packages`_ chapter describes the compressed
  and encrypted data files that make up a data package, the locations of those
  files on the Amazon S3 storage service, and the files that data czars extract
  from the packages after download.

* `edX Developer's Guide`_

* `edX XBlock Documentation`_

* `Installing, Configuring, and Running the edX Platform`_  

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Other edX Resources
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You can access the `edX Status`_ page to get an up-to-date status for all
services on edx.org and edX Edge. The page also includes the Twitter feed for
@edXstatus, which the edX Operations team uses to post updates.

You can access the public `edX roadmap`_ for details about the currently
planned product direction.

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