1st of March 2026

This article contains this release's feature updates, user interface changes and bug fixes.

Changes to the platform

My schedule

A new "My schedule" page has been introduced to provide a visual overview of scheduled assignments and publications for both educators and students. It is accessible from the home page and through the profile menu in the navigation bar.

The schedule is shown as a weekly calendar. Navigation buttons at the top switch the view between weeks, and the "Today" button returns the calendar to the current week with a single click. A moving time indicator highlights the current time, making it easy to see what is happening now and what is coming up next.

Scheduled assignments and publications appear in the calendar as cards with distinct colours. Publications are also easy to recognise with the “Publication:” prefix. To keep the view clear, overlapping timeslots for the same event appear as a single card with the earliest start time and the latest end time. Multiple overlapping assignments or publications appear as a stack of cards with a count. Publications without a deadline are excluded from the calendar to prevent them from piling up.

Assignments and publications scheduled for a single day appear within that day, while those spanning multiple days appear at the bottom and stretch across the relevant days. This makes their duration clear at a glance.

Clicking a card opens a list of the related assignments or publications, including their time range and a timer. Selecting any item in the list opens it directly.

A new home page

The home page has been redesigned and now includes new sections for draft, scheduled, and past assignments. Assignment cards in each section have a distinct style to make them easy to recognise at a glance. Clicking a card navigates you directly to that assignment.

The Recent drafts section shows three recently edited assignments, with the newest drafts displayed on the left.

The Schedule section shows the first three scheduled assignments and publications that are due within the next 30 days, including today. Publications are easy to recognise by the “Publication:” prefix. Each card displays an end date and a timer, so it’s clear what is due soon and what is coming up next. Events with the nearest deadlines appear at the top. The "See all" link opens the full schedule in a weekly calendar view.

The Past assignments section shows taken assignments, grouped by end date. The most recently finished appear at the top. The "See all" link opens the full assignment history, where all past assignments can be found.

Students will only see the schedule section, which provides an overview of their upcoming assignment and publication deadlines.

Update 24/2: To give everyone time to get familiar with the changes, the new home page is not yet the default. A "Try the new homepage experience" toggle is shown at the top of the home page. Enabling it switches to the new layout described above. The toggle is personal and only affects your own view. You can switch back at any time. The new home page will become the default in a future release.

Custom fields for question bank exercises

It is now possible to add custom fields to exercises in a question bank. Custom fields are configurable metadata fields with predefined values, making it easier to categorise exercises consistently.

Create and manage fields 

A new Custom fields page in the question bank settings lets you define which fields are available and specify their allowed values. Fields can be added, edited, or removed at any time, keeping exercise metadata accurate and consistent.

Assigning and viewing field values

Custom fields appear on each exercise, with no value set by default. Values can be assigned directly on the exercise page or updated inline from the exercises overview table. Each custom field is displayed as a column in the table, which can be shown or hidden via the Customise columns menu. This provides a clear overview of exercise metadata and makes it easier to review field values.

Exercises can be filtered using custom fields, with each custom field available as its own filter option. Custom fields can also be filtered on when generating an assignment via the new blueprints.

When to use custom fields vs tags

Tags provide a flexible way to label exercises. Custom fields are used when metadata needs predefined, consistent values. The two approaches can be used alongside each other.

Exclude exercises from previous question bank assignments in the new blueprints

When creating or editing a blueprint, you can now select question bank assignments whose exercises should be excluded during generation. This is useful when you want to avoid reusing exercises that appeared in earlier assignments.

The assignment blueprint form now has a "Question bank assignments" field. Type to find question bank assignments and select them. Selected assignments appear as chips that can be removed. When the blueprint generates an assignment, exercises from the selected assignments are excluded from the results.

Previously, the dropdown action for a blueprint was labeled "Rename" and only allowed changing the name. It is now labeled "Edit" and opens a form that includes both the name field and the new exclusion field.

Added QTI 3.0 question bank exercises and assignment export and import

Question bank assignments can now be exported and imported using the QTI 3.0 standard. This makes it easy to share questions between ans* and other platforms that support QTI 3.0.

Exporting

To export an assignment, open the general settings of a question bank assignment and click Export. Ans* will generate a QTI 3.0 package as a .zip file that can be downloaded and shared or imported into another system.

Importing

To import questions, go to the general settings of a question bank and click Upload under the heading 'QTI 3.0 package'. Select the .zip file and ans* will create all the questions from the package, including their scoring settings, feedback, and any images or attachments.

Supported question types

The following question types are fully supported in both export and import: 

• Multiple choice: single-answer questions
• Multiple response: multiple-answer questions 
• Open: free-text response 
• Code editor: code editor with programming language 
• Fill-in-the-gaps: mix of dropdowns and text inputs 
• Match: matrix matching with rows and columns 
• Statement: statements graded with response rules 
• Order: arrange items in the correct sequence 
• File upload: students submit a file 
• Hotspot: click points on an image 
• Hotspot match: drag markers onto target areas on an image 
• Drawing: freehand drawing on a canvas 
• Mathematical equation: mathematical expression input with optional auto-grading 
• Comprehensive integrated puzzle (CIP): clinical information processing tables with dropdowns
• Content blocks: non-interactive content blocks between questions

All scoring settings, partial scoring, feedback, criteria, tags, and flow groups are preserved during export and import.

Question bank import and export moved to settings

Import and export actions have moved from the exercises overview to the question bank settings. These actions are used less often, so the exercises overview is now solely focused on viewing and creating exercises. The import button from the question bank assignment has also been removed. 

Toggle filter visibility in question banks

The + Filters button updates how filtering works across the question bank. Instead of showing all filters at once, you can choose which filters to display. This reduces clutter and makes the interface easier to use, even when custom fields are not being used.

The Last taken filter has also been expanded to include a never taken option.

Updated the Safe Exam Browser download URLs to the latest version

The Safe Exam Browser download URLs have been updated to version 3.10.1 for Windows and version 3.6.1 for macOS.

The full release notes of version 3.10.1 for Windows can be found here. The full release notes for version 3.6.1 for macOS can be found here.

Improved the enrolments and change ownership pages

When validating enrolments or changing ownership of a written assignment result, the pages would still use the layout of the old scan page. Now, both pages have been updated to use the same layout as the current scan page.

Webhook events for question bank assignments

In order to expand the automation possibilities, we are introducing webhook support for question bank assignments based on the assignment's revision.

Similar to our existing webhook subscriptions, there are 'create,' 'update,' and 'destroy' events. Changes that affect an assignment's revision will lead to an 'update' event being emitted. This includes structural changes, such as the order of exercises and flow groups, and changes inside exercises as well. An event will include the full assignment object and the revision change in the payload. Subscribe to these events with "question_bank_assignment".

Additionally, it is now also possible to subscribe separately to question bank exercises that are added to question bank assignments. The payloads for this type of event will include more detailed changes to the exercises, in contrast to only the revision for the assignment. 

• Adding exercise(s) to an assignment will trigger a 'create' event. 
• Changing an exercise and any content in it will trigger an 'update' event. 
• Removing exercise(s) from an assignment will trigger a 'destroy' event.

You can subscribe to these events with "question_bank_assignments_exercise".

Lastly, in order to keep track of the aforementioned structural changes in assignments, we have also added the flow groups to the payload when requesting a question bank assignment in the beta version of our API. These flow groups also include the IDs of their exercises. Both the flow groups and exercise IDs in the payload are ordered based on their position in the assignment. Note that this is only supported for assignment types that support flow groups.

Scroll back to top

A new "Back to top" button has been added to quickly return to the top of long pages with a single click. It appears at the bottom-left after scrolling past the visible screen height.

Your initial in the top bar

The profile menu in the top-right corner of the navigation bar now shows the first letter of your name instead of a generic icon. Clicking it will open your profile menu.

Your name appears at the top, followed by “My schedule” and “My results”. “My results” was previously a separate icon in the navigation bar for student accounts, but it is now located in this menu. Everything else, including settings, language, and log out, remains unchanged.

The role is no longer shown under your name. Each account can have a different role, and the role changes when you switch accounts. Showing a single role here could lead to confusion.

Control access to Schoolyear exam settings

A new school-level toggle has been added to the Schoolyear integration. This allows administrators to control how instructors access the Schoolyear exam settings.

When the toggle is on, as is the default, instructors can access exam settings directly without having to login to Schoolyear. When the toggle is off, exam settings are not directly accessible from ans*. Instructors must sign in through Schoolyear and access the settings via the proctor dashboard.

This gives schools clearer control over authentication and exam security.

The Schoolyear Exam is now archived when removing the Schoolyear integration from an assignment

We now archive the Schoolyear Exam when the integration is removed from an assignment.

Archiving has the following effects: 

• The exam does not show up in aggregated statistics for organisations. 
• The expected_workspaces are disregarded in resource planning.

Archiving does not kick active students from their workspace.

Please note that enabling the integration on the same assignment again will not restore the archived Schoolyear Exam, but will create a new Schoolyear Exam.

Export student tags with the QTI result export

We recently added support for student tags on flow groups to assign exercises based on the student tag in the course. Now, the student tag used during digital test creation will be exported with the QTI result export via the API.

Configure the ReadSpeaker assignment integration via the API

It is now possible to configure the ReadSpeaker assignment integration through the BETA API.

The API supports full lifecycle management of the integration. You can create, retrieve, update, and delete the ReadSpeaker assignment integration, as well as configure and update all available integration options.

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue where exercise attachments were not shown in question bank assignments
  Previously, when a question bank exercise had attachments, they would only be visible when editing the exercise, but not when viewing the exercise in a question bank assignment. Now, the attachments are also visible when viewing the exercise in a question bank assignment.
   
• Improved the description for restricting access to other pages in the accessibility settings
  Previously, the accessibility setting for restricting access to other pages did not specify that it only applied to pages within ans. This caused users to think this setting also prevented participants from accessing other pages in their browser. Now, the description has been improved to clarify that only access to pages within ans is restricted. 
   
• Fixed an issue where rubric criteria asked for points instead of percentages when grading
  When the scoring method is set to rubrics, the form for entering criterion values now asks for percentages in both places: when setting up the assignment, and when changing criteria while grading. Previously, during grading the form asked for points per criterion instead.
   
• Improved the "Send an email about the publication" message when setting up a publication window
  Previously, the option "Send an email about the publication" in the publication timeslot dialog did not indicate that this setting was only applied to students that also had the setting enabled in their own communication settings. The message now clarifies that only students that have enabled email notifications will be notified if this option is enabled.
   

• Improved two-factor-authentication security
  To address a low severity finding from the latest Pentest, we have improved the two-factor-authentication security. The QR code used to set up 2FA is now fully generated securely on our servers and can no longer be modified.

  While working on the two-factor-authentication integration we have also added support for marking a browser as “trusted.” When using a trusted browser, the 2FA code will not be asked for a week.
   

• Fixed an issue where tooltip content could not be selected
  Previously, when hovering over an element with a tooltip, attempting to select the text within the tooltip would cause it to close automatically. Now, tooltips remain open while the mouse is over the content, allowing it to be selected.
   
• Improved tooltip accessibility for screen readers
  Previously, not all tooltips had a corresponding ARIA label, meaning the content was not accessible for screenreader tools. Now, tooltips have their content included in the ARIA label everywhere.
   
• Fixed an issue where file imports were not keyboard accessible
  Previously, the "browse file" button in file import fields was not accessible for users relying on keyboard navigation. Now it can be accessed using the keyboard as well.