OrbitNote Product Updates

September 2024

What's improved?

• Privacy policy is now easily accessible on the login screen.

March 2024

What’s New

• Prediction has been introduced to the Math Tools feature.

What’s Improved

• Enhanced speech recognition around Mr. and Mrs. being read as M R and M R S, with other minor related improvements.

What’s Fixed

• Error opening PDFs with Brightspace has been fixed
• Multiple side note entries weren’t being displayed. This has now been fixed.

December 2023

What's new?

• Introduced analytics for the Math Tools feature.

What’s Improved?

• Improved translations for Equatio Math Tools in several languages, including French, Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian.
• Improved translations for Norwegian Nynorsk

October 2023

What’s New?

• Math Tools introduced to OrbitNote. Watch the feature tour video
• Gaelic (Scottish) Female Ceitidh voice has been added

What’s improved?

• Exam Mode: On exam turn in, a progress bar will appear to visualize progression of the exam paper uploading to Google Classroom

What’s fixed?

• Fixed an issue with text prediction not suggesting a word after initial word selection
• Fixed an issue with Google Classroom integration not appearing for some Snap&Read users

September 2023

What's new?

• Automatic detection of language for Danish, Swedish and Norwegian based on the browser language
• Swedish and Norwegian Bokmal and Nynorsk added
• Uni-C logins can access OneDrive in addition to Google Drive

What's fixed?

• Fixed an issue preventing ‘whole word’ search results to be navigable

August 2023

What's new?

• Scottish Voice additions (Stuart, Heather and Andrew) have been added

June 2023

What's new?

• Image to PDF Feature has been added. Check out the feature tour for more details

What’s improved?

• Exam mode: Toolbar: The Highlighting icon has been moved bit further away from Screen Masking icon

February 2023

What's new?

• Danish translations and default voices have been added
• New option in OrbitNote admin settings to open debug window

January 2023

What's new?

• New OrbitNote admin hidden setting has been changed to switch between Read&Write and Snap&Read features on toolbar

What's improved?

• Exams now appear as Turned In via Classroom when student completes them
• Removal of Chrome spell-check underlines

December 2022

What's improved?

Various improvements to Exam Mode beta

• Settings apply across both exam documents
• Some changes to the exam list and how they are handled
• Improvements to textbox formatting after turning in

November 2022

What's new?

Snap&Read Integration

OrbitNote is now set up to become the default PDF Reader for new Snap&Read customers starting December 13, 2022.

UK Exam Mode v2

Updates to the Exam Mode kiosk solution to allow for beta testing among a few identified UK schools during mock exams.

What's improved?

• OCR Scanning file size limit increased to 50 MB. You can now use the Scanning feature on files up to 50 MB. This is an increase from the previous limit of 20 MB.

September 2022

What’s new?

• New Split and Merge features

New functionality is now available in the Split and Merge feature, including:

- Custom Split feature to easily choose where to split a PDF

- Ability to duplicate pages within a PDF

- Ability to select multiple pages at once for drag and drop

- New File View option for more easily merging large PDFs

- Undo and Redo

- A new setting to automatically open your saved PDFs in OrbitNote

• Settings available on OrbitNote dashboard

You can now access relevant settings like language and toolbar theme from the OrbitNote dashboard.

• OneDrive support for Insert Image feature

For Microsoft users, you can now select an image from your OneDrive to insert it into a PDF.

• New Terms of Use link added

New link added to the settings menu to access Terms of Use

What’s fixed?

• Fix for text wrapping issue with text annotations when downloading your PDF
• Removal of OCR scanning notification on toolbar for UNIC users
• Text comments can now be selected
• Dutch language default now selects Dutch voice and changes features to Dutch
• Support site link fixed in OrbitNote menu
• Minor Insert Image bug fixes

August 2022

What's new?

• Insert Image feature - This update introduces a brand new premium feature that allows you to insert images directly on to your PDFs.

What's fixed?

• Fix for a customer issue with PDFs in D2L Brightspace
• Improvements to text highlighting colors for certain fonts
• Fix for broken Support Site link on the OrbitNote dashboard

July 2022

What's new?

• Integration with D2L Brightspace - OrbitNote can now be used in the D2L Brightspace LMS to create, complete, turn in and review assignments. This premium feature makes PDF assignments easy in D2L, and only requires installing the OrbitNote Chrome extension to use. It also allows students to read and annotate PDFs that have been uploaded to the Content area of their course, with a built-in OrbitNote toolbar inside D2L.

What's fixed?

• Search feature hidden behind toolbar on devices with smaller screens
• File picker hidden behind toolbar on devices with smaller screens

Hot fix

• A quick fix for an issue with how assignments are handled in D2L Brightspace.

June 2022

What's new?

• Accept cookies popup for EU users - A new popup will now prompt users in the EU to accept or reject cookies, in accordance with GDPR. This will appear the first time the dashboard is opened, or the first time a new PDF is opened from Google Drive.
• Text annotation default height changed - When creating a text annotation, the default size of the textbox is now a single line in height, rather than multiple lines. This should help with situations where multiple text annotations may be close together, making it easier to select the one you want without overlapping.

What's fixed?

• When copying text out of a PDF, additional spaces were being added between words.
• Annotations and Equatio math moving slightly on the page when saving
• Text annotations getting stuck when repositioned too close to the top of the PDF
  Screenshot Reader issues:
  - Highlighting slightly offset from text when reading
  - Option to copy text not working
  - On Chromebooks, X being covered by text on smaller selections
• “Exam User” showing on OrbitNote dashboard for UNIC login
  

17 May 2022 - Scanning for all PDFs

OCR scanning now available on all PDFs

For non-image PDFs, you can now scan them by clicking three dot menu and choosing Scan Text.

Bug fixes:

• Issue with annotations not appearing correctly on rotated PDFs
• PDFs not loading in Google Classroom grading window
• PDFs not loading in Canvas

28 April 2022 - Hotfix

Fix for an issue where a user changed their Google account name, but the change was not reflected on the OrbitNote dashboard.

11 April 2022 - Canvas LTI now available

The premium OrbitNote Canvas LTI makes PDF assignments in Canvas easy and engaging for both teachers and students.

Teachers can select a PDF, pre-annotate, and share so each student gets their own copy.

Students can then use the OrbitNote tools to complete the assignment and turn in.

Teachers get real-time monitoring to see student work in progress in the SpeedGrader, and can give a grade and feedback once the student has submitted. They can also return the assignment to the student to continue working and submit again.

Bug fixes

• Danish text spacing - fix for an issue with additional spacing showing up in some Danish textbook PDFs
• Comments workflow changes - minor changes to comments in Google Classroom and Canvas

16 March 2022 - Change font size, Create Copy and more improvements

Set your default font size

You can now set your preferred font size when typing in annotations, and this will follow you in every PDF you open. You'll find the setting under General > Text Size.

Share option for Google Drive PDFs

Under the three dot menu, a Share option that brings up the standard Google Drive share screen.

Reduced Microsoft permissions

Removal of some Microsoft permissions that are no longer needed.

Remember previously OCR’d PDFs

If a user opens an image PDF that they have previously scanned and made their own copy, OrbitNote now remembers and directs the user to that copy they’ve already OCR’d.

UNIC Domain list update

Bug fixes

• Talk&Type continuing after clicking away from a text annotation
• Scroll bar hidden behind toolbar in large PDFs
• Line Thickness control box difficult to use
• Students erasing teacher annotations in Google Classroom
• Font issues with certain Danish characters
• Privacy Policy link fixed

20 January 2022 - Make PDFs readable with OCR scanning

The premium Scanning feature creates readable PDFs with the touch of a button. Inaccessible worksheets and documents can now be made readable and more accessible right inside OrbitNote.

Other new features

Freehand Drawing usability improvements

This makes the Freehand Drawing feature more user-friendly, now allowing users to:

• Scroll between pages while annotating
• Erase individual lines/strokes while drawing (rather than erasing the entire drawing)

Open from OneDrive

On the OrbitNote dashboard, now Microsoft users can open PDFs directly from OneDrive.

Bug fixes

• Voice Notes folder cleanup - one common folder is now used for storing Voice Notes in Google Drive
• Teacher pushpins disappearing - fixed an issue where pushpins were disappearing in Google Classroom assignments, and needed a refresh to reappear
• Textbox expanding - fixed an issue where textboxes were expanding when printing a PDF