V.137 Release Notes

Release V.137 supports the One UCalgary.ca web strategy by continuing our focus on strengthening the stability, security, and sustainability of the UCalgary Web System. Operating within our refined 12-week release cadence, this sprint emphasizes core upgrades, security improvements, system cleanup, and long-term maintainability. 

During this sprint, the team focused on applying security updates, reducing system errors, and making targeted improvements across News, Profiles, Webforms, LiveWhale, and site navigation. This release reflects our ongoing work to stabilize the platform while continuing longer-term modernization efforts. 

Our focus areas for V.137 include: 

• Security Enhancements: Major core upgrades, advisory patches, SSO improvements, and secure integration updates.
• Institutional Compliance: Brand, statement, and institutional alignment updates.
• Stability & Error Reduction: Fixing errors across News, Profiles, Redirects, Webforms and site navigation.
• Performance & Load Handling Improvements: Improving system responsiveness and reducing strain on backend systems.
• System Modernization & Technical Debt Reduction: Dependency updates, patch cleanup, migration improvements, and backend refinements.
• Platform & Experience Enhancements: Analytics, embeds, and small UX improvements.  

For a deep dive into this sprint’s technical work, see below. 

Security Enhancements 

Major core upgrades, advisory patches, SSO improvements, and secure integration updates. 

• Upgraded Drupal core to version 10.5.8. 

• Applied recent security and compatibility fixes across contributed modules following the Drupal 10.5.x upgrade. 

• Updated the Role Delegation module. 

• Restricted UserSwitch permissions to prevent unintended role elevation to Support. 

• Refined Digital Content permissions to allow Teams management without full Site Admin access, reducing over-privileged accounts. 

Institutional Compliance 

Brand, statement, and institutional alignment updates.  

• Updated the Territorial Land Acknowledgement statement in LiveWhale and refreshed the copyright year.

• Removed the retired Qatar theme and related system handling. 

Stability & Error Reduction 

Fixing errors across News, Profiles, Redirects, Webforms and site navigation. 

• Resolved an issue that redirected Site Admins to the cold site when creating or managing Site Alert content on live-ucalgary. 

• Fixed a 500 error caused by Profile List blocks failing to load when no data was returned, preventing pages from breaking on staging. 

• Stabilized Solr indexing by fixing PHP errors in the Page Filter Tags and Profile List blocks. 

• Corrected an error affecting the Assign Teams functionality on the Teams page. 

• Updated entity queries to include required access checks, preventing errors when loading Profiles and related blocks. 

• Resolved an issue where validation messages failed to appear inside paragraph content, preventing blocks from remaining stuck loading. 

• Updated static News Feeds to use absolute URLs, ensuring consistent links across environments. 

Performance & Load Handling Improvements 

Improving system responsiveness and reducing strain on backend systems.  

• Improved News Feed performance by preprocessing image URLs during indexing, reducing database reads and ensuring feeds return full image URLs. 

System Modernization & Technical Debt Reduction 

Dependency updates, patch cleanup, migration improvements, and backend refinements.  

• Provisioned server access to support the upcoming PeopleSoft integration for Funding Opportunities. 

• Updated the SimpleSAMLphp library to resolve a PHP 8.3 deprecation warning during SSO login. 

• Centralized cron detection logic across custom modules to reduce duplication and improve consistency. 

• Improved consistency and usage tracking for reusable blocks across different block types. 

• Removed the unused Supervisors All List module from the system. 

• Cleaned up invalid Comment module permissions from the authenticated user role. 

• Cleaned up coding standards issues across custom modules and themes following a PHPCS scan. 

• Corrected the sort order of the Graduate Degree List when using Page Filter Tags. 

• Enhanced several automated tests to improve coverage and catch regressions during development and deployment.  

Platform & Experience Enhancements 

Analytics, embeds, and small UX improvements.  

• Fixed inconsistent status message display, so system messages now appear correctly and consistently. 

• Added a sort order option to the Page Filter block, allowing content to be displayed in ascending or descending order. 

• Resolved an issue with the 60th Anniversary theme that prevented access to the mobile navigation menu. 

 

In Progress 

Work that is currently in progress and will be included in an upcoming release.  

Enhancements 

• Continue work on the Funding Opportunities integration with PeopleSoft data feeds. 

• Work on adding visual regression testing for blocks using VisualCeption. 

• Continue work to update deprecated SASS functionality in the Docker build. 

• Explore performance improvements for News Landing Pages by moving tag-based views to Solr. 

• Upgrade to Drupal 10.6.x in preparation for future Drupal 11 upgrades. 

 Fixes 

• Investigate a front-end display issue affecting News Feed block labels and types. 

• Improve the reusable blocks cleanup script to safely disable one-off blocks without impacting layouts. 

• Address stability issues with Profile List tests when running on the Selenium Grid. 

Other 

• Continue exploring a new Dialog Insight block to support in-page forms as a future replacement for Marketo. 

• Work on updates to privacy language for Webforms and Dialog Insight forms. 

• Review and standardize enabled modules across sites to reduce technical debt. 

• Continue PHPCS cleanup across custom modules and documentation. 

 

For more information on the UCalgary Web System, visit web.ucalgary.ca.  

If you have questions or need to report a bug or issue, let us know!