Guru 5 Sneak Peek
Guru 5, our Joomla LMS, is right around the corner. You’re going to love it! We know you’ve been waiting a while for this release but when you see what we’ve packed in, you’ll wonder how we managed to do it all so fast. (Late nights and lots of coffee mostly.)
This is a sneak peek at what you can expect to see. The plan is to release Guru 5 in early April. When it comes out, I’ll talk you through the details.
Look And Feel
Categories And Courses
We’ve completely revamped the look and feel of course categories, lists of courses and course pages. They look so much better!
Great-Looking Quizzes!
We figured that quizzes shouldn’t be mean and scary, so we gave them a major makeover too. Check it out…
Beautiful Lessons
Lessons now open in an elegant window that’s easy to use. The list of lessons and the module are on the right, and students can move easily between lessons, make comments and see the lesson description.
Adding Media
Adding and editing media design always did need some love. They got it!
Better Usability
We put a lot of work into improving the usability of Guru 5. We really wanted to raise your conversion rate and bottom line by making Guru easier for users… and you should find that your life as admin has got a lot easier too!
On the front end, we’ve put a call to action button on cover photos and we allow newly registered members to continue the purchase process. Free courses have a more accurate message, lessons have descriptions and quizzes now allow for retakes right from My Quizzes page.
On the back end, you can now remove a student from a course, and we’ve added “save and new” button when creating lessons.
Categories Module
The Categories module now shows an icon of your choice for each category. It looks great.
Improved Teacher Interface
The teacher interface now looks and works much more smoothly. A new menu item even allows teachers to view, rate and comment on essay answers. Very useful!
New Shopping Cart Design
We’ve completely re-designed the shopping cart, here’s how it looks like:
When Will Guru 5 Be Released?
We aim to release Guru in April 2016. We still have to finish a few details so we don’t have an exact date yet, but it won’t be long now!
See Guru 5 In Action!
We’ve installed an alpha version of Guru 5 on our learning center. If you want to see how the front end looks, you can check it out now.
Tags: guru
Ayodeji Joseph
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Nice one, I think this will help revamp the education in Nigeria and Africa at large
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Jan
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Hello, seems realy awsome! I love the new ui
I have a question that was certainly asked, we use easysocial and easydiscuss on our webiste and will are not planning to change, is’this wonderfull version of guru compatible with those products?
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Merav Knafo
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Hi Jan, Guru is currently not integrated with easysocial or easydiscuss but please reach out to to the developers and ask them to add integration.
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Matze
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Great News,
i have some questions…
Is the new shopping cart EU-Tax ready?
What is the status of the Scorm compability?
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Merav Knafo
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Hi Matze,
The cart changes are only cosmetic, we didn’t change the functionality. What changes do you need?
We have put Scrom aside for now, it’s a very big task and we have more basic things to accomplish.
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Matze
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Hi Merav,
here are some rules that I have to fullfill to be in line with the EU Vat Law.
1. I have to show the price including vat.
2.Full VAT invoices
Information required in all cases
*Date of issue
*Unique sequential number identifying the invoice
*Customer’s VAT identification number (if the customer is liable for the tax on the transaction)
*Supplier’s full name & address
*Customer’s full name & address
*Description of quantity & type of goods supplied or type & extent of services rendered
*Date of transaction or payment (if different from invoice date)
*VAT rate applied
*VAT amount payable
*Breakdown of VAT amount payable by VAT rate or exemption
*Unit price of goods or services – exclusive of tax, discounts or rebates (unless included in the unit pri
Extra information required in some cases
*Exempt transactions – a reference to the appropriate (EU or national) legislation exempting it, or any other reference indicating it is exempt (at the choice of the supplier).
*Customer liable for the tax (i.e. under the reverse-charge procedure) – the words ‘Reverse charge’.
*Intra-EU supply of a new means of transport – the details specified in Article 2(2)(b) of the VAT Directive (e.g. for a car, its age and mileage).
*A margin scheme applies – a reference to the particular scheme involved (e.g. ‘Margin scheme — travel agents’).
*Self-billing (customer issues invoice instead of supplier) – the words ‘Self-billing’.
*Person liable for tax is a tax representative – their VAT identification number, full name and address.
*Supplier is operating a cash-accounting system – the words ‘Cash accounting’).
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Matze
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Special for digital goods & services like eLearning…:
1. If the customer is an EU company i have to use my local vat rate(19%)
2. If the customer is private client from EU i have to calculate the vat based on Clients local tax rate.
3. For private customers outside the EU i have to charge my local german vat (19%)
4. For companies outside EU with a local VAT ID i don’t have to charge Vat, but I have to write on the invoice that they a responsible to pay their local vat in their own country.
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Merav Knafo
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Thanks Matze, I will reach out to you on email for more info.
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rdj
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I would also like this solution
I have already send an email but didn’t get any response till today
– invoice layout extra fields to show, image/logo, changeable footer/header, additional text like delivery date or period, detailed description of the bought item so if something is bought with a period lets say a month also this period should be mentioned in the item description, etc. (as a kind of solution idea for the layout settings I am looking at https://wpovernight.com/downloads/woocommerce-pdf-invoices-packing-slips-premium-templates/)
– tax/vat based on buyer place of living (something like this plugin for WP https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce-eu-vat-compliance/ as the standard version only with exemption from pro also)
– send invoice to another person/company with all details, or just a separate part (tab) with invoice details)
– Sequential invoice numbers – with custom formatting (format for example [possible text code]-yyyymmdd-[unique nr depending on the number of invoices already made on that day])
– automatic send of the invoice to the buyer AND to an admin email (for tax reasons), where for the admin all the emails could be added in one large pdf per day if that is easier)
– create credit notes (refunds but also if they didn’t pay)
Merav Knafo
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Hi rdj, the vat issue will be addressed on the next big version, Guru 5 is locked up for new features til it’s stable. I made a note of all your requests and we will take them under consideration.
KEY
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hello, any release date please ?
Do you have any french language translation ? We will have some coupon code for the release ?
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Doug
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I love the improved look. This is exactly what I have been waiting for. Can’t wait to get to work.
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Merav Knafo
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Thanks Doug!
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Meyraz
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Hi,
Is it rtl ?
Is the transform from version 4 to 5 will be easy task ?
Br
Amit
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Merav Knafo
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Amit, we will be testing Guru and RTL before we release this version to make sure everything is working as should.
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Merav Knafo
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There should be no problem upgrading from one version to the next, as long as it’s on Joomla 3.x
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Dan Houston
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Is there any chance that this release or any upcoming releases may have points, ranks and badge capabilities? The most successful elearning platforms out there like Khan Academy have badges and ranks as part of The Learning Experience. I would really love to see Guru integrate similar features.
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Merav Knafo
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Hi Dan, Not this release but planned for upcoming releases
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Jan
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Any release date Merav ?
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Merav Knafo
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Hi Jan, I hope to release a beta version in the next couple of days 🙂
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Mazi Ogbonna
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The new improved gru looks great! Keep up the good work.
I have one correction that needs to be corrected before shipping:
You have “Amount of Stdudent” => That is dead wrong because humans are not expressed in that way.
The correction should be ” Number of Students”
Then my repeated questions about the Guru Quiz:
a) Does the quiz allow audio and video types in the questions and answer levels? Or is just plain yes or know test-based questions at this time?
If the Quiz is not up to par of what I am used to; I will not be a customer until then.
You cann check out Delux Quiz and Simple Quiz from Joomla Extensions.
Thanks for your great efforts.
Mazi Ogbonna
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Merav Knafo
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Mazi, thanks for the English correction, I plan to go over the entire language file before we release and fix any issues. YES, our quizzes support any type of media: audio, images, videos, in the questions and in the answers.
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Micke
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Looks nice, but
no support Easy Social – No Guru
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Merav Knafo
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We fully support JomSocial 🙂
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Jan
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Hello Merav, i am personally using Easysocial and i am sure you understand and know how difficult is changing and migrating from an extension to another since we loose data , time and money.
I am not sure that blocking bridges with other extensions even competitors can bring new clients. Many solutions in IT sector are open to get maximum of benefit and users, if people wont/cant use your A solution they will use your B solution and i think this is an objective way. By opening Guru and other extensions (and i believe thats technically so easy to get done) you’ll have a lot of new clients, personally i know at least 7 persons looking for an LMS solution compatible with ES. They are thinking to use the new extension called Shika from Techjoomla because its compatible with ES. personaly i dont appreciate the UI of this extension and is new, Guru is a very mature solution and get better UI with this new release.
I really (and many others) hope to see more collaboration in the future, at the final stage we all win 🙂
Thanks Merav
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Merav Knafo
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Jan, we are not blocking bridges, we simply prioritize our resources, we do support some of stackideas extensions (ie: iSEO supports EasyBlog). In this particular case, I think you can probably reach out to the easysocial team and ask them to create an integration with Guru, we don’t plan to add integration simply because we have more pressing features to add like ratings and many others.
If we see that more customers are asking for such integration, we will re-consider.
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Jan
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Thanks Merav 🙂
Ian
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Hello Merav, I have the same opinion as Jan.
Earlier I used JomSocial. Now I have EasySocial… Both are great. I want to buy Guru and AdAgency. Both your extensions are great. But urgently I need support for EasySocial. Will be support your extensions Guru + AdAgency extension EasySocial?
Please when? Time is money …
Thank you and have a nice day.
Regards, Ian
Merav Knafo
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Hi Ian, as I told Jan, the integration can and should be done by the guys at StackIdeas, just ask, I’m sure they will be happy to help!
Majed Alharbi
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Wow, wow, wow. This is reallllllly biggggggg. Thank you Merav and Thanks to all of Guru brilliant team members for bringing Guru to a more professional and competitive level. Now I’m really, really proud of you and of Guru.
One thing though, and it is very important: to make it easy to switch the direction of all Guru pages and contents to be right-to-left, to support languages such as Arabic. Please support this feature.
Thanks again for the greatest and happiest news every to me.
Best regards
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Merav Knafo
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Glad you like it Majed! We will be testing Guru and RTL before we release this version to make sure everything is working as should.
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Lex
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You mention in your blog that you
We’ve installed an alpha version of Guru 5 on our learning center. If you want to see how the front end looks, you can check it out now.
I can only find the Guru course which costs $39 – where can I see the alpha version – I have a client who wishes to start developing an online school – and I want to show him the new Guru
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Merav Knafo
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Hi Lex, the entire learning center IS guru, not just a course, so if you just click around, join as a student, join a few free courses, you’ll see how Guru looks like. I hope it makes sense!
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rdj
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Some other nice add-ons for me
in the financing part
– reports to extract per period (also for all other options mentioned here)
– reports for all teachers as a separate pdf t but also as 1 document for me as admin
– for my records as a total what is earned including my % and the amounts (to be paid) per teacher
– creating commission reports (or negative invoices) per teacher incl tax/vat and all there basic information so incl tax id/account/paypall/address, etc) so that I can use that for my taxes
courses options
– Delayed access to course material, so after finishing a lesson you can only start with the next lesson after x days
– You can only start a lesson after finishing a specific other lesson or passing a quiz
– to add downloadable items per lesson or a general page per course where some standard documents can be added (for example study guide, to read material, etc), this should then also be possible to open directly to view, off-course in a secured environment so this cannot be found by google and downloaded without having access to the course
– set what is shown on the course page (also in front-end where people can buy), f.e. show/hide amount of students in this course (to be set in general by the admin and/or by the teacher), date released not with time so only date or not show at all (to be set by admin and/or teacher), check what info is shown by teacher tab so only teacher information or also other courses or not show this tab at all
special options
– buying ‘promo codes’ (incl invoicing) this is an option where a kind of promo codes (with a 100% discount) can then be bought by teachers so they can sell there courses somewhere else but still use the content set on my site, off-course all the promo codes they buy need to be unique, even if they buy multiple, because otherwise people will use 1 code and share that among friend (I will off-course then take a specific to agree amount per sold promo code but that will be then also handled in the invoicing) (so with a link to teacher/course where he/she can buy) this should then be a standard fee that can be set per teacher (maybe even per course) by the admin in the back-end)
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Evan
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Have you included the ability to take a course more than once? For example certain certification courses may require a person to recertify every year. Currently you can expire a course but when you buy it again, you can’t take a new exam or get a new certificate with a new date, only the old one.
Thanks,
Evan
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Merav Knafo
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Hi Evan, you can go to student manager, open the student and then reset the course, it will make them start it from scratch 🙂
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gabriel
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hi i want to buy the guru 5 as I can, because I want to buy this new version
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Merav Knafo
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Hi Grabriel, you can get this new version now, it’s included in the zip file:
https://www.ijoomla.com/component/digistore/products/47-joomla-add-ons/119-guru-pro/189?Itemid=189
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mihnea prefit
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Hi Merav,
Very nice version 5 of Guru, but when you will release it? Now I have version 4 of Guru Pro but it is not comparable with version 5. I have to wait the last version of Guru, version 5, for promoting my new education website. It is exactly what I need for showing online courses.
Regards,
Mihnea
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Merav Knafo
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Any day now, just fixing a few bugs customers reported on RC2!
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