Pythaverse Platform Release Notes

Dear Valued Stakeholders and Users,

This August 2025 release delivers major improvements across Pythaverse – from streamlined order workflows in School, Partner & Distributor Workspaces, to enhanced contest management with NROC Online in PContest, and a richer, AI‑powered workshop experience in EduCatalyst. These updates boost operational efficiency, improve user experience, and enable more engaging learning and competition environments for all roles.

Here’s what’s new:

🆕I. New Features

1. Workspace Enhancements

Sales Admin Workspace

Centralized School Orders: Added a new feature to view all school orders in one place.
Unified Order Management: Sales Admins can now create and approve Contract/POs directly. Any Contract/PO created by a Distributor requires Sales Admin review and approval before the license pool is allocated.

Admin Workspace

Course Configuration (LMS): Admins can now configure the official list of courses available for schools to order, sourced directly from the PLearn catalog.

School, Partner & Distributor Workspaces

Clearer Order Workflow: The order process now features a more detailed and transparent workflow, including the Contract/PO creation and approval loop.

New streamlined end-to-end order approval workflow.

2. PContest Upgrades

Event & Contest Setup

New Contest Type: Added support for NROC Online contests.
Country Restriction: Organizers can now limit contest eligibility by nationality.
Video Submissions: Phase 2 now supports video submissions from any source (YouTube, Google Drive, etc.).
Simplified Setup: Hid "Age Category" to prioritize "Team Category" and reduce confusion.
Content Access Control: Learning content is now tiered by category (Apprentice/Veteran → Blockly, Expert/Elite → Blockly + C++).

Email & Notification Management

Centralized Hub: A new dashboard allows organizers to create, edit, test, duplicate, and manage all communication templates.

Role & Scoring Flow

Flexible Roles: Easily assign or change participant roles.
New Scoring Logic: Teacher/Mentor grading is now optional. Judges can score independently, and their finalized scores lock the submission from further changes by teachers.

Updated PContest scoring flow with judge finalization.

3. Introducing EduCatalyst

Workshop Hub: A central dashboard to view and search all upcoming and completed workshops.
AI-Assisted Creation: Admins can create official workshops and teachers can propose new ones, with AI helping to generate descriptions and learning objectives.
Seamless Registration: Secure, login-based registration for all workshops.
Automated Notifications: Automated confirmation, reminder (24h & 1h), and cancellation emails.
Admin & Curation Dashboard: A powerful backend for approving proposals, managing users, and viewing analytics.

EduCatalyst workshop creation and curation workflow.

🎨II. UI/UX Improvements

Admin Order Management: Cleaner interface with a new Distributor column and clearer package types (Course or Leanbot).
PContest: "Category" label updated to "Team Category" in the teacher grading view for consistency.
TCC Website: Upgraded homepage UI and redesigned the Winner and Champions pages.
EES Website: Adjusted layout for better visual consistency.
Community Guidelines: Improved layout and content for better readability.

⚡III. Performance & Stability

Faster Order Processing: Removed the manual admin step of mapping courses, significantly speeding up order fulfillment.
Clearer Responsibilities: Well-defined steps for Partner, Distributor, and Sales Admin reduce delays and improve process stability.

🐞IV. Bug Fixes

General Platform

Fixed PNote errors 503 Service Unavailable (Jul 24).
Fixed Digital Twin gateway connection error 'Leanbot websocket connect ... failure' (Aug 6).
Fixed 502 Bad Gateway error when accessing the pythaverse.space homepage (Aug 6).
Fixed PNote errors (500 Internal Service Error & 400 Not Found) affecting some teacher accounts in the Philippines (Aug 8).
Fixed PTutor error where all users shared the same histories (Jul 16).

PContest

Fixed incorrect timeslot date/time display for new registrations.
Fixed a critical issue where Judges could not view or score submissions.
Fixed the scoring summary table not updating after changes were made.

⚠️V. Deprecations/Removals

Distributor Self-Approval Removed: All Contract/PO approvals are now centralized and handled by the Sales Admin.
Course Consolidation: School-specific courses with zero enrollment or progress have been merged into the shared PLearn catalog to simplify management.