Latest news from SMOWL
Until now you could only filter a student's detail by tool and by incident. That told you where to look, but not what to look for: to check one specific thing — a copy-paste, a second face in the frame, a virtual machine — you still had to go through the whole timeline yourself.
You can now filter by the specific evidence you're after. A new sub-filter separates technical from behavioural evidence and lets you pick exactly the one you want to review, leaving the purely informative events out.
The options are built from the alarms configured for that activity, so you only ever see what that particular exam can actually produce. And the sub-filter combines with the tool and incident filters you already use, so you can narrow a review down as far as you need instead of reading everything.
Your last selection is now saved per user and comes back when you return, both in the student detail and in the results list — including "Show only results with incidents". When filters are active you'll see it at a glance, and you can clear them in one click.
We've also added the activity ID to the report, and you can search or filter by it in the results dashboard.
If a student left SMOWL CM open for a long time before starting an activity, cached credentials could cause errors when the activity finally began.
SMOWL CM 5.3.0 is now live. Students receive it automatically the next time they start a monitored activity, so neither your institution nor your students need to do anything. This version removes that credential caching issue and updates all of SMOWL CM's dependencies, keeping the desktop component current on security.
It also lays the groundwork for a more flexible way to manage permitted programs, so each institution will be able to define which applications students may keep open during an activity. Nothing changes in your results or evidence for now — SMOWL CM keeps using the current detection logic, and we will let you know before the new one is switched on.
When we launched the new results export, we replaced the event-by-event detail with aggregated counts. The reports became easier to read, but they no longer gave you the evidence you need to justify an incident to a student.
The detail is back. Computer Monitoring exports now show which program was opened, which page was visited and the text that was copied or pasted — each one with the exact time, down to the second.
We've also separated multiple screens from virtual camera instead of grouping them together, and camera reports now include the browser, the operating system and the module ID.
The summary view stays exactly as it is. The detail is added on top of it, not instead of it.
Until now, SMOWL results only showed a student's latest attempt of an exam, with no way to look back at earlier ones — which made handling appeals and case reviews harder than it needed to be.
Now you can filter by attempt directly in the student detail. Pick a specific attempt number to see its report and results, or choose "All attempts" to review the student's full history.
The last attempt is still shown by default, so nothing changes in your day-to-day unless you need to dig deeper.
This is available for Moodle and custom (API) integrations.
Until now, report downloads in mySmowltech were limited to a one-month range and didn't include evidence from our newer monitoring tools.
You can now request up to 12 months of data as CSV, including Audio and LOCK evidences.
Just click Download summary and we'll email the file to you within a couple of minutes — no need to wait on screen while it's generated.
We've focused the Summaries section on clean CSV data, while keeping the ZIP download for Computer Monitoring incident detail.
Until now, alarm settings were rarely adjusted. The configuration relied on granular technical toggles with little guidance on what each one actually protected, so most exams simply ran on the default settings.
That changes today. Every alarm now comes with a plain-language description, so you can see exactly what each setting detects before you turn it on or off.
You can now configure 100% of the alarms included in your plan before each activity — including options that weren't adjustable before, such as LOCK expulsion and evidence thresholds.
These settings are available now in mySmowltech, and they're coming soon to the LTI panel, with the same configuration at institution, course and activity level.
Need to update many exams at once? Apply your settings in bulk to up to 100 activities, choose how many rows you want to see, and rest assured the panel only shows the tools your plan includes.
For institutions with legal restrictions or privacy concerns, biometric face comparison isn't always an option. Until now, the only alternative was manual review — slower, more costly, and harder to scale.
SMOWL now includes a new automatic validation mode that detects whether exactly one person is in front of the computer during an exam. It confirms presence without any biometric comparison, so no sensitive facial data is processed.
This gives institutions that can't — or prefer not to — use biometrics a fully automatic and scalable option, with strong guarantees.
During registration, users review the SMOWL privacy policy before starting their activity. Until now, this information lived across many separate versions, which made the experience less consistent from one setup to another.
We've replaced this with a single, dynamic privacy policy page that adapts automatically to each institution's configuration. Students now see exactly the information relevant to them, in a cleaner and more consistent layout.
The page is available in 10 languages (Catalan, Spanish, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Finnish, German, Afrikaans, and Zulu), so every student reads the policy in their own language during registration.
This change happens automatically — there's nothing you need to do to enable it.
Previously, SMOWL's registration flow was based on the platform's default configuration, which meant students were prompted to take a selfie even when their specific exam did not require it.
Registration is now modular: each student sees only the steps and downloads relevant to their exam — whether that's SMOWL CM or webcam setup. If an activity does not require webcam, students will be able to register without a selfie, regardless of the platform's default settings.
No action is needed on your end. The update applies automatically to all activities.
Until now, communication in Live Proctoring only went one way: a supervisor could send a notification that appeared in the student's monitoring block as an alert the student could mark as understood.
Communication is now two-way. When a supervisor starts a conversation, the student can reply directly, and every message the student sends appears in the supervisor's Live Proctoring panel in real time.
Supervisors stay in control of the exchange. When the supervisor closes the conversation from their side, the student can no longer write in it.
Students can also ask to be heard: a "raise hand" button lets them request a conversation, which sends an alert to the supervisor, who can then choose to open the chat — just like asking for permission to speak.
Each message the student receives continues to trigger the existing post-message, exactly as before.