SMOWL News Center

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.

Manually copying and pasting Client IDs, Deployment IDs, and OIDC endpoints between Canvas and our support team used to make your integration a slow process that delayed your exam readiness.

We have eliminated the manual back-and-forth. With our new support for LTI Dynamic Registration, you can now link SMOWL to your Canvas automatically. SMOWL securely exchanges all required cryptographic keys and configuration endpoints with your LMS in real-time, cutting registration down from days to seconds and reducing configuration errors to zero.

When students reach the quiz summary page in Moodle, any gap in proctoring risks unauthorized external searches right before they submit their final answers.

We have extended the SMOWL monitoring block to automatically include the Moodle summary page. This update ensures continuous activity tracking and closing the security loophole between exam completion and final submission.

To secure the entire exam workflow, you will need to update your SMOWL Moodle plugin to the latest version.

You can now switch the entire mySmowltech platform between English and Spanish instantly. With the new language selector located in your profile menu, your team can configure settings, review reports, and manage integrations in the language they feel most comfortable with.

Uninstalling the extension is no longer a “workaround” for bypassing access restrictions after being kicked off the system.

The new logic in Smowl Extension permanently links the expulsion status to the user ID within the system. This eliminates the vulnerability of re-access through reinstallation. For your team, this means smoother processes and fewer technical disputes. In the event of an error, the administrator can reset the student’s status from the new results dashboard, enabling an immediate and controlled retry.