What is an extension?

This course looks at the basic concept of extensions in TAO: what they are and how they work. It provides an overview of what extensions are included in the different TAO products.

Extensions, as the word is used in TAO, are software implementations which can be installed in your TAO instance in order to enable a particular feature to be used. By way of example, using a feature called Data Access Control it is possible to restrict access to the content on your TAO instance so that only certain users can access certain folders in your item and test libraries.

In software terms, an extension could also be referred to as an add-on, though this is slightly misleading as the core functionalities in TAO are also called extensions. Extensions form the backbone of how the TAO assessment environment works. Each extension, or feature, represents a possibility of doing something.