The installation of OLAT for productive use is now significantly easier. There is no need to download source code anymore; just grab the WAR file and deploy it in a Tomcat servlet engine.

OLAT offers a flexible online-course system along with extensive features to guarantee learning and teaching independent of time and place. It has been created especially for public institutions such as universities, academies, and colleges, but it is also suitable for other businesses.


OLAT has been developed course based to offer didactic freedom at the preparation of learning contents. The vast user and group management and a multitude of collaborative tools permit users to realize any teaching scenario without restriction.


The development of OLAT started in 1999 at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, where it is the strategic learning-management system and deployed on the main OLAT server. The University of Zurich leads the further development and engages a team of eighteen developers pushing OLAT to the next level.

Some further new features are:

• integration of OLAT into existing IT infrastructure with the new REST API (beta)
• mail attachments in user visiting card, group, and course-contact form
• various component improvements: topic assignment, context-sensitive help, task, calendar, full-text search, single page, and notifications
• improvements in LDAP module for synchronisation of large LDAP directories and OLAT cluster operations
• browser side caching of course media resources to reduce network load
• refactoring of deprecated forms using "Flexi Form" infrastructure part III
• packaged deployment (WAR) consistent with the Java Web Specification, simplifying the application's rollout.