LDN - Luminis Developer Network

Description

Group Activity

This channel will list all groups and courses a user is a member of. For each group/course if there has been recent activity (defined as activity in the last 7 days) they will be provided with a link that will take them directly to that new content.

The area that new content will come from are message board posts (only the topic is shown if it has new posts), files, photos, new items, and links. In the case of files and links the link will open a new window and take the user there, for the other items they will be taken into the group/course to the appropriate page. Only items that have been approved by a group/course leader or section administrator will be visible to the users.

If the user is a group/course leader or has been given administrative rights to certain areas with the group/course they will be able to see ALL recently submitted items (this includes ones that have not been activated yet). Non active items will have an asterisk(*) beside them as well as appear in italics. These users will also be provided an edit button beside each item to quickly access the edit page for the item to activated or inactivate the item.

The list of groups/courses are currently sorted alphabetically, and omit any consolidated course configuration (this does not omit the courses in a consolidated course group, just the consolidated course group itself).

Group Request

This channel will list requests for new groups or modifications to existing groups. The user will then be able to click on the group and be taken to the admin page to approve the request.

Changelog

May 9, 2008

Posted the new version of these channels

Installation

1. Run the SQL code on the database server (groups.sql)
2. Copy the CAR file into $CP_WEBINF/cars (groups.car)
3. Follow the instructions in the unEnforcedURIs.txt file
4. Copy cpinfo.properties to $CP_ROOT/webapps/luminis/WEB-INF/config
5. issue configman -s cpinfo.configFile '${CP_PROP_ROOT}/cpinfo.properties' and configman -s cpinfo.cacheExpire 6000
6. $CP_ROOT/bin/rc/70-webserver stop && $CP_ROOT/bin/rc/70-webserver start
7. Log into Luminis as an admin (or someone with channel manager privlages)
8. Create a new custom channel with the Channel Class set to ca.umanitoba.uportal.channels.groups.groupActivity for the Group activity channel
9. Repeat the previous step setting the Channel Class to ca.umanitoba.uportal.channels.groups.requestQueue for a channel that displays group creation/modification requests.

Upgrade

1. Replace groups.car in $CP_WEBINF/cars with the one listed here
2. Replace/merge your cpinfo.properties file with the one listed here
3. Run the SQL found in groups.sql

For upgrading steps 2 and 3 are only needed if the listed file is newer (or the same date) as groups.car.

Contribution
I have placed all the needed source code into the LDN SVN which you can download and compile as you wish. Luminis/Channel Repository/ca.umanitoba.grouptools

To Do

• Move the code to a servlet so that AJAX can be used to build the channel content to avoid blocking the rendering of the tab while the database calls are being done
• Developing a sorting solution which will allow users to sort the list as they want
• Allow users to indicate the number of days back to consider recent

Notes

I have classified this as a Luminis III channel mainly because of the use of the LogService class which does not exist in Luminis IV. We are going to Luminis IV this year at which point this will be revised, however anyone at IV right now that can handle Java should have no trouble making this work in IV.

The previous version was very slow in how it obtained the recent data. This would often cause channel time outs. If you had tried the previous version and were left disappointed I encourage you to try this version to see if it works better for you.