01 September 2010, 12:07

Have installed 1.3rc1 which looks very good. The Collections feature will be a big help!

Two questions:

1)  We edited access to allow copying of a collection. However, when another user attempts to create a new collection, the "copy collection" option is not presented, even though that user is explicitly granted access to the original and all views included are also accessible. Is this a bug or design limitation?

2)  Is a capability for  "nesting" collections anticipated?  We are working on a live requirement where that would be quite helpful. There are 16 views in the collection which expands into three lines of breadcrumbs in the navigation section.  In this instance, 7 or 8 of the views would normally fall under one heading and could naturally be included in a sub-collection (a tree-type format).  Possible? Planned? Bad idea?

Thanks!

01 September 2010, 17:29

All of these are good suggestions, and some have been considered and planned previously under the heading of 'Multipage views':

http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=1066

Thanks to Birmingham City University we got some funding for a subset of this work, so that's what's gone into the release for now.  But feel free to add your suggestions as feature requests on the tracker, and they might make it into a future version.

01 September 2010, 21:39

This appears to be a high priority for a client of ours. In fact, we've begun looking at developing the collections copying capability ourselves.

What's the process for us to begin to get plugged into the development funnel? We'd like to ensure that anything we do is complementary to the main stream effort...

01 September 2010, 23:06

Worth,

I think it'd be a good idea to join the mahara contributors group on launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~mahara-contributors

Then create a bug on the tracker and assign it to yourself so that the rest of us know you're working on it.  It's also a good place to discuss details of how best to implement the feature.

When you're working on a new feature that builds on top of the core code, pull the latest stuff from the master branch (git://gitorious.org/mahara/mahara.git) reasonably regularly, so that you don't get too far out of sync.

And finally when you're done and you want someone to look over your code, you can put a link to a git branch on the tracker, or use the merge request feature on gitorious.  Hopefully, someone with some free time will take a look at it and either provide feedback, or merge it to the master branch.

01 September 2010, 23:49

Hello Worth,

Cool that you want to contribute code. I just want to add some additional information to what Richard has already provided. You may want to check out the wiki pages at and http://wiki.mahara.org/Contributing_to_Mahara and http://wiki.mahara.org/Developer_Area

It would also be good if you posted a little bit of information on what are you going to develop in a forum, e.g. http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/view.php?id=48 if you want to receive feedback.

Cheers

Kristina

16 February 2011, 11:01

Well, here we are again almost six months later...

After attempting to use the 1.33 version as is, our client has again asked for a quote on what it would cost to add the ability to copy collections to the system.

If the folks who originally developed the collections feature are still around, we're wondering whether it would be cost/time effective to sub-contract the development of the collections copying capability to them. I know Birmingham City University funded the original collections work, but can anyone tell me who did it?  Any way to reach them?

Just FWIW, I've searched the mahara.org site to try to see whether this capability is already under development, but haven't found anything.

For further background, our client is attempting to build a template for an entire portfolio for their students. Currently, their portfolio has sixteen views - they'd like each student to be able to create a Mahara account and copy all views with one copy command.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Cheers,

Worth

16 February 2011, 13:25

Hi Worth:

Our strategy for templating ePortfolios is going to be exporting/importing generic portfolios that the learner then customizes. That should work well for us, since we're adding learners manually in small numbers...but it likely wouldn't scale very well.

It would be great to see  the wish list for collections. I know I'd like to add group collections, and the ability to add views to more than one collection...but I don't have access to funding at this point for that; tant pis.

16 February 2011, 15:23

Hi Worth

The collections development was completed by Catalyst IT.   

Happy to discuss further enhancements to the functionality.  Flick an email to [email protected] and I'll get back to you.

Cheers,

David

17 February 2011, 21:29

Copying a collection is something we would like too.

I can highly recommend supporting the development of Mahara by providing funding to speed up the development of the software. We are a small organization that was able to find funding to make improvements to the HTML block and very recently have asked Catalyst to write code so that submitted views to a course group can be sorted. This will be forthcoming in a few weeks.  If we can do it, I am sure many others can too and it would benefit the entire community.

18 February 2011, 4:55

Thank you for helping Mahara to be improved and let all the community beneficiate of it

-dajan