15 April 2011, 8:13

We would like to set up a mahara group for academic lecturers and have groups as an alternative choice when adding access rights to a portfolio view.

At present besides assigning access rights to individuals when creating or maintaining a portfolio view, there is only the option of adding Public, Logged in Users, Friends and Secret URL. We would like to be able to have groups as an alternative option from which to choose, thus allowing students to add the "Lecturers Group" as opposed to having to add each individual lecturer separately. This will reduce the risk of some lecturers not being included when students assign access rights.

We are currently running

Mahara 1.2.4 from mahara.org: location of archive /webspace/myportfolio.bishopg.ac.uk/data/mahara-1.2.4.tar.gz

 Running on:

 PHP 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.2

Apache 2.2.14 (ubuntu)

Mysql 5.1.41

I am not sure if a later version offers this option or if anyone out there has done any development work that allows for this.

Any advice in this matter will be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Elaine

15 April 2011, 10:19

I'm afraid my memory doesn't extend back as far as 1.2.4, but our install (1.3.2 currently) certainly has this. This is exaclty how we've inplemented portfolio grading and access on our install. You can assign access to any group, regardless of membership.

hope this helps!

18 April 2011, 3:11

Thanks for your response. That is good news.

Regards

Elaine

18 April 2011, 15:17

Hello Elaine,

Before thinking about moving to Mahara 1.3 seeing that the features that you were looking for exist there and not on 1.2, you may want to keep in mind that Mahara 1.4 will be released in the not so distant future, and thus move to 1.4 immediately. Please also read http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=3253

Cheers

Kristina

19 April 2011, 4:57

Hi Kristina

Many thanks for your advice. I have passed on the concern about the vulnerabilities of the version we are currently running to the technical team. 

We are very likely going to be having Mahara hosted externally from September at which point it will be an excellent opportunity to upgrade to 1.4. My concern about upgrading to it earlier is that from what I can see there will be some changes to layout, terminology etc which will have documentation (in house developed) and training implications. In the meantime we should clearly update to at least 1.2.8. if not 1.3.5.

Many thanks for your advice.

Regards

Elaine  

19 April 2011, 16:00

Hello Elaine,

There are definitely going to be terminology changes in 1.4. Certain menu items have also been moved a bit to group them more logically. If you are concerned about re-doing your documentation, I would suggest you stay with 1.2 until you switch to your new provider in September and don't go to 1.3. 1.3 also already has a number of changes, primarily additions, e.g. Collections, Plans, see the release notes at http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=2207 Thus, you would have to update your documentation for that and then again update it for some more changes for 1.4.

You can take a look at 1.3 at demo.mahara.org (use any of the test accounts to log in) and at the developer version of 1.4 at master.dev.mahara.org (you would need to set up an account) to see the changes for yourself.

Cheers

Kristina

20 April 2011, 3:58

Hi Kristina

Thank you so much for all the information, very useful in decision making on the upgrade. Definitely makes sense to upgrade to 1.2.8. at this stage.

Thanks for web address for 1.4. I have just registered and looking forward to seeing new features etc. This is very handy in that it will give me time to prepare for document changes before September.

Regards

Elaine