24 January 2013, 11:50

Hi Gerard,

The idea you talk about is actually pretty easy - technically. 

You could, for example, have a custom script that:

1. checked users registered with a mobile phone number
2. check if there are any pending notifications since last check (either use the sync API or borrow the query from it http://code.google.com/p/maharadroid/wiki/MaharaSyncAPI)
3. send the request to a SMS Gateway over HTTP - there are many 3rd party services offering this ... or in the spirit of all things open source check www.kannel.org and use a phone/modem to send the SMS (we use it at Catalyst to talk SMPP to Telcos - a bit more involved ;) 

A note - the sync API was written to provide, in part, the ability for mobile handsets to pull notifications. MaharaDroid 2.x versions support the Android notification framework, allowing users to select which notifications they wish to receive - polling periodically and raising said notifications.

SMS is IMHO a dying technology - though it will live for some years yet. Use of SMS is declining with smartphones and uptake of data messaging (think IM, Facebook messgaing, tweeting, etc). If an instituition had a private messaging server for instance the notification script mentioned above might fire off an instant message. Though perhaps an individual would register communication channels (such as SMS, IM, email etc) and the messaging server would deliver to said person without being aware of the transport. 

All technically do-able ;)

24 January 2013, 20:55

i like the fact that it is technically do able, even though sms is a dying technology, students still use it, for us it will be an alert that there is a comment or page waiting to be checked. Talking to teh students we suggested email, but they liked the idea of getting a text. Hopefully in a year or two time this will change. However, the project we have in mind requires SMS. Looks like i may have to talk to our admin for myportfolio to see if we can get this operational.

25 July 2011, 9:10

Firstly, I like the idea.

Having read the spec on the wiki, I would suggest it easier that you setup a mailbox that mahara can dial into (e.g. [email protected]) which everyone emails. Suggested workflow (similar to how to Twitter via sms works) with an example follows (apologies for the detail, I'm a programmer who happens to support students and teaching / support staff):

USER

1. User makes sure their email address in the profile is correct (e.g. [email protected])
2. User sets up a ONE WORD (would make life easier, but mulitple words would probably still work) key word for their Journal (e.g. an IT Practicioner course Journal might be ITPRAC)
3. User sends email from the address in their profile ([email protected] here) to [email protected] - the subject would contain a  the key word (ITPRAC), and the body of the email would be the body of the Journal entry.

MAHARA (maybe cron job bolton?)

1. Accesses the blogpost@ inbox and looks for new messages, then downloads them. Looping through each message....
2. Looks to see if the 'from' email address matches anyone in the user list
3. If so, check the start of the subject for a keyword - and does it match any in that user's Journal list
4. If it finds one, it takes the rest of the subject line to be the title of the post and the body of the email to be the journal body and adds these as a new entry

Perhaps the 'does the student have to confirm that this post is ok' question could be optional?

Hopefully I've explained this clearly, if not shout and I'll do something more visual.

Dave

26 July 2011, 6:33

Hi Dave and Andrew,

Dave's suggestion reminds me very much of Launchpad's email interface. There you can put commands in the body of a message to perform certain actions on a bug.

Cheers

Kristina

26 July 2011, 7:53

Interesting idea -- rather than mahara processing the e-mail directly, having a cron job poll an inbox.

I really like this idea and the idea of specifying a keyword for the journal. This makes things much more available to general hosted users than having mahara do the e-mail reception itself. Of course it removes the timeliness of it (cron jobs aren't called on demand) but I suspect that this is acceptable -- especially if the cron is called frequently enough.

Just a couple of points to consider with this (while I remember):

• E-mail Quota -- This could be a potential limitation but it's up to the institution's own policies really. There could also be a maximum attachment size, but these tend to be reasonably high in this day and age.
• Locking message -- It'd be good to ensure that if a messages takes a while to download (e.g. a large attachment over a slow connection), that other e-mails can be processed in other crons. We'd ideally need to add a locking entry to one of the database tables to ensure that an e-mail is only processed once. We'd also need to ensure that stale locks aren't left if something fails for whatever reason.

I think that the keywords would also need to be one word with no whitespace, and that they should probably be followed by a colon. For example a subject of:

workplacement: Working hours in the real world!

Would translate to the journal with a shortcode of workplacement and the entry would have a title of Workings hours in the real world!

I still think that if no keyword is specified, or an unrecognised keyword is used, that the entry should go into the default journal for that user with the entry's title taking the entire e-mail subject. For example a subject of:

fwd: route to work

Might be intended to keep the fwd section.

Andrew

20 December 2011, 9:16

I think this is essential - currently I am unable to post to mahara from my HTC Desire android mobile. It may muddy this discussion to include the two bgs which prevent this but:

1. I have the mahara app but it only allows me to share images - not text files or notes (issue for mahara droid app)
2. If I go to my journal page I can type in the title and tags folder but not in the body. (Issue for mahara on mobile devices/android browser)

So from my mobile I have no way to contribute text to my journal which is the main feature I use a as a research journal as a PhD student. 

Emailing entries would be really easy and simple from any device.  

06 January 2012, 4:39

This feature would be very useful for scaling the use of Mahara in several ways that would be useful for our institution. It would be very useful to email to journal, not just from mobile devices, but also to enable people to send to mahara and tutor (for example) at the same time, or for tutors to send audio feedback files from their iPhones (or Androids) to mahara to share along witih other assets in a portfolio with student...

I do not profess to know very much about internet security, but I would suggest that from a usability point of view, having a nominated email address, a keyword and optional verify publish with email hits the spot between overkill and openness, and giving the user some degree of choice. I'm fairly neutral on this choice though, compulsory verify by email wouldn't be such a pain :)

Multiple attachments - YES

Multiple file formats - YES

08 January 2012, 13:11

Hello Phil,

In regard to audio feedback: I think this is somewhat different to what is proposed because the feedback would be added to somebody ele's page and not your own journal etc.

MaharaDroid allows you to upload files to your own files area but that doesn't help you when you want to add feedback. Have you tried recording your audio on your Android and then selecting that file as attachment in the feedback section?

Cheers

Kristina

09 January 2012, 3:58

Hi Kristina,

Thanks for your comments. I like this feature suggestion as it allows lots of flexibility in how I manage my assets. A journal article or an attachment may not only have Mahara as its only end point. It is true that I can add my audio recordings (eg feedback) to my mahara via share on the Droid app, but I may wish to email it direct to the student also, and have a record of it for sharing. Email is a very good way of managing this, in my opinion better than the droid app as I can do more things in one click on multiple devices.

I suppose I just mean that the attachments are as useful as the text of the articles, and could perhaps be copied to the private files area as well/ instead of being attached to the journal entry to allow me to use them more flexibly...

wrt your comments about adding feedback to others portfolio, how about a way of adding attachments to feedback from my private files, not just browse from computer (another feature req. I think..)

Phil

15 January 2012, 0:26

Hello Phil,

I added a feature request at https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/916687 for adding a file from your files area to the feedback. This is a very good suggestion.

In regard to emailing feedback to the student that is then displayed on the page, this may not be so easy as the commenter would need a URL for that page. Maybe Andrew who proposed the feature knows more if that is possible to do.

Students could already now save an email as HTML and upload that to their files area and then display directly on their page. It involves a number of steps but should be possible.

Cheers

Kristina