22 July 2012, 12:54

Hello,

While writing the user manual, I realized that a few admin navigation items are not consistent when logged in as either site or institution admin. I propose the following:

Institution administration navigation. Change

• "Manage users" to "Users"
• "Manage groups" to "Groups"
• "Manage institutions" to "Institutions"

to match the site admin items.

Move "Admin notifications" from site admin "Users" tab to "Institutions" tab right after "Admins" like in the institution admin navigation.

What do you think?

Cheers

Kristina

24 July 2012, 2:14

+1 from me :-)

Saludos.
Iñaki.

03 August 2012, 9:31

Makes sense Kristina.

16 August 2012, 2:50

Hello Iñaki and Thomas,

Thank you for your feedback. I created a bug at https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1037450

Cheers

Kristina

04 September 2012, 0:43

Hello,

Now I'm wondering if we could also actually rename "Site administration" and "Institution administration" into just "Administration" on the main navigation. This makes it a) shorter and b) easier to manage for those writing documentations since you don't have to refer to two different navigation menu items anymore and with the new changes for institution admins, most of the navigation path is now the same as for site admins. If we were to change "Site / Institution administration" to just "Administration", we could write for both for example: Go to "Administration -> Users -> User search".

An added bonus would be for site staff who will have access to site statistics: They (when they are also institution admin, otherwise they see "Site information") would be able to go to "Administration" and then see Users, Groups, Institutions, Site Return to site which makes more sense than "Institution administration -> Users Groups Institutions Site Return to site".

To summarize: Do you have any objections for renaming "Site / institution administration" to "Administration"? If we make that change, I'd like to get it into Mahara 1.6 (pretty much only 1 day left to do so for me, but we found a bug only yesterday night and fixed it which brought up this question more prominently) as we already have admin navigation changes anyway instead of having those over 2 releases.

Thank you very much for thinking about it and responding.
Kristina

04 September 2012, 1:04

I am going to sound pedantic here, but I giv that a -1

I think two areas sharing the same name will cause great confusion. I know their location determines their function, but I fear this over simplicity will just create confusion.

Other ppl's thoughts?

JR

04 September 2012, 4:58

Thanks for your response, Julian. I re-posted it on FB where there were 2 positive responses for that latest change.

I don't see it as two different areas. Yes, one is site admin and thus has more rights, and the other is institution admin, but they also have a lot of things in common. The institution admins see the user screens, the group screens (for their groups), their institutions with all the sub pages. The site admin has the additional site settings which are clearly marked as those.

The dilemma I have (so late because I didn't see the review) is the following: Site staff have access to the site statistics. That's not an issue if they aren't also institution admins. There was a bug now that we caught before the RC with that scenario. So if we leave "Site administration" and "Institution administration", I'd need to find a place where to put the "Site statistics" for them. When they aren't institution admin it's easy because it goes under "Site information". But when they are institution admins, where does it go? Into "Institution administration"? Then we'd have as admin menu items:

Users - Groups - Institutions - Site - Return to site

As the menu item on the regular site is called "Institution administration", I would find it strange to see "Site" listed. And calling it "Site statistics" also breaks it for me as it is one level deeper than the rest and in future we might want to make other things available under "Site" as well. However, having two admin navi items in the main navigation is also not good:

Dashboard - Content - Portfolio - Groups - Institution administration - Site information

esp. as the last two are both admin functionalities and shouldn't take over the main navigation menu. The renaming of the "Site / institution administration" to "Administration" would solve that beautifully, esp. also in regard to potential future developments where there might be other features where the lines would blur a bit.

This is not an issue for a Mahara instance with only one institution, but for a multi-tennanted one.

If you want to see what it would look like in real life, you can check out the code in review at https://reviews.mahara.org/#/c/1628/ (the site staff bug is being fixed at https://reviews.mahara.org/#/c/1627/ ). Infos on how to test something in review, please see https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Developer_Area/Developer_Environment (Hugh has a good idea of how to make the testing easier, but first we need to get the RC out ;-) ).

Any suggestions for solving this dilemma?

Cheers

Kristina

07 September 2012, 14:42

I think its ok if a user will not see the same term twice with different functionalities. But as I understood this will not happen.

We should think more about the documentation. Here it will be possible that a user reads different chapters and  may be confused if he's not quite clear about the own role and the context if the chapter. So he can read  about site admin pages and founds on the own system only institution admin permissions. How can we make this as clear as possible?

07 September 2012, 22:15

Hello Ralf,

The change has been merged into 1.6. :-) Once we have fixed all the minor lang strings that we can find, I'll get onto reworking the 1.6 manual. I think the new navigation will make things easier in a number of ways as I only need to point to one set of menu items. I already referenced the site admin pages for the institution admins but of course there the navigation was different on the final pages and that might have been confusing. Now with the more unified navigation I hope there are fewer confusions. I'll have to see how to make it clearer then what is site admin and what is institution admin.

Suggestions are welcome.

Cheers

Kristina