12 February 2013, 10:58

Hi everyone,
just wanted to share some of the things we implemented on our free site, http://www.portfoliocommunities.com:

1) James Ballard's awesome left column navigation (https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=4323) was upgraded to mahara 1.6

2) Mike Kelly's awesome Skillshare plugin (https://github.com/CLTAD/mahara-skillshare) was added

3) James Kerrigan's and Geoff Rowland's great My CPD plugin was added https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Plugins/Artefact/My_CPD

3) We added our own common menu enabling users to seemlessly browse between a mahara and moodle and other apps. We also added a breadcrumb trail and a few other little things and fixed our Mckenzie theme so it works better with IE.

We are also changing how we accept LEAP export files. We have been getting quite a few requests over the past 3-4 month which is great...all worked! Starting immediately, this is the process:

1) Create a new account at www.portfoliocommunities.com and upload your LEAP export file into the accounts files area.

2) Contact us via the 'Contact Us' or 'Support' button.

3) Watch for an email from the site informing of the successfull import. Upon import, we will delete the originally created account that was used to upload the file.

I am personally realy interested to see what happens to the skill share feature. Hope some folks will use it. Below are some screen shots.

Cheers,

Dirk

03 March 2013, 18:51

Hello Dirk,

With interest I read your enhancements to portfoliocommunities. That sounds fantastic!

How manual is your process of accepting uploaded Leap2A files? Does a user create an account first in order to upload the Leap2A file and you then click on a button to extract the Leap2A file? Will the email address that is in the Leap2A file be used or the potentially new email address that the user had during the account creation on portfoliocommunities?

Do you then manually delete the first (empty) account?

Cheers

Kristina

04 March 2013, 16:03

Hi Kristina,

Thanks for the comment. I am having fun.

As for the LEAP import process. I actually tried two things:
In the first process users would upload the file to a website without needing to make an account. I was able to filter just for zip files and had a few mandatory fields they would fill out (name and email address). However, uploading to a different URL confused users.

Now I am asking new users to first create an account at the mahara site and to upload the LEAP file  into their new account's file area. Then they should click a link in a menu which allows them to sent me a message about the uploaded file. I then login as them, download the file, delete the temporary account and upload the file as a new account. I then login as the new user and confirm that the email address is the same as on the temporary account. If it is not, I add it for them which triggers an email to them. In either case, I sent them a message informing them of the new account and username/password.This is definately not alarge scale processbut I do like the fact that all correspondence is done via the mahara site thus hopefully improving delivery of correspondence.
Something I did notice is that many users often have their institutional email address in the LEAP file and mahara sends the confirmation email to that account. Unfortunately quite a few users do not check that email anymore and so although the LEAP file is restored, the user never knows/uses it. 
 

04 March 2013, 23:00

Hello Dirk,

Thank you very much for describing your procedure. I thought the email address stored inthe Leap2A file might be problematic for the reason that you describe. I guess, a possibility could be to send another email asking for their institutional email address if the ones of the newly created account and the Leap2A file don't match.

If you have any thoughts to add for automating this process, please add them to the specs that Richard and I had jotted down at https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Developer_Area/Specifications_in_Development/Portfolio_Export_Import

Cheers

Kristina

19 March 2013, 8:38

Hi everyone,

I added the following new fearues:
1) Calendar view of plans curtesy Technische Universität Darmstadt

2) Coffee theme, our own development...cause sometimes you just want to surprice your users.

20 March 2013, 10:34

Very nice! Thanks for sharing all of these things.

21 April 2013, 15:16

Added a cool new feature today: When logged in, users can now switch the site theme as a personal preference. Also added a couple new themes.