12 April 2014, 0:06

Hi,

Whilst reading through https://mahara.org/artefact/file/download.php?file=363268&view=1088, it got me thinking and wondering whether a user needs to have a separate dashboard page to edit.

Could this not just be the users profile page, but specify whether a block is viewable to only you, to other users only or to all users (possbily some of these are automatically set that way and not changeable) and then checks done to verify what is viewed by who? 

Thoughts?

14 April 2014, 12:24

Hi Wullie,

That would be another way to do it, sure.

I think the main advantage of the current system, though, is that it makes it easier to have a very different dashboard and profile page. And since they serve different purposes, for most users they probably will have quite different content.

Having them as separate pages also makes for a simpler interface. We already hear lots of complaints from users about how cluttered the block configs are, so we have to think hard about whether each new block config setting is worth the additional clutter.

Cheers,

Aaron

14 April 2014, 18:18

HIi Wullie, Hi Aaron,

this topic is interesting!

I was thinking about, that it would be great to create dashboard pages for an institution, instead or additionally than user dashboard pages..

We are using an institution for every single school, and it would be nice, if the institution admin (a school teacher) could create and design their own dashboard look. Up to now, (if I'm right) a insitution member only can see the "site dashboard".

Regards,

Christian

15 April 2014, 11:42

Hi Christian,

Do you mean that you want to be able to customize the user's dashboard, depending on what institution they belong to?

There are actually 3 components to the dashboard, that you might customize:

1. The topmost part of the dashboard is a static chunk of text. In Mahara 1.8 and earlier, this can be customized at the site level via the "Edit static pages" admin option. In Mahara 1.9, we renamed these to "Static pages", and made it so that institutions can customize them!

2. Below that you have the "homeinfo", or what I call the "cheat sheet". This is the introductory graphic shown to new users. Its content is determined by the user's current theme, and you can give institutions custom themes, so that would be one (sorta clunky) way to customize the Dashboard per-institution.

3. And below that you have the blocks in the user's own dashboard page. The blocks they start out with are copied from a site template page. There's a patch in review for 1.10 (which should be out next September) that will let the site admin customize the default dashboard template, but no implementation to make it institution-specific yet, although I predicted to the devs that would be the first thing people would ask for. Here's the bug tracker for that: https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1303551

Cheers,

Aaron

18 April 2014, 1:08

Hi Aaron,

thanks, thats exactly what I meant!

I like the idea, that institution admins ( in our case "school admins") can edit the content for their own institution as you mention in point 1(->"static pages")! 

So if this is already in v 1.9 they'll be very happy !..me too 

#3 , I guess would be a "nice to have".

Thanks for pointing this out!!

Regards,

Christian