01 September 2015, 0:49

15.04 - just noticed weird problem where pages do not seem to be sharing with groups. To reproduce...

- pick a page, edit, and go to the Share page tab
- Next to one of my groups I click the + and the group appears in the middle (I leave the dates)
- Click 'Save'
- I then go to 'Groups' and select the group in question. Under 'Pages shared with this group' it says '0 pages'
- Just to confirm I go to  Portfolio > Shared by me and it is correctly listed on this page

I also get an email to tell myself I've added the page... :)

Is this a known bug, am I doing something stupid or something else? It's not just me, others have confirmed this. 

01 September 2015, 12:09

Hello Howard,

It's not a bug but a feature: http://manual.mahara.org/en/15.04/blocks/general.html#index-9

You are on the default settings for that part of the "Group pages" block. Per default, only pages shared by members of the group are displayed. Change it to "Anybody" and you'll see the page.

Cheers

Kristina

 

01 September 2015, 19:22

Sounds like it :)

However, my immediate reaction is to ask how could anybody possibly know this? Wouldn't it be better to display (even to the group admin) a note that there are hidden shares? In fact, why are shares allowed in the first place if they (effectively) don't work?

Unless I'm missing the point somewhere, it seems a very odd feature.

01 September 2015, 20:40

Another point-ette here. And I'm sorry to be a moan but this totally confused four of us who are loosely titled "Educational Technologists"...

This setting is so buried that it took us 30 minutes to find it even with the instructions. So...

- Go to Group
- Go to pages tab
- Select Homepage
- Edit Homepage
- Find shared pages 'block'
- Click Edit button for shared pages block
- Find setting for visibility of shared pages
- Change it
- Save
- Go back to group front page and happily note that pages are visible

Could I respectfully suggest that this at the comedy end of bad UI design? In the nicest way... ;-)

02 September 2015, 8:50

Hello Howard,

Thank you for your feedback. The feature was added because others were having trouble seeing current shared pages esp. when using groups for assessment / feedback purposes. Groups in those cases are set up across academic years and more and more students share their page with a group. Often, they don't put an end date to the visibility. Thus, instructors needed to wade through pages upon pages to find the actual current ones that they needed to be concerned about.

I can think of two options at the top of my head which I posted to the wishlist item https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1491136

1. At the bottom, a note is displayed that says "There are X pages shared by non-group members. Display all shared pages." And the last sentence is linked so that the block content would change.

2. Users have a toggle option to display only pages by group members or by anybody thus being able to override the group admin's default setting for the block.

Would any of those make things easier or are there others that would be better?

For the time being, if you always want to view anybody's pages, you could make a code / database change for any newly created group.

Cheers

Kristina

 

06 September 2015, 13:40

Hello Howard,

By closer examination of the code by a developer it turns out that the default setting should have been on "By anybody".

This will be changed: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1491639

Cheers

Kristina

 

07 September 2015, 20:37

Sorry for taking so long to reply.

Thanks very much for your efforts on this. I'm sure it will make a difference. 

I don't consider myself entirely stupid (!) but I was completely at a loss with this issue. If you've never seen those edit pages before then I can't see any way you would discover them. Even having read the instructions they are almost impossible to find. They way it works does make a sort of strange logic but it's not remotely intuitive. 

Anyway, it all sounds good to me!

07 September 2015, 19:09

Another thing we should do, at least, is make it easier to edit the group homepage, by putting an "Edit" button right on the group homepage if you have edit permissions. We've added that to the user dashboard & user profile pages. The Group homepage is the last holdout of editable pages where eligible users don't see an "Edit" button right on it.

This would make it more obvious that the group homepage is an editable Page (something people don't always realize), thus making it more inviting for users to explore its configuration options.

I could have sworn that was already in the bug tracker, but apparently it is not. So I've gone ahead and added it: https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1492928

07 September 2015, 22:11

Hi Aaron

You've probably looked at 15.10dev. The "Edit this page" button is there for the group homepage. :-) I think either Naomi or Pat must have put it there.

Cheers

Kristina

 

12 October 2015, 1:25

I've changed the settings so that anyone's shared pages will be visible:

doublechecked collection and pages are shared with the group in question

But still nothing appears in the group homepage under shared collections or pages

 

What can I be doing wrong?