08 August 2022, 23:23

The student has reported being unable to edit blocks in her portfolio. Message is "The text you have selected is not editable on this page."

The student reports having copied this portfolio from one of her other portfolios that is locked/submitted. 

Some digging in the database... 

The artefact_views table shows links for the block back to both the old and the new view. It appears that the copy doesn't create new versions of the block. So it remains uneditable due to being still linked to the locked portfolio. 

Is this expected, or has something gone wrong? What can be done to copy a locked Portfolio and end up with one that can be edited?

09 August 2022, 9:13

Hi Howard,

Can you please provide some more details about which blocks you are talking about? Is it a note block or an image block or some other block? When artefacts are locked by submitting a page, they will be locked from editing on all other pages.

Thank you

Kristina

09 August 2022, 10:29

This is a collection. The page in question consists mostly of text blocks. 

The original collection was submitted to Moodle and is locked. The student copied the collection but now each text block in the copy is also locked even though (in the copy) it's possible to enable editing on each page. 

The text blocks are now linked to both the original views (in the collection) and the new copy. It's as if copy does not copy the text blocks, it only copies the views and links the original artefacts. 

I'm a bit hazy about how all this hangs together so I hope this makes more sense.

09 August 2022, 15:56

Hi

It looks to be related to the 'Note' block.

I can replicate the error message if I update the configdata of a Note (textbox) block in the block_instance table in the database to point at the artefactid of a different block owned by another person.

I'm not sure how that situation happened normally though.

In a normal situation when you copy a block from another person it should update the copied block to point to the copied artefact.

Cheers

Robert

09 August 2022, 19:23

I think the copy works but the artefact has TWO links - the original (page) view and the copy. The former is locked so that (I assume) is enough to result in the aretefact being locked. 

I guess that's my question - if you copy a collection, does it copy *everything*? Do you get new copies of all the artefacts? Should copying a submitted/locked collection result in a new collection where all elements can be edited (because they're different). 

If it should - what might have gone wrong here?

10 August 2022, 10:17

Hi Howard,

If you make a copy of your own portfolios, artefacts are not copied but referenced so that you don't double up on things. Since notes are artefacts, they are referenced. If you used 'Text' blocks instead, a full copy would be made as they only live on blocks. Therefore, if you wanted to change the artefacts on the copy, you'd need to create them / upload them new since you don't want to re-purpose them.

If you make a copy of somebody else's portfolio, then the artefacts will be copied into your own area rather than referenced.

Cheers

Kristina

10 August 2022, 19:30

"f you used 'Text' blocks instead, a full copy would be made as they only live on blocks"

I must admit, you've lost me here. So somethings on a view are artefacts and some are not and act differently? 

Anyway, this leaves us with a problem - or a question... if (as has happened here) the student has submitted a collection to Mahara and it is now locked they cannot edit it. Which is expected. So they want to use it for something else and copy it. It' doesn't work because some or part of its contents are not copied they are just referenced - they are still locked. Am I ok so far?

The collection has about 20 pages and the student won't want to have to recreate it from scratch. Is there no workaround for this? It really sounds like copying locked collections (or simple views, I suppose) doesn't work. 

Having said all that, I'm confused why we have not encountered this before.

17 August 2022, 8:26

Hi Howard,

Thanks for your patience. I needed a minute of quiet to try to post this and not stumble over my words. Let's see how I'm going to go. :-)

There are three ways of adding text to a page:

• 'Text' block
• 'Note' block
• Journal entries

Notes and journal entries

Both notes and journal entries are proper artefacts that live in the artefact table. Therefore, they adhere to the typical artefact rules such as locking of content when portfolios are locked (I think only the résumé fields don't fall under this rule). They can also be repurposed in other pages by being selected in the block configuration. Since they ultimately access a single artefact, if that artefact is locked because it is part of a submitted portfolio, the artefact is locked on all pages. You can still add it, but not change it.

You cannot change journal entries while they are submitted. However, if you made a copy of a page, you can change the content of a note because you can make a copy of it and edit that copy. The original, submitted note stays as it is, but the copy can be changed.

Mahara 1.5: Introduction of reusable text

Now why do we have the 'Text' block? Many years ago, we only had 'Text' because the idea was to use it only for quick notes / scribbles so to speak, and use journal entries for re-usable content. But then people wanted to re-use text blocks on other pages as well. That's why in Mahara 1.5 we changed the 'Text' block to also use the exact same text on other pages. That was really handy for creating templates and fixing spelling mistakes and other things across all templates in one go before rolling it out to students. I myself was saved quite a bit of work a few times when adjustments needed to be made across several template collections...

Mahara 1.10: Splitting of text into 'Notes' and 'Text'

However, with all the options of using the same content, finding content from other notes, and making a copy, some people found that this text block was too complicated to work with and wanted to have a simplified version without all those bells and whistles. So, come along Mahara 1.10 where we renamed the existing 'Text' block that had re-usable content into 'Note' block and introduced a simple 'Text' block for quick adding of content. Since it was meant to only be a quick thing on a page, it was not turned into an artefact. It's a block similar to an external media block: If it's deleted, it is gone.

Over the years, we've added a couple of extra features to the 'Text' block so it can behave like other blocks. For example, it can be tagged and thus added to another page when you create the page based on tags, but you won't find the content of 'Text' anywhere else than on the page in contrast to notes and journal entries that can be found in the main navigation's 'Create' menu.

So, can I copy submitted portfolios and edit their content?

Yes, you can copy submitted portfolios and edit their content, depending on what that content is:

• You can move blocks around and remove them as that doesn't delete artefacts.
• You won't be able to change properties of images or other files and can't delete them, but you can still add or remove them from your page.
• If you have 'Note' blocks and want to change their content on the copied page, make a copy of the note in question in the block configuration.
• If you used 'Text' blocks, you can edit their content on the copied page without restrictions.

Does this make things a little bit clearer?

Cheers

Kristina

19 August 2022, 23:20

Ahh.... that helps a lot

The extensive explanation is much appreciated :)