22 May 2024, 21:59

Hi 

We're looking at how we manage users/content in Mahara now and I have a few questions I hope someone can clarify for me.

• If we set a user account lifetime and the account expires:
  • Does the portfolio content for that account remain in place?  
  • Does any archived portfolio content remain in place?
  • Can the account be re-activated?  
  • If re-activated, can user see their previous content?
• If we set user account inactivity time:
  • Does the portfolio content for that account remain in place?  
  • Does any archived portfolio content remain in place?
  • Can the account be re-activated?
  • If re-activated, can users see their previous content?
• If we delete user accounts:
  • Does all their portfolio content get deleted too?
  • Does any archived portfolio content get deleted?
  • Can a new account be created (via LDAP) for that same user (at a later date)?

We would want students to have access to an account for the duration of their degree course.

Mahara Admin would need access to their portfolio work (where it has been submitted for assessment) for a period of years after the student has graduated (to conform to regulations).

Also wondering how others deal with the issue of accounts and retention/archiving if anyone is able to share.

Thanks

Yvonne

23 May 2024, 14:49

Hi Yvonne,

Thank you for your questions. Let me answer them.

If we set a user account lifetime and the account expires or if we set the account inactivity time, all portfolio content stays in place. The only thing a person can't do if they miss logging back in is that they can't log in and you need to reactivate their account. No content is lost. The password even stays the same. It's just that they need an admin intervention to log back in again. You would change the expiry date on their account settings page.

If we delete accounts,

• all content stored in the personal area of the account holder is deleted irrevocably. That includes all artefacts, including files, journal entries etc., and portfolios. It is possible to retrieve content from a backup, but friend connections, sharing permissions, group connections and other interactions won't come along.
• content that the person created in groups is not deleted, but the owner is set to 'Deleted account' so that no personal information is shared from Mahara any more. Of course, if they signed off on forum posts with their name or their name is mentioned in other content, then that would still be visible.
• archived portfolio content is not deleted as that is not stored in a person's personal area.
• a new account can be created for the same person later on. They will not have access to their previous data though (which would have been deleted though any way).

Submitted portfolios that have been archived are available to admins via Admin menu → Groups → Submissions → Archived submissions. Since you are talking about years that you need to archive data, I would recommend to regularly, i.e. at least once per year, to save all submissions on an external storage, download the CSV file that contains the names of people and the path to their portfolios and store that offsite so that this data can be removed from the online storage for Mahara and thus is not backed up all the time. It keeps your data storage lower and you can be assured that you have access offsite where other assessment data is stored as well.

Cheers

Kristina

24 May 2024, 4:03

Thanks for the detailed response Kristina, that's really helpful.

Two clarifying queries if that's ok:

1. Alongside the CSV export (which gives links to the 'archived submission' zips) I'm guessing we also need to export the zips themselves?  How do we do that bit?  I can see there's a 'bulk export' admin function to export portfolios by user, but this isn't the 'snapshot' submission folders we need.
2. In 23.04 there's a new feature ('Create copy when submitting a portfolio') - does this just relate to submissions within Mahara (i.e. in a Group) or does it also relate to submissions made to Moodle?

Thanks again.

Yvonne

27 May 2024, 10:30

Hi Yvonne,

Yes, you would also need to download the zip files. That's best done directly on the server as all zips are in one folder (and there in subfolders). The folder path is mentioned in the CSV file.

Every submission that is made, no matter whether in a Mahara group or via the LMS, will have a copy made instead of the original portfolio being submitted.

Cheers

Kristina

28 May 2024, 22:49

Thank you for the helpful responses :)