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Ignore Ownership in Folders

1 Description

Ownership is a general concept in ILIAS. If a user creates an object in the repository this user gets all basic permissions for this object automatically (except « Edit Permissions ») - even if the user has no role with appropriate permissions. In daily use this concept has advantages but also a disadvantage:

• Advantage of this concept: a user will always be able to edit, copy or delete an object she or he has created.
• Disadvantage: some « hand-in » scenarios are not possible due to the ownership principle. If you want to realise a folder as a postbox where users can upload files they should - in some scenarios - not be able to edit submitted files later. But this cannot be realised with permission settings due to ownership concept.

Possible solutions: It is not desirable to deactivate the ownership principle for the entire ILIAS because this concept is often very helpful. But there should be a possibility to "ignore" it in a specific didactic scenario (like the « folder-as-postbox » mentioned above). And this behaviour should be restricted to a selected folder (IMHO the container object that would be mostly used for this setting) and to file objects that are created within this folder (a file object is the only object type that can be created without editing it).
 
I see two options for implementation:

1. a special type of folder that does not offer the ADD NEW ITEM menu but only an upload box (maybe incl. a comment field).
   • As long as files are inside this 'inbox folder' they can only be seen and edited with Edit Settings permission (usually hold by tutors).
   • The ownership information is kept for these file objects but users have no access to these files - so they can't edit them
   • The type of folder can later be changed into a regular folder. In this case the ownership is respected again - like known from a default folder.
2. a special type of exercise that is reduced to the hand in process of files and that keeps these files as file object to reuse them later.
   • The presentation of this exercise type needs to simplified (compared to default exercise with assignments) to make it as simple as a dropbox.
   • It has to be possible to take all submitted files and offer them as default file objects in a regular folder.

2 Status

• Scheduled for: Not scheduled yet
• Funding: Required
• Development: Feature is to be developed by tbd

3 Additional Information

• If you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding, please contact: Hansjörg Lauener, Universität Bern / Matthias Kunkel

4 Discussion

JF 9 Jul 2012: We see the general need to realise this scenario and would like to support it. However we need to discuss the technical concept with the responsible maintainers, Stefan Meyer and Jörg Lützenkirchen. We will postpone it to the next JF.

JF 23 Jul 2012: We appreciate the idea and schedule it for 4.4. However we need to clarify some open issues. We currently prefern the second solution, the implementation within the excercise object. It should be possible to add this kind of simple mode here.
 
If the submitted files should be made available as file objects, the tutor would need to trigger a kind of "export" that would e.g. create a folder within the same container as the exercise object and add the file objects to this container. The ownership of these newly created objects could then be optionally set to the original uploaders or to the tutor. Would this be ok?

Simon Moor HSLU 2 Aug 2012: We would like to have the functionality in folders, so it'll be easier to use. Our professors and also the secretary staff do not use the excercise object. Please have a look at our version:
1. create a folder
2. convert it to Postbox by one button
3. later convert it back by one button - very simple!!!

Simon Moor HSLU 7 Aug 2012: To create this scenario, you'd only need to be able to break the Owner in a Folder. That's all the magic we do in our patch, other things are gui/cosmetic. We have an additional feature to change the name of an Object. When two people upload "Document 1" then it'll be renamed by adding student name and upload date, so a teacher can distinguish the two documents.
This is also a very important feature for us.

Matthias Kunkel, 13. August 2012: What exactly happens when you transform a folder into a postbox? Do you change the owner or do you only disable the owner check for objects within this folder?

JF 8 Jul 2013: We discussed the feature again today. Unfortunately we did not come to a conclusion. We need to separate the concepts of the object types ILIAS. If folders become objects for handing in files, the concepts begin to become "blurry". In the case of the HSLU the features of the postbox may be enought, but once this is realised in ILIAS other users may ask for additional features like scheduling or learning progress. In this case the postbox feature would become an exercise "light".
 
We still think that controlling the ownership permissions could be a more general RBAC feature, but would not like to introduce additional complexity (like an option for folders that triggers ownership permissions) only because of the postbox scenario.
 
We remove the scheduling for 4.4 (also because there are no ressources left for its implementation).

Zenzen, Enrico [ezenzen], 03 AUG 2022: This request no longer fulfills the requirements of the Feature Wiki. In consultation with the maintainer I change the status of the feature request to "Redundant / outdated". If the request is still relevant, please update template and mockups.

5 Implementation