Customizable Online Help Packages

1 Requirements

The ILIAS Online Help should be customizable to the configuration and wording in a given productive platform.  Administrators should be able to change the online help package. To do so administrators will 

1. customize the original package for the first time
2. maintain customizations while updating ILIAS
3. maintain customizations while updating the help package.

1.1 Administrators customize the original help package for the first time

Administrators can customize their original online help package doing one or more of the following 

• Search and replace specific terms throughout the package 
• Add, delete or edit the content of pages in the package
• Changing titles of pages or chapters
• Deactivating pages and chapters
• Assign or de-assign screen-IDs  to chapters 

• delete pages or chapters
• move pages or chapters 
• add  pages or chapters (Antonia wants it though)

To meet the maintenance requirements we suggest to ID all pages and chapters of the honline help package starting with 5.2. 

1.1.1 Search and replace specific terms throughout the package (Must have)

The online help package corresponds with the language file of the official ILIAS major release. If a local language file is employed at the given installation, the help and the interface will not match. The help has to be edited to match the local language file or small patches.

1. Administrators open the online help learning module in their ILIAS installation's administration for editing. 
2. Administrators enter a search term i.e. "Repository" / "im Magazin".
3. ILIAS lists of all those chapter titles or pages comprising the search term. 
4. Administrators enter a replacement term for the search term, i.e., "Learning Content" / "in 'Lerninhalte'".
5. Administrators can replace the search term by the replacement term
   • Administrators can bulk replace all instances of the search term at once [Replace all]
   • Administrators can replace every instance of the search term individually [Replace and move on to next]
6. ILIAS saves the customized help package.
7. Administrators activate customized help package. 

1.1.2 Other Customizations  (Must have)

Administrators have more requirements: 

• Change titles of chapters or pages: If a page is completely re-purposed to include highly relevant information on legal requirements, campusmanagesment Interfaces or authentifaction matters. This is needed, when ILIAs is integrated with other tools and information about this connection is to be imparted to users. 
• Add, edit or delete the content of a page: Changing pages to reflect the workflows of patched functionality i.e. My Workspace at the University of Cologne. 
• Deactivate pages and chapters: Hiding texts about functionality that is switched of or patched away at the platform i.e. copying at the University of Cologne. 
• Assign or de-assign screen-IDs: To re-purpose chapters they are sometimes needed to be displayed in new places. 

1. Administrators open the online help learning module in their ILIAS installation's administration for editing. 
2. Administrators open a page and add, edit or delete the content of a page. 
3. Administrators change titles of chapters or pages.  
4. Administrators deactivate pages and chapters.
5. Administrators assign screen-IDs to a chapter.
6. Administrators save the customized help package.
7. Administrators activate customized help package. 

1.1.3 Logging Customizations

Administrators need a log about the changes they made. The changes should be logged and the log should be stored

• ID: ID of edited page or chapter
• Date: date stamp when edit was made
• User: Name of person who made the edit
• Nature of edit: title edit, content edit, screen-ID edit
• Content of edit: before and after 
• reason for edit: to be filled in by editor 

1.2 Maintaining Customizations 

1.2.1 Maintain customizations while updating ILIAS

Updating ILIAS should not temper the customizatons made to help package locally.  What might come with a new ILIAS release?

1.2.2 Maintain customizations while updating the help package

Administrators would install a new help package along with their customized one. Administrators open their log and check whether the edits they made last time are still required / vaild.

1. Administrators open their log and click on the ID of the first edit.
2. ILIAS opens a comparison page contrasting the page ID x of the customized help and the page of the ID x of the new help package next to each other. Changes, omissions and additions are highlighted. 
3. Administrators can choose to overwrite the page in the new package with the customized one. A fresh log is started. Administrators can choose to keep the new page and not make any changes. Administrators can edit the new page. 
4. ILIAS somehow gets back to the log that the administrator worked from. 
5. Administrator click on the next ID.....

Administrators can view additions lists: 

• List of new pages: Pages with IDs that are not contained in the customized version are listet. 
• List of Screen-IDs: List of new Screen-IDs, Screen-IDs that died, diferences in assignments 

2 Additional Information

• Idea / concept: Alexandra Tödt toedt (at) leifos.com
• Funding: Required
• Maintainer: Alexander Killing
• Development: Feature is to be developed by
• Testcases:
• Tested by:

3 Discussion

JF 7 Jan 2013: We agree that a customization of the help packages is needed in the long run. As the online help has just been released with 4.3 we need to collect user experiences in the next months first. It may be necessary to make some fundamental changes to the concepts and this should be done before we add customization features in the core. So we keep this discussion open for now but the implemenation of it may be more a 4.5 feature than a 4.4 feature.
 
Please collect cases of your customization needs on this page (similar to the "repository" renaming case).

4 Implementation

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