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Usability Improvements Calendar

This page collects suggestions to improve the usability of the Calendar object and its sub-features like "Consultation Hour" and others. Please add an new subchapter for each requirement. This will ease the splitting of this page at at later stage to define workpackages for a new release.

1 Requirements

1.1 Modifiy Single Calendar Event

The Jour Fixe takes place every second Monday. Therefore it is created in the ILIAS calendar with bi-weekly recurrence. But sometimes it falls on Easter Monday (same with Pentecost and Xmas) and a single event needs to be modified (in date / time). At the time being I have to delete the appointment and create a new one for this single event.
 
It would be much nicer if users can do this by modifying a selected event and give it another date / time (it is another question what happens within ILIAS with this event).
 
Similar requirements have already been posted to the pages "Break recurrency into single appointments" and "Modifying single appointment". Modification of calendar events has been appreciated by Jour Fixe and scheduled for 4.2 but postponed due to missing funding.

1.2 Presentation of Appointments of a Calendar

If I click on a calendar in the calendar selection box I get the "Calendar Details". This page has a list of "Assigned Appointments". Unfortunately, this list mixes single appointments with appointments of recurrence. The recurrence is mentioned in a special column at the right side. But the presentation itself gives a wrong impression of the appointments because a sequence of events is only mentioned with the very first appointment. You do not see that these are appointments of recurrence and if they have an end date or still going on.
 
Suggestion: Show every appointment but focus only on those who are close to the current date (by introducing a filter). If one would like to see "all appointments" or appointments from 2010 the user can change the filter settings.

1.3 Consultation Hours Presentation and Handling

1. The current presentation of consultation hours within the calendar could be improved. The day view is fine as there is enough space to show each appointment at that day but...
   • showing each avialable appointments in the week view is already a problem as there is less space in width so appointment texts need several lines and the hour cells are increasing in height (see also below). Suggestion: offer a kind of "placeholder" for all appointments within this hour like "15:00 Anwenderberatung (3 appointments)". If someone is interested to know more about these appointments one can click into this "placeholder" to get the overlay with all appointments in it.
   • showing each appointment of a day as single entries in the month view kills the layout of this view. Only chance is the mentioned "placeholder".
2. The link for making an appointment (booking a consultation hour) is far to small. This "action link" needs to be an eyecatcher because this is what people want to do on this screen in most cases.

Week view in 4.3

Month view in 4.3

1.4 Consultation Hours Management

1. The manage screen for consultation hours should get a filter to handle large amounts of appointments. Filter criteria could be "date and time" but also "show only available appointments"/"show only booked appointments" or filtering for participants.
2. It is impossible to see the length of a single consultation hour in the manage screen. This will become more relevant if we introduce a filter. Having a distinct column for this data would be nice (incl. option to show/hide column).
3. The length of an appointment is restricted to 59 minutes. But appointments with 60 or even 90 minutes are eligible, too. And a reduction to 5 minute steps (5, 10, 15, 20,...) for the length of an appointment is highly appreciated as it reduces the number of entries in the selection drop down (no one wants to create 17 minutes appointments).

1.5 Booking Notice for Consultation Hours

The current consultation hour booking needs two more text fields to improve communication between tutor and learner:

1. When adding a consultation hour slot it should be possible to add a simple text that is displayed with the booking form. This allows the tutor to present questions or requirements for the consultation hour.
2. A second field is offered as input field where the learner (the one who books the consultation hour) may or even has to enter text, e.g.: a short info what she/he wants to discuss with the tutor. This input field can be set as required input for booking.

Requirement has already been posted to page "Booking Notice for Consultation Hours", appreciated by Jour Fixe and scheduled for 4.3 but not implemented due to missing funding.
 
3. If tutor and learner use different language settings, the booking notice should be sent to each in their own language. So far, both receive the notice in the learner's language.

1.6 Show All Course / Group Relevant Events of Embedded Objects

While session dates are creating course / group events automatically and appear therefore in the course / group calendar, other embedded object types within a course / group are not able to do this. To improve the communication flow the calendar of a course / group should also show:

• Deadlines of exercise assignments
• Start and end dates of surveys
• Start and end dates of tests

This requirement has already been posted in better connection between calendar and courses/groups.

1.7 Download Session Materials From Appointment Page

It should possible to access course content assigned to a session straight from the calender. If a course / group administrator adds materials to a session, the course objects should be presented in the presentation view of this calendar appointment to make them accessible with one click only.
 
This requirement has already been posted in better connection between calendar and courses/groups.

1.8 Improved Notification About Appointments

The "subject" of a notification mail about a new event / appointment has to be more meaningful. At the time being ILIAS tells me only: "Terminänderung in Gruppe "ABC". A better solution would be:

• Terminänderung in [group/course/calender-name...]: [date of event] - [subject]

This requirement has already been posted in page Meaningful Notification About Calendar Event

2 Status

• Scheduled for: Not scheduled yet
• Funding: Required / Partly funded by / Funded by ...
• Development: Feature is to be developed by

3 Additional Information

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

4 Discussion

Zenzen, Enrico [ezenzen], 05 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

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