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Selecting recipients for group and course mails

1 Description

Course- or groupmembers want to send emails to the group but maybe not to all members. There should be a possibility to select which members get an e-mail like the course- or groupadmins always have (via checkboxes).

Sending e-mails to the members of one's courses and groups can be done via the Mail Component or via the Member Tab of a course or group.
 

1.1 Current Behavior

The two screen-shots below show the status in ILIAS 4.4.:

Mail to Members in Members Tab of a Course

1. Click in "Next"

2. Write mail

Mail to Members in Mail Component

1. Click on "My Courses"

2. Select course, click "Exceute" to carry out the default command "Mail to Members".

Alternative: select command "List Members", select some members and then click "Execute".

3. Write mail

1.2 Desired Behavior

Both ways send bulk mails to all members. This is not the desired behaviour. Members should be presented with the opportunity to view the full list of members, select all or some members from the list and write to the selected recipients.

According to the JF Comment from the Discussion below three options are required:

• Option 1: "Send Mail to all Members" should trigger the Mail form to open, comprising all members, tutors and administrators as recipients using the role syntax.
• Option 2: "Send Mail to Selected Members" should open a new screen to select users from a structured list.
• Option 3: "Send Mail to Selected Roles" should open a new screen to either feature a tool bar with four button "Members and Tutors", "Members", "Tutors" "Course Administrators" which upon click open the Mail form with the recipients using the role syntax already inserted. OR the Screen with the checkboxes for Role Relection should get revamped with a headline, proper options carrying informative by-lines and a "Next" button.

1.3 Mock-Up and Suggested Usability Improvments

2 Status

• Idea / concept: Hübsch, Wolfgang [wolfganghuebsch], Tödt, Alexandra [atoedt]
• Funding: Databay AG AG
• Maintainer: Jansen, Michael [mjansen]
• Development: Feature is to be developed by Databay AG : Ahmad, Nadia [nadia]
• Test cases by: Kunkel, Matthias [mkunkel] (only adaption)

3 Additional Information

• If you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding, please contact: Wolfgang Hübsch, admin@bbs-ilias.de

4 Discussion

JF 18 Feb 2013: We appreciate the feature. If implemented this should be streamlined with the possibility to list groups/courses in the mail system itself. In both locations it should be easily possible to send mails to

• All members
• Selected roles
• Selected members

of one (group/course) or multiple (mail system) groups or courses. We envisage to use an accordion for theses three options (creation-screen-like).

Hi, theres something I'd like to add here: Right now _all_ different member-groups are pre-selected after clicking on "Mail to Members". The ILIAS Administrator should have a possibilty to define which groups are pre-selected. Most of the time people just want to reach the learners and so they always have to un-select the other two checkboxes..
 
Kind regards,
Frank

JF 14 Oct 2013: Changed status to "not started yet" due to missing resources / contract.

JL 14 Jul 2014: Somehow a wrong JF discussion/comment ended up on this page (Course Autostart Single Object) and was removed/edit by HJL some months ago. I'm not sure if this feature has ever been discussed for 4.5.

AT, 2014 July, 14th: I have severely edtited the acrticle above. I hope it does still cover the originals authors case.

JF 21 July 2014: Matthias will add an additional mockup for the "mail to members" workflow, major goal: add the possibility to list the members of the course/group. If the necessary code changes are small we would accept the change as a usability for 4.5.
 
Please re-schedule to an upcoming JF after adding the screenshots.

Matthias Kunkel, July 22, 2014: I have added » mockups for the solution we dicussed yesterday at the JF. BTW: If we make this change, couldn't we also do the "Sub-Tab to Button" change we discussed already in the past? I mean: having a real "Button" for "Mail to Members" instead of a sub-tab? This feature is much to important to get lost on tab 4.

JF 6 Aug 2014: We support the first mockup added by Matthias under 1.3 and accept it as a usability fix for 4.5. The second screen (member list) should be re-used by the existing implementation in the mail system (without role column).

AT 2015-02-19: The Jour Fixe has decided that this one should be implemented as a usability fix. But there was no time for it before 5.0.
This should become a part of 5.1

Matthias Kunkel, 02 Mar 2015: A usability fix can still be made when a stable release has already been published. So I see no need to wait until 5.1 and add it to the JF agenda as 5.0 development issue.

JF 27 Apr 2015: We schedule this as a usability fix for 5.1. If this is well tested and technical effort minimal, we may back-port it to 5.0 as well.

5 Implementation

October 07, 2015: Feature has been implemented as bug fix for course mails and group mails by Ahmad, Nadia [nadia] for 5.1.

 
Option 1 – course or group mail shall be send to all members of one or more roles:

Option 2 – course or group mail shall be send to selected members of the group:

Option 2, step 2 – ILIAS lists all users that are member in at least one role of this group / course and shows also the membership for all users:

Test Cases

• http://testrail.ilias.de/index.php?/cases/view/7019 : Mail an Mitglieder schicken • per Button
• http://testrail.ilias.de/index.php?/cases/view/5865 : Mail an Mitglieder senden (über 'Teilnehmerverwaltung')

Approval

• October 08, 2015: Feature has been approved by Kunkel, Matthias [mkunkel].