Teams

This feature request is a part of the Concept for Learning Communities. 
To implement Teams as put forward in the article the following sub-projects have to be completed: 

1. Group Templates
2. Category for Huge Amount of Data
3. Customisable Main Menu
4. Groups and Courses: News Timeline

1 Requirements

Users have a place of their own to collaborate informally. They can create their own resources and and work together.  They can create a container for collaboration autonomously from i.e. their course administrators. Teams will be especially configured group objects. 

Deletion by Cron-Job 

• When is a Teams considered to be orphaned or ready to die? These Teams are to be deleted by a cron-job. This cron-jobs needs to be informed what to delete. 
• ILIAS Admins can specify after what time of inactivity an automated reminder will be sent to all Team-Admins that the team is flaged as inactive and about the impeding automatic deletion of the team. ILIAS Admins can specify a period of time to elapse betwen the reminder and the actual deletion. 

2 Additional Information

• Idea / concept: Tödt, Alexandra [atoedt]
• Interest in funding: partly funded by Universität Freiburg
• Maintainer: Meyer, Stefan [smeyer]
• Implementation of the feature is done by (company, developer)
• Tested by / status: (name, e-mail), (status information set after implementation)

3 Discussion

Matthias Kunkel, 26 Feb 2015: The concept of a "team is already used in the Exercise object. Is the team in an exercise just a specific team that exists to create a team upload? Or is it something totally different? If so, how we avoid confusion?

AT, 2015-02-26: Matthias brought up a valid point. I see these concepts as different and thus they should be labled differently. I will think about it. Once we have a clear concept, we can put a name on it.

HJL., 9.3.2015:
 
There are at least ways for ILIAS-admins to help to give users more collaboration-possibilities:
a) Allow users to create groups in a category. (see iTools of Unibe https://ilias.unibe.ch/goto_ilias3_unibe_cat_7374.html).
b) Create a new "Didactic Template" in courses and groups: Course- or group-admins can add a group-folder: This gives members the possibility to create groups.
 
But we agree, collaboration functionalities could be improved. We suggest:
 
Instead of introducing a new setting in courses, and a new "Add Team"-button, and a new group container, we suggest to improve the existing functionalities.
 
Introducing a new "Enable Teams" (or "Enable Workgroups") in the Configuration settings of the Personal Desktop/Personal Workspace.

• ILIAS should implement a new independant service: System-Administrators can enable "Working Groups" in the Admin-menu => Personal Desktop => Personal Workspace

• Now in the "My Workspace"-area, users could add  "Working groups". Working groups should will have more or less the same functionalities as groups already have.
• These groups will be private groups, similar to private files, blogs and more.
• It is possible to join a group if you get the link from a user. It is possible to add a person manually to a group. It is possible to join a group with a link for direct admission.

• All group admins and all group members of a "Working group" see their group in the tab "My Resources"

• Admins can specify what time of inactivity is necessery (incativity of all admins in a working group) before an automated reminder will be sent to all working-group admins, and they can specify the additional time of inactivity to a) flag the course as inactive or to b) Delete a course.
• Admins have the possibility to list and search for Working-groups, for 3rd level support

Matthias Kunkel, April 08, 2015: @ Alexandra: I am not sure if the concept of ‘Teams’ presented at this page and the ‘Teams’ in an exercise are really two very different things. In both cases we have a number of learners that do something together ‘as a team’. It is not a group in the way ILIAS understands groups. This is why I would like to distinguish ‘teams’ from ‘groups’. In ILIAS, ‘groups’ are a specific kind of container inside the repository - while ‘teams’ are more situated outside the repository.

4 Implementation

{please give a description of the final implementation and add screenshots if possible}

Test Cases

Test cases completed at {date} by {user}

• {Test case number linked to Testrail} : {test case title}

Approval

Approved at {date} by {user}.