Feature Wiki

Information about planned and released features

Tabs

Course Contacts and Support Contacts

Page Overview

[Hide]

1 Requirements

Users are provided with an opportunity to directly adress a content-related or ILIAS-related question to a skilled contact person throughout the whole system:

  • Whenever they run into a subject matter or learning issue they can adress themselves to a Course Contact.
  • If they have a question on operating ILIAS or a technical issue they can adress themselves to a Support Contact.
Users can do so using the Chat of the Awareness Tool: Users can open the Awareness Tool and are presented with tabs 'Personal Contacts', 'Course Contacts' and 'Support Contacts'.
The tabs 'Course Contacts' and 'Support Contacts' present users in free-floating standby. They are prepared to take user questions. Users can just start a chat coversation with them stating his or her problem. The Contact then supports the user in solving the problem.
This problem-centered conversation can take place directly facing the screen on which the learning issue or technical issue occurs. The conversation can take place 'in view' of the problem.
It is not required to request and approve of Course or Support Contacts: These special Contacts will be automatically listed in the Awareness Tool. We may have to develop a rule on the sorting of those special contacts within the tab.
The functionality of the special Contacts is the same as for Personal Contacts, please consult the Who is online? tool for awareness article for information.

Appointing Course Contacts
The existing Course Contacts are to be extended. The Course Contacts are displayed on the 'Info'-tab. We would like to change the layout a bit and have a two-column layout: on the lefthand-side all normal Info-tab-data and on the righthand-side something like a mini-profile of the Course Contacts will be displayed.

Mock-up 'Info'-tab

Appointing the Course Contacts should be carried out in the 'Members'-tab of the Course, in the 'Edit Participants'-screen. The tables should get an extra column 'Course Contact' with a checkbox. Users that get activated as course contacts will be displayed on the Info-Tab of the Course and in the Awareness Tool of Course Participants in the 'Course Contacts'-tab.
 

Appointing Support Contacts
In the Administration-Panel in the Awareness Tool section there has to be an entry field for user names / names.
If names are entered here that person will be displayed at the 'Support Contact'-tab of the Awareness Tool of all users online.

2 Additional Information

3 Discussion

CK 20150417: I would suggest to use a different presentation of tutors on the info tab. Those business cards tend to say "dont use ILIAS to contact the tutors", because they emphasize on email/telefone etc. It also adds alot of text to the page. I would suggest a more visual approach and display course contacts similar to the members galery [image + firstname + lastname]. It could really be the same widget, though it might need some refurbishment itself (=larger images). The course contacts could be a section within the course info tab. The contact information would then be available if I follow the link to the profiles of the course contacts. I think it would benefit the general appeal of the Info page to reduce the amount of text to a bare minimum and give course administrators the possibility to add those texts they need (another story..).

JF 27 Apr 2015: We appreciate the feature and schedule it for 5.1. It would also be ok to use roles for system wide support contacts instead of single user assignment to the feature. System wide support contacts should replace the existing administrator contact link in the footer. A click on the footer link should then open a list of the profiles of the contacts, similar to the one on the info page above.

Kunkel, Matthias [mkunkel], August 19, 2015: I had a look at the current implementation in EDGE. It's nice but I was a bit confused when I clicked on a "Profile" link of one of my contacts because I get presented the user's profile (fine) but no way to go back to the page where I started except using the browser's "Back". When I click on a user name in the forum I see the profile, too - but get an ILIAS-side "Back" button. We should implement something like this, too. Or present the profile in a modal (and make this the new standard presentation for profiles).

4 Implementation

Killing, Alexander [alex], 26 June 2015: A first implementation is merged to the edge branch.

4.1 Configuration of Course Support Contacts

The members section incourses shows a new column "Support Contact" for administrators and tutors.

4.2 Presentation of Course Support Contacts

Presentation is based on profile and info screen presentation in ILIAS 5.0. Redesign could be discussed.

4.3 Configuration of System Support Contacts

4.4 Presentation of System Support Contacts

The link "Contact Administration" is not a mailto: link anymore, instead it lists the system support contacts.

Presentation is based on profile presentation in ILIAS 5.0. Redesign could be discussed.

Test Cases

Test cases completed at July 10, 2015 by Tödt, Alexandra [atoedt]

Approval

Tested successfully and approved at August 28th by André Mersch remaining free of deepening testing and closing approval in beta version.

Last edited: 2. Apr 2019, 20:30, Samoila, Oliver [oliver.samoila]