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Scheduled Reminders

1 Requirements

Learners and instructors could do with some help organising themselves or keeping track of deadlines and required actions in complex learning setups and scenarios. 
This help should not require a heavy-handed approach with set deadlines in ILIAS but a rather lighweight option for ILIAS users to trigger reminders of 'whatever'. 

Status in ILIAS 5.1 
In ILIAS 5.1 one can ad notes to objects in ILIAS: to flag pages  / objects to which one wants to get back to at some point. 
These notes are displayed only to the person that created them. 

• Notes can be crated using the content top actions , dispalyed within the object. If notes have been created, the number of notes is indicated by a status badge. 
• Notes can be created using the ▼-menu outside an object. If notes have been created, the number of notes is indicated by a text underneath the title and description. 

On the Personal Desktop there is a dedicated section "Notes and Comments" where all notes one has created are gathered and links to the respective object are presented. 

Requirement for ILIAS 5.2 
Notes are to be extened to serve time-management purposes. Upon creating a note users should be able to set a trigger for an e-mail reminder. 
The text of the note and a link to the place where it was created should be send to the note-creator to remind him or her of the task at hand. 

• The input modal for creating the note should be extended to allow for entering a date and / or time for the reminder to be send to oneself. It mighte be pre-set to the same time the following day as a default. Additionally a "Send reminder in 3 hours"-button might be offered. 
• It would be helpful if there is a scheduled reminder-note indicated next to the content top actions a mouse-over tooltip would indicate its time. We are not quite sure how this would be dealt with in the case that more than one reminder-note is created. It would be helpful it the icon could be switched from pin to alarmclock for the reminder-notes. 
• On the Personal Desktop the "Notes"-section and the "Notes"-block should be amended to show the upcoming reminders. We have no suggestions how this could be done or how has-been reminder-notes should be dealt with. 
• It would be nice to be able to to create reminder-notes that are not related to a specific object. We have no suggestions how this could be done. 

2 Additional Information

• Idea / concept: Marko Glaubitz, marko.glaubitz@rz.uni-freiburg.de, Universität Freiburg
• Interest in funding: partly possibly by the Universität Freiburg
• Maintainer: Killing, Alexander [alex]
• Implementation of the feature is done by (will be set by Jour Fixe / maintainer)
• Testcases by: (please add your name if you want to create the testcases for this feature)

3 Discussion

Glaubitz, Marko [mglaubitz], 07.07.2015: Any news on this feature? We woud really love to see this coming for 5.1.

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], Feb 01, 2016: We like this feature request but still have some questions:

• Is the Notes feature the right feature for this request? Or do we need a new "To Do Service" that allows to create and handle to-dos?
• If we prefer Notes, how does the screen "Personal Desktop » Notes and Comments" look like? Do we need to sort notes according to reminder dates (upcoming and delayed)?
• Do notes with a reminder date create a calendar event automatically?

Glaubitz, Marko [mglaubitz], 03.02.2016: Thanks for discussins this feature and for your questions. I'll try to address the three issues in the above order...

1. "To-Do-Service": I think that a task management system would be a nice thing to have, especially for all those who use ILIAS for project management purposes and for complex learning tasks that are assigned to students. Having something like a prompting system for upcoming or tasks with mail and/or on-screen alerts might be wirthwhile considering as well.But: are there any starting points / previous requests for a task service? Or is this such a big issue that it might not be realised before 2019? Who else is interested in this?
2. "Notes"-Widget on PD: I think sorting according to the time of scheduling might be a good option. Couldn't this be done accroding to the way the degree fo detail is selected in the "News" widget?
3. "Calendar Event": I thik this is a wonderful idea. A scheduled reminder should create an event in a calendar / the personal calendar. I would even go another step further and make it possible for ALL calendar items to be scheduled as a remider. In my view, this would be a new calendar item option "Reminder Date/Time"

There is on more issue that I would like to point out: reminders should no only be sent out once a day. That means that the standard Cron-Job might not be a good trigger / sending mechanism. For the reminders to be effective it should be possible to select an exact time for the reminder message disposal.

Reminder Date: ( ) Later OR ( ) Tomorrow OR ( ) Exact Time: [Date Picker] [Time Picker]

( ) radio button group, Preset "Later" means: "in 3 hours", Preset "Tomorrow" means "next day at 9 a.m." (the presets might be made configurable for the sysadmin)

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.

4 Implementation

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