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Creating Groups from Who-is-online?

This article is a part of the Learning Communities projects. It specifically adresses the creation of groups as Teams.

Related Article: Inviting Users to Join Groups

1 Initial Problem

Group Objects are being placed in a dedicated category allowing for the special requirements of advertising and navigating that come with informal learning groups.
Main creation scenario: Users have permission to create Groups in this specific category  by the "Add New Object" workflow, and then adds members.  However this main creation scenario requires a lot of prerequisite knowledge and competent actions from the user: 

1. User manages finding the special category for informal collaboration. 
2. User manages creating a group. 
3. User manages adding a member to the group.

The bar is too high: We need an auxiliary creation scenario the short-cuts those demanding tasks. 

2 Conceptual Summary

Step 1: Click "Add to Group"

Step 2: Add Member to existing or newly created group

The chart below presents the different courses of action depending on the "Create Group" and "Manage Members" permissions of a users on the one hand-side and the availability of a group on the other side. 

In ILIAS 5.2 Groups disregard whether a user actually wants to be added to the group or not. If a User has the persmission "Manage Members", this User has the chance to directly add any user to the group for whom they know the login / name. 

Users have to "Unsubscribe From Group" if they do not want to be part of that informal learning group.

3 User Interface Modifications

3.1 List of Affected Views

• New entry in "Who is online?" menu: "Add to Group"
• New entry in Administration > 'Who is online?' Tool Settings > User Actions: "Add to Group"
• New view: "Select Existing Group" dialogue
• New view: "Create Group" dialogue

3.2 User Interface Details

New entry  in "Who is online?"

New entry in Administration > 'Who is online?' Tool Settings > User Actions: "Add to Group" with a checkbox

New "Select Existing Group" 

Create Group 

3.3 New User Interface Concepts

4 Technical Information

No technical issues.

5 Contact

• Author of the Request: Alexandra Tödt, Marko Glaubitz
• Maintainer: Stefan Meyer, Alexander Killing
• Implementation of the feature is done by: leifos 

6 Funding

If you are interest in funding this feature, please add your name and institution to this list.

• ...

7 Discussion

Killing, Alexander [alex], 8 Dec 2016: "Teams are Group Objects being placed in a dedicated category allowing for the special requirements of advertising and navigating that come with teams." - I would give up the "teams" term completely. We use groups and allow to make them usable for learners in a mass number with little administrative overhead.

I think the "invitation process" is incomplete. We may consider to skip it for now, since it makes everything complex. The alternative would be to just add the user ot the group. What is missing:

• We need an overview "Invited Users" in the group. Group admininstrators must be able to add and remove users to the invitation list. Notificatoin mails should be written on all actions. We might need the same for courses.
• Each user needs a personal "Open Invitations" list, since the links in emails may get lost. Also here accept and decline actoins need notifications (for the group/course administrators).

Killing, Alexander [alex], 12.12.2016: I support the request in todays version.

Amstutz, Timon [amstutz], 19.12.2016: I do not like to include the group creation processes in here. Since all those proceses take place in some strange netherworld (or modal, I am not sure from the screens) I would like to reduce the interaction and complexity of those screens as much as possible. My Proposal: 

• User has NO permission to add other user into some existing group: Option is not displayed (After all, the option is named, "add to group" and not "Add to group or create group and Add" or similar.
• User has permissions to add user into some existing group:
  • Only One: Selected user is directly added.
  • Multiple: Group has to be selected, user is added.

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]: Dec 19, 2016: We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule it for 5.3. We would like to show at least five repository nodes where a user can create a group or has 'Manage Members' permission to improve usability for users creating a new group or adding the user to an existing group.

8 Implementation

Test Cases

Test cases completed at 10.08.2017 by ezenzen

• 4400: Szenario: Benutzer über die "Wer ist online?"-Anzeige zu Gruppen hinzufügen 

Approval

Approved at 24.8.2017 by Marko Glaubitz.