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Mail: Option to Hide Mail Settings Tab in Personal Settings

1 Initial Problem

In certain scenarios users in ILIAS should not be able to access the 'Mail Settings' view in their 'Personal Settings' or `Mail` (named `Options` here) section, e.g. to prevent configuration changes of users in general (not only for a specific setting).


Currently the appearance of the tab (and the access to it) 'Mail Settings/Options' only depends on the 'internal_mail' RBAC operation, configurable for specific roles in the global ILIAS mail administration.
Revoking this permisson leads to the desired behaviour. The tab 'Mail Settings' is not visible anymore.

But: Relying on the RBAC operation here to solve the problem leads to the following side effect: Users without any role assignment the 'internal_mail' permission is granted for, can't receive emails at all when being directly addressed as a recipient by the sender.
The sender (e.g. another user or ILIAS, e.g. for automatically created notificatons) will receive a corresponding error when using the mail system service: [USER_XYZ] (user is not allowed to use the mail system).

Recipients without 'internal_mail' permission are currently filtered via `\ilMailLoginOrEmailAddressAddressType`, where the 'internal_mail' access is checked for recipient strings directly addressing an user account (e.g. 'root', 'mjansen', etc.).

2 Conceptual Summary

To solve this problem, the appearance of the `Mail Settings` screen (and the access to it) should depend on a new global setting. This setting should be located in the global ILIAS mail administration. It will be introduced as a checkbox with the following attributes:

• Label: Show Mail Settings/Einstellungen anzeigen 
• Byline: If enabled, the user's `Mail Settings` are accessible via the `Personal Settings` or `Mal`section./Falls aktiviert, können Benutzer Ihre Mail-Einstellungen im Bereich 'Einstellungen oder 'Mail' selber vornehmen.
• Default (for new and upgraded ILIAS installations): Enabled

Another option (which Klees, Richard [rklees] as the interested party and I did not discuss, yet) would be to add another global RBAC operation: receive_internal_mail
Introducing a new RBAC operation would require a migration (the new 'receive_internal_mail' permission should be initially granted for all roles with 'internal_mail' permission) in the ILIAS database update steps. With two splitted permissions we could separate between use/view on the one side, and receive on the other side.

3 User Interface Modifications

3.1 List of Affected Views

• Personal Settings (Screen ID: user/mail_settings/)
• Mail / Options (Screen ID: mail/options/)
• Administration / Mail / General (Screen ID: mail/settings/1)

3.2 User Interface Details

3.3 New User Interface Concepts

None

4 Technical Information

None

5 Contact

• Author of the Request: Jansen, Michael [mjansen]
• Maintainer: Jansen, Michael [mjansen]
• Implementation of the feature is done by: {The maintainer must add the name of the implementing developer.}

6 Funding

• CaT Concepts and Training GmbH

7 Discussion

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], 23 APR 2018 : Highly appreciated and scheduled for 5.4.

8 Implementation

Implemented as described above (as a global setting).

Test Cases

Test cases completed at June 29, 2018 by Ahmad, Nadia [nadia]:

• C24614: Aktivierte Einstellung 'Einstellungen anzeigen'
• C24615: Deaktivierte Einstellung 'Einstellungen anzeigen'

Approval

Approved at 2018-07-10 by Klees, Richard [rklees].