Holiday status

1 Description

Basic idea:
Up to now, there are only active or inactive users. Inactive users cannot do anything in the system, e.g., they don't even receive any e-mails, and nobody except an administrator knows what happen to a user that became inactive.

Motivation for introducing intermediate stati
It would be useful to have some intermediate stati in different situations:

• Users are absentees/ex-users not (fully) active anymore or for the time being like "on holiday", "on parental leave", "subscription expired", "Alumni" etc.
• Users are prospects/Adepts not (fully) active yet, i.e., scenarios like a "Step-by-step introduction to the e-learning system", "Application approved but not on the job yet"
• Moreover, even the "inactive status" like it is up to now could be differentiated, as there are very different events leading to this status that might deserve a different treatment:
  • not active yet after registration
  • created or set inactive consciously
  • outdated
  • set inactive automatically after password wasted

Functionalities to be varied in intermediate stati:

1. This could be anything concerning situations when a reaction is expected by someone but will not come because he/she is on holiday or not available for other reasons:
   • Does the user receive e-mails? Is there an absence notice?
   • Can the user be invited to courses, groups etc.? Is there a warning if he/she will not be able to attend because of being absent?
   • Is there a warning in forums if replying to someone who will not react the next few months?
2. Moreover, the ability to log in could be allowed only in a restricted way:
   • Is the user allowed to log in only in specific time slots or from specific IP numbers?
   • Is the user restricted from logging in but able to use stand-alone objects (ELBA2)?
3. Finally, special stati should be visible in the user administration and in the "Members" tab of courses, groups etc.

Administration of user stati:
It would be nice if administrators could preconfigure some stati like that, so the user can simply choose from a pre-selection.

Further Ideas:

• „System message“ feature gets new productive meaning: Mails also sent to inactive users
• Administrator receives notification about objects becoming void of (active) owner
• Settings of a user account may change automatically after the activity status is changed. Example:
  • Mail forwarding is automatically disabled
  • Mail notification is automatically enabled

2 Status

• Scheduled for Release: Not scheduled yet
• Funding: Required
• Development: Feature is to be developed by

3 Additional Information

• If you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding, please contact: Florian Suittenpointner (suittenpointner@qualitus.de)

4 Discussion

JF 8 Mar 2010: If there is concrete funding, we will discuss this in more detail. We see a general need for this. But the effort to realize this may be not small.

Zenzen, Enrico [ezenzen], 18 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.

5 Follow-up