How To Suggest A New Feature

It is very easy to suggest a new ILIAS feature or the improvement of an existing one. Read this page to learn how to do this. You can also consult our German-language screencasts.

On this page you find all necessary information on how to contribute your ideas to the ILIAS software development process. You make your and our live easier if you respect these guidelines because it will ease our communication and the ILIAS development.

1 Requirements

You need to have an account on ilias.de to be able to create new pages in this wiki and modify existing ones. You find the registration button on the top of the screen at the right side.

2 Suggesting a New Feature

If you want to suggest a new feature you have to describe the feature on a wiki page. If you want to suggest several features please create one page for every feature. But before you add a new page, please have a look if a similar request has been made already to avoid duplicates. Just go to the Overview page of this wiki and open the category page of the module / component to which your request belongs to.

1. To create a new feature wiki page you go to the feature category to which your feature request belongs to, e.g. a new feature for the ILIAS wiki has to be created in category ‘Wiki’.
2. Change on the page to Edit mode and add the title for the new feature within the first section ‘Suggested features...’. Please consider that page titles should be short (because they are used as links too) and that all list items are sorted alphabetically.
3. Add wiki brackets (in this format: [[]]) around your feature title or simply highlight the text with your mouse and click on the Wiki bracket button in the editor bar.
4. Save the page and click on the red link of the new page title to create the new wiki page.
5. ILIAS will ask you to select a template for this new page. Please select ‘Creating A New Feature Page‘ in any case! ILIAS creates the new page with a predefined structure that you can fill out.
6. Now describe your suggestions and requirements in the predefined chapters. Please write in English in order to enable a broad discussion with all users worldwide. Describe the problem you want to solve and how this could be done as clearly as possible. If feasible, add a mock-up to the page to get an impression what you want to change in ILIAS and how it might look like.
7. Please add your name and contact in chapter 7. In case you have interest in funding this feature, please indicate this in chapter 8.
8. After finishing the feature request please close edit mode of page and edit the metadata in the right column. Remove the checkbox before "AAA..." and assign your request to the related component(s), e.g. "Forum" (multiple assignments are possible). This is necessary to list your request automatically on the right component overview pages.
9. A feature request needs to be complete to be discussed in the Jour Fixe and to decide upon it. Please read the instructions at "How can I schedule a feature for a Jour Fixe meeting?" carefully and check if your request fulfills the criteria before sending a mail to the product manager and asking for a slot on one of the next Jour Fixe meetings. To be treated in a Jour Fixe, each request needs to send to the product manager one week before the meeting at the latest

Notice:

• If you can offer funding, please let us know. Add the name of the funding institution / company to chapter "Funding". Several institutions or companies can show their interest in funding in this list.
• Add your name and e-mail to the feature request so we can contact you. If you have activated your public profile on this installation, use the link to your User Profile from the Link dropdown of the page editor, see following screenshot.

3 Picking-up an Already Suggested Feature

There are already a lot of suggested features that haven't it made into ILIAS until now. Often the reason is missing funding. Sometimes a feature has been postponed due to open conceptual issues or missing ressources to implement the feature before the scheduled ILIAS version.

• If you see a feature request in the section Already Suggested of a module page and you want to suggest it for the next upcoming ILIAS version, just copy the feature title and add it to the first list in chap 1. Suggested Features.

4 Discussion: Adding Comments to Existing Feature Requests

If you want to add your idea or comment to an existing feature request, you can add a posting in the Discussion block of the related feature wiki page.

• Please add your name (see hint above) and the date of your posting, then describe your ideas or add your comment.
• Please select the paragraph format "DiscussionPosting" for your entry. You can do so by using the drop-down menu Paragraph in the editor's top bar.
• Feel free to add a mock-up to illustrate your idea / requirement.
• Activate the notificiation for the wiki to get an e-mail when a reply or another change has been made to this page. You can do so by clicking on the small bell icon on the top of the page.

5 Charge a Developer with the Programming

At least when the Jour Fixe has decided upon your suggestion and scheduled it for the next ILIAS version, you should start to get into contact with the responsible maintainer to discuss the next steps.

• The responsible maintainer is mentioned on the page of the feature request and also on the module page to which your feature request belongs (link to this page in block Status of Feature in the right column of the wiki page, section Related Component/Module).
• Contact the maintainer to clarify the necessary funding and to get a tender.
• If you need assistance in this process, contact the ILIAS product manager (Kunkel, Matthias [mkunkel]).