Roadmap

Short Term

Deletion of Talks

Currently, the deletion of talks bypasses the Trash manually. This process should be brought more in line with the other ILIAS objects. The simplest option would be to just allow Talks to be in the Trash.

Legacy UI, Part II

The legacy table used for the 'Talks' list needs to be replaced by a KS component. It should be investigated how to translate those view to the KS, and take the opportunity to rework them. This effort should be coordinated with Staff.

Removal of Unused Code

It will be investigated whether code/classes are unused and can be deleted. From a first quick inspection, there seem to be some candidates (see e.g. ilObjEmployeeTalkSeriesListGUI, copy and paste OrgUnit code, etc.).

Interface to OrgUnits

EmployeeTalk contains logic specific to OrgUnits (see ilObjEmployeeTalkAccess) which should be minimized by making use of the OrgUnits interface more cleanly. It might be necessary to rename the EmployeeTalk context in OrgUnits to make that work (since context is in many places tied to the ref_id of objects, and one does not always have a talk handy when one needs to check position access).
Similarly, use of ilMyStaffAccess should be minimized.

Mid Term

Properly Implement RBAC Permissions for the Administration

Currently, effectively only administrators can access talk templates and their administration view: even though the permissions needed look like they can be configured for other roles, specifically read access does not work at all (no templates are shown). This should be addressed by also introducing permissions for talk templates, and removing the 'edit settings' permission from the talk template administration. This would have the additional advantage that one could administer talk templates much more granually.

Interaction between Talks and Talk Series

There are a few occasions where information has to be propagated from talk series to talks (and the other way around): this happens when changing the title or changing the setting 'Lock editing for others', and when completing the form in 'Change date of talk series'. This is implemented in different ways, and in different places in the code, sometimes a bit hidden (ilObjEmployeeTalkGUI::updateCustom and ilObjEmployeeTalkAppointmentGUI). A centralized service fulfilling this function should be introduced, making the flow of information more apparent in the structure of the code.

Editing of Talks/Talk Series

Several aspects of the process of editing talks could be improved or presented better: - It could be explained better which settings are specific to individual talks, and which are shared across the series. Currently this information is only conveyed through bylines. It might be worthwhile to introduce separate tabs. - Currently, when changing the date of a series, all talks of the series except the talk where one has initiated the change are simply deleted, and new talks are created (except for talks in the series for which the date was individually changed, or which are already flagged as completed). This should at least be explained in a byline. Improving this behavior seems to require rather large changes, as the recurrence rule is not saved anywhere.

Long Term

Unit tests

Improve the unit test coverage. This includes refactoring classes such that they can be unit tested effectively.