EmployeeTalk

Talks are used to organise one-on-one meetings between ILIAS users. Superiors can schedule Talks with their employees (with those Positions being derived from Organisational Units) by creating them from previously configured Talk Templates.
Employees recieve Notifications about talk appointments, and can keep track of them via the Calendar. The superior can keep minutes of the appointments with the use of Custom Metadata.

• Talk Template Administration
  • Access to Administration
• Talk Templates
  • Metadata
• Talks
  • Editing Talks
  • Talks in Staff
  • Calendar Appointments
  • Notifications
  • Access to Talks

Talk Template Administration

To activate Talks, open the settings of Organisational Units. Activate Positions in Employee Talk and Enable ‘Staff’, and make sure the Positions have the relevant permissions (see Access to Administration and Access to Talks).
The Talk Templates available to Superiors can be managed in the Talk Template administration, found under Administration > Organisation > Talk Templates. There a list of all templates is shown, and the option to add new templates is given.
Templates can also be deleted via the dropdowns in the list. Deleting templates does not delete the Talks derived from them.

Access to Administration

Access to the Talk Template administration and its functions is restricted using Role-specific permissions. Currently, only users with the Administrator role have access.

Talk Templates

Talk Templates can be created in the Talk Template administration. They consist of a Title and Description, and can be toggled Online. Further, previously set up Metadata sets can be activated individually for the template. All of these options can be configured in the Settings tab of Talk Templates, and their info tab shows all selected Metadata fields in a disabled form.

Metadata

To be able to activate Custom Metadata sets, they first need to be created in the Metadata administration, and fields to be used for minuting the Talks should be added to the sets. Lastly, the sets need to be set to Data set needs activation for Talk Templates.
Changing the sets back to Data set not used only affects Talk Templates but not already created Talks, but changing their fields also changes the fields available in the Talks.

Talks

Talks can be created in Organisation > Talks. To do so, first a Talk Template has to be chosen, from which the Talks inherit their assigned Custom Metadata. Talk Templates which are not set Online are not available. Then one can set Title, Description and Location for the Talks, their Date and/or Time as well as a Recurrence, should one want to create Talks in a series, and an Employee. The field Employee autofills from all available users.
In the Settings tab of the created Talks one can find and edit the aforementioned fields, as well as Completed and Lock editing for others checkboxes. Further, two buttons are offered to change the date of the individual Talk, and to change the dates of all Talks in the same series.
The users involved in the Talk are shown in the Settings tab - the Employee set during creation, and as the Superior the user that created the Talk - but can not be changed.
The fields of the assigned Metadata sets can be edited in the Content tab.

Editing Talks

• When editing a Talk, changing the Title and Lock editing for others also applies those changes to all other talks in the same series. All other options are specific to the individual Talk, including the Metadata.
• When Lock editing for others is checked, only the user listed as Superior is allowed to edit the talk.
• When changing the dates of a series of Talks, all Talks but the one the change was initiated from are deleted, and new Talks are created according to the chosen Recurrence. This process explicitely excludes Talks for which Completed is checked, and Talks where the individual date was changed previously.
• When a user is not allowed to edit a talk but can still access its Content and Settings tabs, the buttons to edit dates disappear, and all fields in the forms of both tabs are disabled, though their values remain visible. This includes the Metadata.

Talks in Staff

A list of all talks the user is allowed to see can be found in Organisation > Talks. This is primarily intended to be used by Superiors to manage, edit and create Talks: A Add new Talk button is offered, and by clicking on the titles of Talks or via their Action dropdown one can access their Content and Settings tab, respectively. The latter option is either titled Edit or View, depending on the permissions of the user. The Action dropdown also offers the option to Delete individual Talks.
Further, a similar list of Talks limited to individual Employees is available. It can be reached either by clicking on the user or on Talks in the user's Actions dropdown in Organisation > Staff List, as long as one has permission to view the user's Talks. The same Talks option in the Actions dropdown of users is also offered in other contexts, e.g. Communication > Contacts > Gallery or in the Members Gallery of Courses and Groups. Note that the option can be disabled in the Administration.
In the lists of Talks, it is not explicitely denoted which Talks are in a series, except for their shared title.

Calendar Appointments

Talks where the user is either Employee and Superior can be found as appointments in their Calendar. For Employees, this is intended to be the only way to access their Talks. Appointments list the Title of the Talk, the participating Superior and Employee, as well as the date and time of the last update of the appointment. Further, a button linking to the Talk is offered.
The calendar can be filtered for Talks in a specific series.

Notifications

Any time Talks are created, edited, or deleted, a Notification is sent out to the Employee with the Superior in CC, informing them about the change. It contains the Title of the Talk(s) and a permanent link to the first one, its Description and Location, the name of the Superior, and a list of the dates of the affected talks. Note that the list does not contain unchanged Talks, even if they are in the same series.
The Notification further has attached an .ics file such that the Talk can be imported as an appointment in external calendars.

Access to Talks

Access to Talks and related function is restricted using Position-specific permissions as given by Organisational Units:

• Read: User can see those Talks in lists and view their content, over whose Superior and Employee they have authority.
• Create: User can create Talks with users as Employee over which they have authority.
• Edit: User can edit Talks in which they have authority over the Employee, except when Lock editing for others is checked.

These permission are overwritten in some cases: users always have Read access to Talks in which they are Superior or Employee, and can always edit Talks in which they are Superior, but they can never edit Talks in which they are Employee. A Talk can only be deleted by the Superior, or an Administrator.
To have access to Organisation and Organisation > Talks, a user needs to have at least one of the three permissions above.

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.