mahara-contributors team mailing list archive

[Aaron Wells <826649@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Gordon,

As far as I can tell, shortname only exists in order to be a more data-
entry friendly name used by CSV. The comments indicate that it is also
meant to be used by other automated systems like webservices, but
currently CSV's the only one. The LDAP sync functionality we're adding
in 1.8 (which allows groups to be automatically populated by LDAP data)
also uses it to uniquely identify Groups.

So, there is some call for having a non-changeable identifier for the
group. And, well, you could just use the group's ID number, which is a
non-changing integer assigned automatically by the database, but I guess
it's probably more user-friendly to have something alphanumeric, hence
the shortname.

So it sounds like we'd want this:

1. When a group is manually created, assign it a unique shortname based on its name
2. Add a bit to the upgrade script to automatically assign a unique shortname based on its name, for each existing group that doesn't have one. (This should be trivially easy)
3. Display the group shortname as a non-editable field on the group's config page (/group/edit.php?id=1)
4. Possibly, for institution admins and site admins, make the group shortname be an editable field on the group config page.

I think items 1, 2, and 3 together are "bite-sized". Item 4 is slightly
more difficult.

Cheers,
Aaron

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/826649

Title:
  Add group shortnames to manually created groups

Status in Mahara ePortfolio:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  In Mahara 1.5 groups can be created via a CSV file and associated with
  an institution. Often, however, groups can be created manually, but a
  CSV upload of the members may be preferred. Thus, it would be good if
  manually created groups could also have a short name (that is also
  displayed to the admin) so that members can be added via CSV.

  This wishlist item needs a bit more thinking because the CSV feature
  allows institution admins to create groups that are associated with
  their institution (though it doesn't do anything with that information
  yet, I think) but not on a site level. Furthermore, if groups already
  exist, they would need to be assigned a short name. And then who can
  add members as they are not associated with an institution yet?

  Furthermore, the CSV upload is also only beneficial if users don't
  change their user names. An admin must be aware of that or his upload
  may not work most of the time. Thus, user names should be locked.

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