[Building Sakai] [DG: Teaching & Learning] Google Apps Integration in Sakai

[Duffy Gillman]

The limitations that I'm seeing for Google integration are around  
authz.  Bboogle creates Google groups to model course membership, so  
it can maintain a coherent view of permissions in Blackboard and  
Google.  My attempts to parse apart that same function for Sakai have  
shown that to be a bit tricky.  It is no problem to initially set the  
permissions on a document if we assume all users in the Sakai instance  
have Google accounts in the same domain.  But keeping those  
permissions in synch with all the potential changes on the Sakai side  
seems hairy.  Consider all the ways you might alter who has authority  
to view a document (add/remove function to AuthzGroup, add/remove role  
to AuthzGroup, add/remove user to role,...).  Assurance that a user  
can/can't access a document directly through Google would necessarily  
lag way behind some periodic or lazy update from Sakai.

As far as providing the Google Documents data to users within Sakai  
based on Sakai's authz, things look fairly keen.  We are looking to  
provide a ContentHostingHandler which will permit site maintainers to  
share documents from Google in a read-only fashion through Resources.   
This seems a good first-stab given the limitations on keeping authz in  
synch in a generalizable way.  Document editing would occur on the  
Google site itself, but it looks like it should be possible to stream  
the documents for download to users through Sakai.  Authorization into  
Google would require use of OAuth, so I have designed a token  
management service to aid that effort.  I've pasted a rough vision of  
the design into Confluence if you're interested or have feedback:

http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/SAKDEV/Read-Only+Google+Documents+Integration

Cheers,

     Duffy

------------------------------
Duffy Gillman
Sr. Software Engineer
rSmart





On Jan 20, 2010, at 3:25 PM, Steven Githens wrote:

> Hi Mathieu,
>
> Do you know if there is a detailed description/screenshots of the
> functionality provided by this?  We've done a few sprints here  
> trying to
> integrate Google Docs and stuff with Sakai, but the GData API's were
> missing some fundamental things that were necessary for embeddable  
> stuff
> and doing "cool" things.  They may have added the missing  
> functionality
> by now.
>
> I guess I'm mostly curious if this goes beyond basic stuff like
> embedding some iframes that maybe have a Google Doc folder that is
> mounted to a class / showing google calendar for a class in an  
> iframe /
> reading a few RSS feeds.
>
> Cheers,
> Steve
>
> Mathieu Plourde wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Sorry for the cross-posting, but is anyone interested or involved in
>> integrating Google Apps with Sakai? Blackboard has piloted with
>> Northwestern U. and it seems very nice...
>>
>> http://course-management.northwestern.edu/display/cms/Bboogle+Pilot+Project
>>
>> Mathieu
>>
>> -- 
>> =================================
>>
>> Mathieu Plourde, MBA
>> Project Leader, LMS/Instructional Designer
>> IT-Client Support & Services
>> mathieu at udel.edu <mailto:mathieu at udel.edu>
>> Office: 302-893-6631
>>
>> =================================
>>
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>>
>> Technology Troubleshooting: http://www.udel.edu/help
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