[Building Sakai] URL directly to edit tools part of site-manage

Tue Apr 19 08:33:01 PDT 2011

Hi, Adam.

Thanks for the email.  I agree with you on both accounts.  I definitely agree with you about "Page Order."  Most of our faculty assume it refers to something else, not ordering tools in the left menu.  ("Page" doesn't resonate for them.  Sounds like a lingering legacy naming item from an earlier release.)  I almost wonder if "Edit Tools" should be renamed "Add/Remove Tools" and "Page Order" should be named "Edit/Reorder Tools."  The next best option would be to rename it from "Page Order" to "Tool Order" or something.  BTW, the "hide" feature in Page Order is one of those gems that most users don't realize is there.

I believe some institutions have renamed "Site Info" to "Site Manager" or the like and perhaps hide the tool from students altogether.  I can see the value of this decision.  We have to spend so much time reminding folks that they can manage the site via Site Info, perhaps a name change would reduce some of this need?

Overall, we're hoping to reduce clicks and make options more obvious for our users.  By bringing shortcuts below the left menu, we can help faculty customize their site quickly.  The "bug" we've identified makes this more difficult for us.  If anyone has any thoughts on the Site Info session problem, please let us know.  Else, can we fix this in Sakai 2.9?

As a final thought, we find that fewer clicks and clear language = more satisfied faculty.  One of the biggest criticisms of our previous LMS was the number of clicks to accomplish things.  The more work we can do to improve the interface and usability for our faculty, the better IMHO.

Thanks again, Adam, for your feedback.  And I appreciate everyone's time and thoughts!

P.S. Does anyone like our idea to make the "Unpublished Site" warning clickable? Again, fewer clicks, less training necessary.  Is this an enhancement that might be valuable for Sakai 2.9?

Sincerely,

Alan Regan, MFA
Manager, Technology and Learning
Information Technology
Pepperdine University
(310) 506-6756

________________________________________
From: Adam Marshall [adam.marshall at oucs.ox.ac.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 1:29 AM
To: Regan, Alan; sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org; Adrian Fish
Subject: RE: [Building Sakai] URL directly to edit tools part of site-manage

I have often worried about the name "Site Info".

For me, a good solution would be to call the tool "About this site" for students and "Manage Site" for teachers.

Whenever I talk about the "Page Order" tool during training I call it "The poorly named Page Order tool" - it does so much more other than allowing pages to be ordered.

adam

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org [mailto:sakai-dev-
> bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org] On Behalf Of Regan, Alan
> Sent: 18 April 2011 19:20
> To: sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org; Adrian Fish
> Subject: Re: [Building Sakai] URL directly to edit tools part of site-
> manage
>
> Dear Adrian and Dev List,
>
> Adrian, thank you for posting your inquiry to the list.  I see that a
> few people responded, but I wanted to ask the dev list for advice on
> how to address an issue we've discovered.
>
> Working with our great hosting partner, Longsight, we've been making
> progress on a development project together.  To help our professors, we
> are trying to add shortcut links so that professors can quickly modify
> their sites with fewer clicks. Unfortunately we've run into a snag
> related to how the Site Info tool works.  In order to deep link to Edit
> Tools, Page Order, or Manage Access, it seems like Sakai 2.6 and 2.7
> requires the user to first initiate a Site Info session before you can
> deep link to a specific tool in site-manage.
>
> You can learn more about our project goals here:
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1moJOkQ0AxFRLLJxINuL3_MUAETQKBoSJPRJ
> yXFf5_xs/edit?hl=en&authkey=CI3N_5UH
>
> (The screenshot in the GoogleDoc is a little outdated, but it still
> communicates the concept.)
>
> Per Longsight, "We're using xsl-portal to insert (among other things)
> an unordered list below the list of tools that points to various Site
> Info tasks using the 'directtool' syntax. Here are the urls we've
> constructed to deep link the user to specific parts of Site Info:
>
> Publish a site:
> /xsl-
> portal/directtool/sakai.siteinfo?sakai.site=[YOUR_SITEID_HERE]&sakai_ac
> tion=doMenu_edit_site_access
>
> Edit Tools:
> /xsl-
> portal/directtool/sakai.siteinfo?sakai.site=[YOUR_SITEID_HERE]&sakai_ac
> tion=doMenu_edit_site_tools
>
> Page Order:
> /xsl-
> portal/directtool/sakai.siteinfo?sakai.site=[YOUR_SITEID_HERE]&sakai_ac
> tion=doPageOrderHelper
>
> "It works fairly well, although we've noticed that the first time the
> user clicks the links in a given session, they're taken to just the
> generic Site Info main page. After that, they're taken directly to the
> deep link. It's as though Sakai won't let them access the deeper page
> link until they go to the main Site Info page first to initialize the
> tool. They only have to do this once per session per site, and then the
> deep links will work. This happens in 2.6 and 2.7. I'd welcome any
> insight anyone has on if there's any way to eliminate this need."
>
> ***********
>
> NOTE: Longsight developed a solution so that our "Publish Now" feature
> is working by directly updating the publish status of a site. It's the
> Edit Tools and Page Order situation that we need community assistance
> with.
>
> If anyone on the dev list has an idea on how to address the Site Info
> session problem, we'd love to hear it!
>
> Thanks in advance for your time.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Alan Regan, MFA
> Manager, Technology and Learning
> Information Technology
> Pepperdine University
> (310) 506-6756
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:12:53 +0100
> From: Adrian Fish <a.fish at lancaster.ac.uk>
> Subject: [Building Sakai] URL directly to edit tools part of
>       site-manage
> To: Sakai Dev <sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org>
> Message-ID: <4DA5CB85.5060204 at lancaster.ac.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Anybody know how to construct a URL directly to the 'Edit Tools' part
> of
> site-manage? Can it be done?
>
> Cheers,
> Adrian.
>
> --
> ==================================
> Adrian Fish
> Software Engineer
> Centre for e-Science
> Bowland Tower South C Floor
> Lancaster University
> Lancaster
> LA1 4YW
> email: a.fish at lancaster.ac.uk
>
> http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/YAFT/Yaft
> http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/CLOG/Home
> http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/BBB/Home
>
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