[Building Sakai] unchoosable groups

[Bryan Holladay]

I think the concept of hidden groups is a feature that should be added to
the group settings page.  Just add a simple checkbox to make the group
hidden or not by a group property (not "lessonbuild_ref", but something
more generic) plus a new realm permission like "groups.view.hidden".  One
difference I would make is having hidden groups still selectable if you
have the "groups.view.hidden" permission.  For instance, msgcntr added an
internal hidden groups feature that was to address some FERPA concerns
 This allows instructors to send messages to these groups while preventing
students in the class from seeing that these groups exist.  However, the
"hidden groups" values were tracked in msgcntr, so it wasn't applicable for
other tools.  It'd be nice to have one central place to set a hidden flag
for a group, especially since "hidden groups" is already a feature for
msgcntr in Sakai.

-Bryan


On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 11:26 AM, Charles Hedrick <hedrick at rutgers.edu>wrote:

> Lessons uses groups to control release of tests, assignments and forum
> topics. This is used to a kind of conditional release, though the
> situations used are different than those in the actual conditional release
> code. Some users object to seeing these groups in "manage groups" and in
> group-aware tools. The format of the group name is "Access: <assignment
> name>" though that can now be changed in messages.properties.
>
> I can make groups not appear in Mange Groups by omitting the
> group_prop_wsetup_created property. But it still appears in group-aware
> tools.
>
> I am reluctant to do this change at all, since hiding these groups would
> make difficulties hard to diagnose, but if someone wants it, the most
> practical approach seems to be another group property, which would make the
> groups not choosable in group-aware tools. I don't want to make them
> completely invisible, since someone looking at a test should probably be
> able to see that release is controlled by Lessons. Does it make sense to
> people to add an invisible group property, and supply patches for the
> group-awrae tools? I'd make this a site.properties setting.
>
> (We do now set a group property anyway, "lessonbuilder_ref". So we really
> only need patches to the group-aware tools to not show such groups with
> this property set if a site.properties setting says not to.
>
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