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Sakai Newcomer: 10 easy questions not so easy

Sakai Newcomer: 10 easy questions not so easy. Daniel Merino Echeverría Centro Superior de Innovación Educativa - Universidad Pública de Navarra. A brief presentation about us. Universidad Pública de Navarra. March 2010. European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain. 2.

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Sakai Newcomer: 10 easy questions not so easy

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  1. Sakai Newcomer: 10 easy questions not so easy Daniel Merino Echeverría Centro Superior de Innovación Educativa - Universidad Pública de Navarra

  2. A brief presentation about us Universidad Pública de Navarra March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 2

  3. A brief presentation about us • Universidad Pública de Navarra • A small university created in 1987. • 8669 students. • 911 teachers. • 26 degrees. • Located in Pamplona (Navarra)‏ • About 200000 citizens. • Maybe you have heard about the Sanfermines. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 3

  4. A brief presentation about us • WebCT 4.1 since 2001/02. • June of 2007: 66,43% average of use. • 3000 courses, 800 teachers, 8000 students. • “Aulario virtual” fully integrated in academic activity. • Migration to Sakai. • 2008/09: Pilot of Sakai 2.5.3. Migration of contents. • 2009/10: Sakai & WebCT in production at the same time. • 2010/11: End of WebCT. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 4

  5. Disclaimer • This conference is about our experience. • We only have worked with Sakai 2.5. • Some things could have been fixed in newer versions. • This document is for newcomers. • Lost in the beginnings with Sakai. • With non too technical profile. • Corrections & contributions are welcome. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 5

  6. 1- Where can I find documentation? • Is the first question a newcomer will do. • Not an easy question. • Open source documentation is contributive. • Every version of software can change things. • The most boring thing in the development process. • Sakai official page is a good starting point. • http://sakaiproject.org --> Support --> Documentation • 2.5 and 2.6 guides, linking scattered resources. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 6

  7. 1- Where can I find documentation? • But Sakai documentation is not perfect. • Some docs in the source code are a bit obsoletes. • The wiki (Confluence) is huge, but.. • The pages are not classified about relevance. • The old obsolete info is not always deleted. • Is hard to know what is useful and what is not. • The JIRA title descriptions are sometimes confusing. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 7

  8. 1- Where can I find documentation? • Some advices. • Read the Sakai book. • Good non-technical reference. • Many links to extend the information. • Look the previous conferences programs. • There are great documents out there. • All the programs are in Confluence. • Look the blogs (planetsakai.org). • Some blogs go in depth with concrete themes. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 8

  9. 1- Where can I find documentation? • End-user documentation. • Few oficial documents. • It seems that each university makes its own documents. • Two awesome public resources. • Delaware: • http://www.udel.edu/sakai/training/gettingstarted/index.html • Oxford: • https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/info/page/browse_hel

  10. 2- How can I migrate contents? • A critical matter if you come from other platform. • Users want their old contents. • Starting from scratch can discourage them. • Two different problems here. • The contents organization structure. • The contents themselves. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 10

  11. 2- How can I migrate contents? • The usual import schema. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 11

  12. 2- How can I migrate contents? • Problems about this schema. • IMS CP partially supported. • Only Melete imports it (AFAWK). • Melete has its own resources folders. • Each platform has its own IMS standard • So each platform needs its own IMS parser. • There are several solutions already availables. • But probably you will have to touch some code. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 12

  13. 2- How can I migrate contents? • Another distinct simpler schema. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 13

  14. 2 -How can I migrate contents? • A simple WebDAV script can upload the contents • To a site's Resources. • To an user's MyWorkspace Resources. • You can optionally create HTML pages. • Linking the files and showing them in WebContent tool. • Flexible visual design with CSS files. • Our experience. • Our teachers love Resources • But they hardly use the WebContent pages. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 14

  15. 3- How do the permissions work? • Realms, Roles, Permissions. • One of the most dangerous things in Sakai. • Very complex configuration. • Little documentation. • Disastrous consequences of a bad use. • Once settled, hard to change in existing sites. • We explain three examples that happened to us. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 15

  16. 3- How do the permissions work? First real example: site.visit • Every maintain & access role has it checked. • We gave it to the realm !user.template. • We thought that they could only visit their sites. • But !user.template sets global permissions. • Result: URL direct access to every site. • Every user can visit every site, pasting its URL. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 16

  17. 3- How do the permissions work? Second real example: site.upd.site.member • We assigned it to the realm !user.template • We thought that it affects only to user's MyWorkspace. • We wanted that users could unsubscribe of their sites (this is configurable in the site's xml file). • But MyWorkspace is ruled by !site.user. • !user.template sets user's global permissions. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 17

  18. 3- How do the permissions work? Second real example: site.upd.site.member • User permissions prevail over site permissions. • The sites access role hasn't site.upd.site.member. • But the global !user.template permission wins. • Result: Any user can add users to their sites. • It doesn't matter if he is access or maintain. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 18

  19. 3- How do the permissions work? Third real example: realm.add/del/upd • We thought that realms are a matter of admins. • Problems with public resources. • Users can't make public resources. • Other users can't revert to private contents. • Any public resource has its own realm. • Users must have permissions over realms in their sites. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 19

  20. 3- How do the permissions work? • Some advices. • Read carefully the permissions document deployed with Sakai. http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/download/attachments/37290420/sakai_permissions_2-1-2.pdf • Then read carefully “Configuring Sakai Boston 09”: http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/CONF10/Wednesday+-+Configuring+Sakai • Make a collaborative wiki to document your permissions. • So you can see other's changes and others can see yours. • Don't touch permissions without being sure about what they do. • Specially the !user.template permissions, which are global. • If you need to propagate a role to existing sites, look here: http://steve-on-sakai.blogspot.com/2009/05/roles-in-sakai-sites.html March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 20

  21. 4- How can I configure sites? • Enter as admin. • In MyWorkspace/Sites, you have templates. • !user: Configure MyWorkspace's template. • !user.guest • !user.registered • !admin: Configure admin's MyWorkspace template. • !gateway: Configure the portal's gateway template. • These templates have pages with tools. • All sites inherit their corresponding templates. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 21

  22. 4- How can I configure sites? • Worksites are different. • Configure them in sakai.sitesetup.xml. • Categories (project, course, etc). • Tools of each category. • There is a !worksite too in sites, but is overriden. • More useful information about configuration: • Configuring Sakai Boston 09 (http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/CONF10/Wednesday+-+Configuring+Sakai)‏ March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 22

  23. 4- How can I configure sites? • Some advices. • It's hard to change existing sites. • Changes in templates don't propagate to existing sites. • You'll need webservices to do this. • We had about 800 bad MyWorkspaces... • Home: Announcement's limit set to 3. • Home: Without Messagecenter synoptic tool. • Home: Iframe with a height value too big. • Just be sure about the tools you want! March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 23

  24. 5- Which tools should I use? • Many tools to choose. • http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/DOC/Tool+List+%282.x%29 • Several tools for similar things. • 2 blogs (Blogwow & Blogger)‏ • 3 forums. (Forums, JForum & Yaft)‏ • 2 testing tools (Samigo & Mneme)‏ March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 24

  25. 5- Which tools should I use? • There is an official (deprecated?) classification. • Core tools. • Included in the release. Tested and following best practices. • Provisional tools. • Mature enough to be included in the release. • Not fully tested in production, not enabled by default. • Contrib tools. • Not formally QA'ed, neither included in releases. • Is being replaced by the Scorecard Working Group. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 25

  26. 5- Which tools should I use? • Some advices. • Some contrib tools might look better than core tools. • Nicer user interfaces. • Some better and extra functionalities. • But several core functionalities aren't obvious. • Integrations with other tools (e.g. Section Info or Resources)‏ • i18n. • More deeply tested and more community support. • Always check that somebody is using the tool in production. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 26

  27. 6- How can I patch my Sakai? • JIRA is not too intuitive. • The principal page has attachments of tested patches. • Users can think that these attachments are the real patches. • But usually they are only temporary tests. • The true patches are obtained with Subversion. • You must get them from the official source code. • Search for your Sakai version's patch, if available. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 27

  28. 6- How can I patch my Sakai? • We must look in the tab “Subversion commits”. • Search for our Sakai version's patch, if there is any. • If there isn't, we can try the trunk patch revision. • Generate the revision of the patch with Subversion. • svn diff -r 45235:45236 https://source.sakaiproject.org/svn/dav/branches/ sakai_2-5-x/ > parche.patch • Apply the patch with the command “patch” (in Unix). • patch -p0 < parche.patch (with --dry-run for testing the patch without applying). March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 28

  29. 6- How can I patch my Sakai? • A JIRA page example. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 29

  30. 7- How can I modify the help pages? • Sakai brings a bunch of help pages. • There are several properties included. • help.button: Showing the help button. • help.location: External location for help. • help.url: URL to use instead of built-in help. • display.help.menu: Showing/hiding the help's link. • But we can change the built-in help easily. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 30

  31. 7- How can I modify the help pages? • Each tool has (should have) a folder with: • A help.xml file. • A bunch of html files linked from help.xml. • For example, sam/samigo-help/src/sakai_samigo/ • You can edit these files to change whatever you want. • You must redeploy and restart to see changes. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 31

  32. 7- How can I modify the help pages? • These changes can include i18n. • You can translate the help to your language. • You just must create: • A translated help_xx_XX.xml file (e.g. “help_es_ES.xml”)‏ • The translated html pages linked from it. • Redeploy, restart and it's done. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 32

  33. 7- How can I modify the help pages? March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 33

  34. 8- How can I change the Sakai appearance? • Skin (portal's visual design)‏ • Well documented in sakai_skin.doc(https://source.sakaiproject.org/svn/reference/trunk/docs/architecture/sakai_skin.doc)‏ • Static content • Several pages are static, without i18n. • At {sakai_root}/reference/library/src/webapp/content/ • myworkspace_info.html : Initial info in the user's My Workspace. • webcontent_instructions.html: Template for Web Content Tool. • webdav_instructions.html: Webdav tutorial at Resources tool. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 34

  35. 8- How can I change the Sakai appearance? • Tools names. • {sakai_root}/tool/tool-impl/impl/src/bundle/tools.properties • These are the tools names in the database. • Can be i18n'ed too (e.g. tools_es_ES.properties). • Properties • Each tool has its own properties files. • The texts of Sakai can be modified or i18n'ed. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 35

  36. 8- How can I change the Sakai appearance? • An useful shell script to locate properties (Unix). find . -name "*.properties" -print -exec grep "Text to locate" {} \; |more March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 36

  37. 8- How can I change the Sakai appearance? • Our advice: • If you change this and you are more than one person... • ...make common collaborative environments. • Repositories. • For files (e.g. properties and static html content)‏ • Wiki pages. • For text (e.g. tools names). • Individual local copies can be a living hell. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 37

  38. 9- How can I change the Wiki's pages? • Wiki's default pages are based on templates. • Default page: used in all new pages. • Help pages: normal help and macros help. • Etcetera. • These templates are created from a properties file. • ./rwiki-tool/tool/src/bundle/uk/ac/cam/caret/sakai/rwiki/tool/bundle/PrepopulatePages.properties • These templates: • support i18n partially (they use the tomcat's language). • are used one only time for site (when the wiki is created). • the pages created from them are stored in the database. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 38

  39. 9- How can I change the Wiki's pages? • Any maintain can change the templates in his site. • Just use the macro {index} before creating content. More awesome documentation at http://udel.edu/~mathieu/wiki/ March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 39

  40. 9- How can I change the Wiki's pages? • More advices, of course. • Changing globally the created pages is hard. • Raw database sentences. • The user's changes in these pages will be lost. • We changed all our wiki's help pages. • We changed the prepopulate_pages_es_ES.properties. • So all the new help pages are OK. • We changed the database tables. update rwikicurrentcontent set content='Wiki Help Page's Formatted Content' where rwikiid = any (select distinct id from rwikiobject where name like '%edit_right%')‏ March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 40

  41. 10- How can I change things without restarting Tomcat? • An annoying matter. • You change a tool and deploy it with mvn. • Theorically, Tomcat should notice the changes. • But it's needed (we, at least) to restart Tomcat to see them. • A non general solution. • touch <TOMCAT-ROOT>/webapps/<TOOL>/WEB-INF/web.xml • It restarts only that tool. • Only possible with “light” tools. • “Heavy” tools (e.g. portal, site, etc) still need the restart. March 2010 European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain.. 41

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