Best practice forum (Archived)

Groups in Totara

 
Fergal Mohan
Groups in Totara
by Fergal Mohan - Wednesday, 3 April 2013, 4:25 PM
 

Hi all,

We have a Totara site that is probably a little different in use than most. Instead of it being an LMS with multiple courses for a large community of users, it has very few courses but has multiple communities of users. To enroll users, I am using bulk upload from a file and specifying the same course but a different group for ever 'community'. The 'Separate groups' have been enabled on the course and force groups -> 'yes' so only those in the same groups can see each others details in the course for all activities. Essentially a poor man's multi-tenant setup using groups.

I was hoping to use the Moodle group interfaces, but while the code is there, I cannot seem to find the admin interfaces for groups. In Moodle 2.X it appears under the 'settings' block on the admin page, but there doesn't seem to be an equivalent in Totara 2.2.16.1

I can create the equivalent url
http://www.mysite.com/mycourse/group/index.php?id= Where is the parameter for the entity to which the group is applied. But the fact that it is hidden functionality leads me to believe that either there is something else that provides the same functionality, audience, perhaps – or else this is an exotic use case for which Totara is not catering.
Any insights or pointers would be appreciated, Fergal
Fergal Mohan
Re: Groups in Totara
by Fergal Mohan - Thursday, 4 April 2013, 12:30 AM
 
Just to clarify (some automatic formatting removed the X in the following statements)....
I can create the equivalent url
http://www.mysite.com/mycourse/group/index.php?id=X
Where X is the parameter for the entity to which the group is applied....
Sorry a about any confusion in my original from this omission.
Fergal
Craig Eves
Re: Groups in Totara
by Craig Eves (Totara Support) - Sunday, 7 April 2013, 3:21 PM
Group Totara

Hi Fergal

The group functionality is visible under Courses Settings > Users > Groups .

You should be able to see this on your version as it is visible on sandpit. totaralms.com. If not then the settings block may be docked and not visible.

Craig

James Igoe
Re: Groups in Totara
by James Igoe - Monday, 8 April 2013, 3:06 AM
 

Hi Craig

re Fergal's comment about this workaround being "... a poor man's multi-tenant setup using groups."

Are there any plans to introduce multitenanting into Totara? I know this would be helpful for our organisation, e.g. keeping information such as reports private to each tenant.

Kind regards
James 

Craig Eves
Re: Groups in Totara
by Craig Eves (Totara Support) - Monday, 8 April 2013, 2:19 PM
Group Totara

Hi James

There has been some discussions with Totara partners and in Moodle https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-28946 on implementing the different definitions on multi tenanting and ways this can be accomplished.

It looks like this has not progressed and has been put off to Moodle/Totara 2.4  at least. There have been some  solutions that go some of the way including one from (Totara partner Androgogic) who have developed a multi-tenant capability that you might be interested in seeing? It uses category permissions and a custom catalogue that is sensitive to Organisation. They are happy to show you if you are interested.

As far as restricting access to reports to a particular tenant organisation there is in the Report builder the Content tab that has a setting show records from staff in the users organisation with the option to include staff at or below users organisation.

Alternatively roles for an organisation can be setup and using the access tab only certain roles can access the report (this could be a bit messy to administer  though so only suitable if organisation and report structure simple)

Craig

Fergal Mohan
Re: Groups in Totara
by Fergal Mohan - Monday, 8 April 2013, 5:26 AM
 

Craig,

thanks for the reply. As per my original post, I have the group settings enabled for my course. I can go to the course participants and filter by group, send them emails etc. However in order to manage the groups (add, delete users etc) I have had to reverse engineeer the URL from an equivelant Moodle menu option. That is, I went to a moodle 2.2 instance and brought up the Settings > Course administration > Users > Groups interface. Recreated the URL for my site and experimented with the parameters to get the view I required

http://www.mysite.com/mycourse/group/index.php?id=<x>


This provides me with the functionality I need but it seems too add hoc. Has the group admin iterface been hidden by ommission, design or incorrect use by me


regards, Fergal

Craig Eves
Re: Groups in Totara
by Craig Eves (Totara Support) - Monday, 8 April 2013, 1:39 PM
Group Totara

Hi Fergal

I think you are talking about the interface below which is available in Totara using the same menu Settings > Course administration > Users > Groups

If this isn't appearing then you may not have right permissions or your Totara may have not be properly installed and needs to be upgraded to fix. 

group admin interface

Fergal Mohan
Re: Groups in Totara
by Fergal Mohan - Tuesday, 9 April 2013, 2:10 AM
 

My bad,

I was looking in the site administration block rather than the course administration one. Yes the menu is there as expected, the groups are segregated and I can use the course participants menu to bulk message a group.

Are people extensively using the groups functionality to segregate disperate learners (in our case from different organisations) or are there other mechanisms that should be looked at such as having clones of the primary course for different organisations,

Thanks in advance, Fergal