Moodle and Serco Facility - MIS Block

[skell]

Does anyone have experiance of the Facility to Moodle plugin and the MIS Block plugin which adds information regarding student grades / attendance et al?

 

I'm having a problem with it and the author doesn't seem to respond to emails

 

Thanks!

[philwaud]

The original author is no longer in post, there are plans for it to be taken over by someone else.Cant give you any more info at the moment, unless its a very simple issue!

[skell]

I don't know really. Both blocks are installed fine, but the MIS Block, when you click on View Any Student, and then actually click on any student, the first screen displays one students details for everyone. For example, click on student A, B, C, D etc, it will always display data from student X.

 

So yeah, I don't think its a simple issue!

 

Any idea of when this might be resolved? It's an awesome block, would be a shame if it was not maintained.

[philwaud]

Have you got sessions enabled?

[skell]

Pardon my ignorance, but I am not familiar with either moodle or Facility. To what are you are refering to?

[philwaud]

Its a PHP setting, the php.ini file on your webserver will have a setting for it.

 

A lot of moodle doesnt need session keys (they are a bit like cookies), but that block does.

[skell]

Sessions appear to be enabled in the php.ini and the folder in moodledata\sessions appears to be filling with session keys. Am I missing something?

[philwaud]

Dont think so, it was just a possible issue!

 

Cant really help (?) further, sorry!

 

We have it working and it is brilliant.

[skell]

Thats a shame. Apart from this issue, its great. I don't understand why it is displaying this particular students details, there isn't anything special about them.

 

Thanks for your help!

[Marci]

Phil - you're confusing things. The MIS Block is still maintained by it's original author, Alan Hardy. The Facility-to-Moodle block and the MIS block are both separate entities.

[skell]

Hi Marc

 

Haven't had much luck contacting Alan. Disappointing.

[Marci]

Hmm - have you had a look at the content of your user table and ensured that what's stored in the mdl_user table's idnumber field matches the student's admin number in Facility? All the MIS Block really does is grab that number (imported when students were brought in using Fac-to-Moodle block) then use it as the base ID with which to search Facility.

 

Also check your roles. Whichever site-wide role contains your staff, ensure that permissions are set to ALLOW for Mis:ViewAnyStudent, Mis:ViewBlock, and Mis:ViewStudent. Manage Assessments and View Own should be set to PREVENT (as staff won't have their 'own' student record, and you only want admins messing with the assessments section).

[skell]

The idnumber field in the mdl_user table is blank? That can't be right, surely?

 

EDIT: Its picking up the staff ID's and even the parent ID's and putting them in, but not students. I've definitely got the number in the description field in the AD, so I'm not sure why the block isn't importing it?

Edited November 15, 2010 by skell

[Marci]

Therein lies your problem then. Facility-to-Moodle hasn't brought in the Facility ID Number from the "Description" field in AD... and reading Guy's script from line91 of lib_student_match.php within blocks/facility_to_moodle:

 

if (isset($ftm_cfg->numericStudentIds) && $ftm_cfg->numericStudentIds){

// according to config, id should always be numeric so exit if not

 

Which kinda implies that (iirc) the hyphens used within your establishments' ID numbers may just knack up the entire proceedings... unfortunately, the $ftm_cfg->numericStudentIds variable doesn't exist in config_facility_to_moodle.php for me to know what effects it has on things. Transfer Students runs a different routine to Transfer Staff and Transfer Parents, hence the possible reason why Students isn't working when the rest are.

 

So, first things' first, add the following into config_facility_to_moodle.php...

 

$ftm_cfg->numericStudentIds=false;

 

Save, upload, then do a "Transfer Students" and see if that brings in the correct info into the IDNumber field in mdl_users.

If that still doesn't work, comment out that line and reupload, then I'd suggest if you can remove the hyphen from your current ID Numbers in Facility, update that info in the description field in AD, then re-run the "Transfer Students" function, it SHOULD bring the correct data thru...

 

It appears at somepoint Guy decided that more or less everywhere would be using an integer for the IDNumber in Facility, so removed the feature within the block to set the content of that field to anything other than an integer.

 

In fact, what version of Facility_to_Moodle are you using? Might be worth updating it just incase you're on slightly outdated version... latest is at http://www.horbury.wakefield.sch.uk/media/moodlegpl/head/facility_to_moodle_project.zip

Edited November 15, 2010 by Marci

[skell]

*&%$ I knew it would be something to do with those hyphens. I'll check with the person who looks after Facility and let you know how I get on

 

Thank you very much!

 

EDIT: Nah, that line doesn't change anything. Is it strange that the transferring of students doesn't fail?

Edited November 15, 2010 by skell

[Marci]

[EDIT] Refresh the page as I've made multiple edits to my reply above![/EDIT]

[skell]

Nope, I was using the version you emailed me a few weeks ago. Just made sure but still no dice. Looks like I'll have to get the hyphens taken out. Shouldn't be too much of a problem (not my job either!) as there are only 30 or so students with this type of ID.

[skell]

Hmm... well the hyphens were certainly the problem, but it's still not copying over the ID numbers into the local SQL database... but at least its displaying a different student now!

[Marci]

Have you rerun the "Transfer Students" script since making the change?

[skell]

Repeatedly.

[skell]

Alphabetically, this is the first student with the 9 digit code, rather than a 4 digit code.

 

No wait, they aren't, they are the second.

[Marci]

You should see errors during import if the Description field isn't being brought in...

 

// exit if description is not populated
	if ($desc==""){
           $this->lookupbydesc_failmsg='[b]Active directory description field empty[/b]';      
		return(false);
	}
       if (isset($ftm_cfg->numericStudentIds) && $ftm_cfg->numericStudentIds){
   		// according to config, id should always be numeric so exit if not
   		if (!is_numeric($desc)){
               $this->lookupbydesc_failmsg='[b]Active directory description field is not numeric[/b]';      
   			return (false);
   		}
       }
       $id=$desc;

 

You've definitely got $ftm_cfg->forceauthtype=''; (in config_facility_to_moodle.php) set correctly for the authtype that you're using haven't you? (If it's not set it doesn't update the local database correctly apparently).

Edited November 16, 2010 by Marci

[skell]

Nope, no errors. I've even gone thorough the AD and disabled accounts with no ID so that I have no errors at all.

 

It looks like it is being pulled through, but it just isn't showing on the main SQL table. Rather I have to go a bit deeper into phpmyadmin and look at the structure of the field. All the ID's are listed in there.

 

EDIT: Hmmm... just looking at the SQL, users seem to be listed twice. One lot with ID numbers, one lot without. Any idea how to purge the table to remove rows with no ID?

 

EDIT: $ftm_cfg->forceauthtype='ldap';

Edited November 16, 2010 by skell

[Marci]

No autopurge - you have to bin them manually... but that in itself is behaving oddly. If it finds that the user already exists it should update their info rather than recreating them... however, it's likely that it does this via the ID number.

 

Personally, I would bin everyone out of your Moodle User database (apart from a local admin user) and redo all your parent / staff / student transfers to pull them all in cleanly.

 

I'm presuming all other prerequisites are already met - ie: student's email address is in the email field in AD, first and last names are completed within AD...

[skell]

Students don't have an email address here so thats not there. Everything else looks ok. I've already purged the empty dupes, but will remove everyone from moodle, delete the block and redo it all. Hope this works!