rpwillis

Hi Mrinal, Not that I know about, but I haven't looked. Richard

SLK doesn't support Common Cartridge. Richard SLK Coordinator http://blog.salamandersoft.co.uk

I’ve finally released SLK 1.4 to Beta. Sorry about the delay, but in the end I’ve rewritten the drop box functionality to hopefully work seamlessly within SharePoint. To do this I knew I needed to make changes to how the drop box library was created which would be incompatible and so decided to hold back on officially releasing it. You can download from the release page on CodePlex. It is not backwards compatible with the version uploaded to the patches folder, so any documents returned by that will not be available via this version. The documents will still be present though. The major changes compared to the version in the patches folder are: 1. Students can open office documents and save them straight back to SharePoint without having to save to disk first. 2. Teachers can open and comment on office documents without having to save to disk first. 3. The drop box library is created as required. You do not have to enable the SLK feature on the site to create it. 4. Although folders are still used as containers to hold student’s work (as the document names are likely to be the same), they are not used to navigate the assignments. You either use the default view which is grouped by assignment or use assignment specific views which are created when an assignment is created. 5. You can use the drop box in a locale which doesn’t use US style dates. 6. I’ve currently removed the download all and upload all files options for teachers so that I can get the release out. I just haven’t had time to complete this. 7. I’ve removed Course Manager from the install. This will again be available as a separate release. The reason is that the quality is still not there for it to be bundled. I will consider this version to be in beta until 24 Jan at the latest. At which point there will be another beta version with at a minimum the download all and upload all functionality in, or a final release. Please download and report any bugs, which I will attempt to resolve quickly. I am keen to get 1.4 RTM so we can move on to the next version and get the project moving again. Note, I still need to update the documentation to cover this release, this may take some time. If anyone would like to volunteer to do this it would be really helpful. I’m also considering moving it to the wiki pages on CodePlex rather than just having the getting started pdf as it will be easier to maintain and distribute. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Richard SLK Co-ordinator http://blog.salamandersoft.co.uk

Hi Boodle, The MLG My Classes web part doesn't have any options for changing how it's displayed as the output is programmatically generated by the web part at run-time. What is it you are trying to achieve and I might be able to sort something out. Richard MLG Project Coordinator

Hi High Tower, I've not looked at the code behind that functionality, so am not sure what might go wrong. You could try setting Overwrite to Yes to see if that makes any difference. Only other thing that springs to mind is check to see if the leading digits of the Admission Number have been stripped in Moodle.

Try creating a report for contacts, with a filter to limit to that contact or a few with the same name. Add some student details and it should hopefully show if they are still linked to any pupils.

Not automatic, but Moodle 1.9 has a bulk upload facility to load user profile pictures. Site Administration->Users->Accounts->Upload User Pictures You will need a zip file with all the pictures in named appropriately (idnumber I think). If you haven't got all the photos already there's a utility to extract them on our website SalamanderSoft Limited - Free Utilities Whatever you do you need to ensure that you have the copyright owner's permission to use them in this way if required. Richard

From a purely SharePoint point of view it's certainly possible, I do it all the time when populating SharePoint & AD. By default the name displayed in SharePoint is populated from the display name attribute in Active Directory. However it can be changed from that by editing the profile, but if user profile import is set to update the name this will get overwritten. I don't know how a hosted SLG is set up, but from a technical point of view the options are: 1. Create the account display name using Title Surname instead for Forename Surname. I don't know if Sims Active Directory Provisioning supports this and if it does whether it can be changed for just one school in a hosted solution. 2. Manually change all the names in the SharePoint profiles and ensure that user profile import is set up to not overwrite the display name. I would not update them in Sims as that will affect anything you do in their which uses staff names.

kieran8055 is right. By default Moodle will only create the users in Moodle once they have logged in for the first time. Hence you can't enrol them in anything before they log in. However, there is a script you can run to automatically create them all from ldap without them logging in. http://docs.moodle.org/en/LDAP_authentication#Setting_up_regular_automatic_synchronisation_using_cron Richard

I've set up exchange groups based on teachers of individual pupils for a few schools. Adds a lot of groups to the address book, but solves the problem of emails to all staff. However, if you've got a learning platform which staff use as part of their day to day activities, then using alerts in there probably makes more sense.

Password is actually supporting Correct at time of posting!

There's various options. There is of course the user's recycle bin if the document was deleted in the last 30 days, and then the site collection recycle bin for another 30 days after that. All accessed through the standard SharePoint UI. If you have backups of the content database from when the document existed then you can restore it into a SharePoint environment (not your live one) and the access it, or there's various hacks you can use to get it directly out of the database Notes from the Field : Recover Documents from MOSS 2007 Database Michael O'Donovan's SharePoint and Stuff : How to recover SharePoint document once deleted from recycle bin For all the above if the document is versioned you may need to try several backups to get the right version. There will be some commercial tools which keep backups or help you retrieve documents from DB backups, but I haven't used any of them so can't comment on them. Very best thing to do would be to try a test now and see what works for you. Don't leave it until you absolutely need to retrieve a document. Richard

Norfolk is a long way from Birmingham. There's travel directions on the Belfry web site at http://www.thebelfry.co.uk/index.cfm/section/info/display/15/location.htm. The closest stations are New Street Station - 12 miles, Birmingham International Station - 6 miles You'll need to look at a train web site such as http://www.thetrainline.com to find out how to get there from your location. It will depend on your nearest station. I had a quick look from Norwich though and it takes about 5 hours! Richard

Oh the irony of misspelling criminal next to it!

For those asking about drinks. Some of the speakers and organisers (including myself) are staying at the Belfry the night before and I'm sure will be up for a drink. I'll certainly be in the bar after testing out the spa facilities! There's a SharePint event afterwards in the Belfry bar for those of you who don't need to rush away. We may even be able to persuade someone to donate a float. Richard

Hi David, I hadn't realised that they had started selling it. That's completely a different project that I'm involved in with several other partners. My only involvement in that is to provide the back end which extracts information out from MIS systems. It's about on-line reporting as well as provisioning. I'm not sure what the costs are of it. No need to worry about anyone getting sales calls from me. I never call anyone unless they've explicitly asked for information! The price of the product Matt talked about in the first instance is £999 + VAT per year with a one off £250 + VAT installation charge. I very much view it as a service as opposed to just a product. Regards, Richard

Hi Matt, Thanks for this - I wasn't expecting this. I would say that it's a fair review. A few minor clarifications. logs can be saved to anywhere log4net supports, including emailing and to a database. We are a (very) small company so support is not 24/7. I try to be as responsive as possible, but if I'm on an installation, a meeting or on holiday I won't not able to get back to you immediately. Definitely something you need to consider. I deliberately chose not to implement as a service. I've implemented services for similar applications in the past and you end up recreating a scheduling service, which at the end of the day, isn't as good as Windows Scheduler, is more likely to have bugs in, and no-one knows how to schedule without explanation, plus it's another component to maintain. Everyone one knows how to use Windows Scheduler and it's always present. I'm happy to be convinced otherwise though Salamander Active Directory is a different, complementary product, however if you are using LDAP/NTLM authentication with Moodle then Salamander Moodle will identify the users in AD and link them into Moodle i.e. it's read only with AD not write. Salamander Moodle can create/maintain users and courses/classes in Moodle. As you stated, Salamander Moodle is definitely not a VLE, it's a tool to help enable Moodle. You don't need it to run Moodle, but it is available if you want it's functionality and value that enough to pay for it. There are other solutions which I always point people to when they ask about it (http://blog.salamandersoft.co.uk/index.php/2009/02/automatically-linking-moodle-to-simsnet-and-facility-cmis/). The comparison with Capita's solution is interesting. The last prices I heard for it was that it was more expensive in the first year (taking into account installation costs) and cheaper in subsequent years. It is a lot more complex in it's set up which is due to it's origins as a tool to create accounts in a remote domain. Because of this, if any of the multiple components are down then the process stops working. Salamander Active Directory can also do more as the Capita solution only has access to a small set of data as opposed to the entire data set in Sims. At the end of the day you pays your money and takes your choice. Interestingly I do have customers who have the Capita solution to create the Sims Learning Gateway accounts, but also use Salamander Active Directory to maintain their real accounts (and automatically consolidate the SLG ones with them). Thanks Matt, Richard

Although not a licensing expert, as project co-ordinator of 2 open source projects (SLK and MLG) and managing director of a commercial company (SalamanderSoft), I've got my own take on this. Of course not being a legal expert, it's worth as much as you've paid for it. I also have commercial products, provisioning and online reporting, which compete with Penfold's so take with a pinch of salt;) From reading other responses and my own research I would say that Penfold's blocks would need to be released under GPL and hence in effect whether he wants it or not, open source. Penfold can restrict access to download it from his servers to those who have paid, but once downloaded it can be freely passed on to others. And the only thing preventing a commercial company providing commercial support for it would be his in depth knowledge of the code and problem domain. I can only see the following means of income for open source projects: 1. Your school needs it and are paying your wage. Do it in working hours. 2. Customers pay for ongoing support. Moodle users tend to be happy hacking it themselves, which does limit it a bit. 3. Customers pay for one-off consulting/support/training. 4. Customers pay for development. If they want a particular feature and timescale they are going to have to pay for it. Going into an open-source project you need to keep 3 things in mind. 1. You will not make any money out of it. 2. You are doing it because you like hacking the code or because you need the finished product. 3. You will not make any money out of it. 99.9% of open source projects will not make any money. Most of course will not try. I think that if you go into it expecting to make money you will be disappointed. Do it because your school needs it or you enjoy doing it. Also, people are unlikely to pay any money until the product is complete. The people who are going to pay for support are the people who have the budget for a packaged product, but don't lurk in technical forums on the off-chance something might be developed! Finally, good luck however you decide to proceed.

That should be fixed now, thanks for letting us know. It was an issue with my hosting company when servers in the cluster are switched in between page requests. Shouldn't happen again now. Richard

Hi David, Have you looked at the Google Charting API. I've just been using it and it seems pretty comprehensive. http://blog.salamandersoft.co.uk/index.php/2009/06/google-chart-api/ I can also confirm for David that the Sims Business Objects are custom objects for Sims and not built on the SAP Business Objects. Bit of a shame that a generic computer science term is used as the name of a product/company as that just leads to confusion. Richard

Try Host URL: LDAP://IP/ The ldap word should be in upper case. Richard http://blog.salamandersoft.co.uk

Penfold_99 has been doing some work on Sims integration which is all open source. I've also started work with some partners about surfacing Sims information in Moodle. Unlikely to be fully available before September though. Richard [edit] Beeswax beat me to it with Penfold and even provided a link!

The pathway choice is just an indicator of which one you'll more likely to go to more sessions of. You are free to go to whichever sessions you want, keeping in mind that the pathways are running concurrently. The choice on the form is just so we can plan which room to put each pathway in. Sorry about any confusion and I've updated the page to make it clearer - you'll see that once the web server has stopped caching the old version. Richard

Hi All, Just to let you know, I've added an on-line quote generator on the conference web site now so that you can raise a purchase order and be invoiced in the normal way. I hope to see see at the conference. Richard

That sample code should run on WSS fine, there's no MOSS specific stuff in there except in the feature.xml file. You can just remove the workflow receiver entries and it will still work.