e-mail all students without enabling system messaging

e-mail all students without enabling system messaging

by Joseph Rézeau -
Number of replies: 8
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Just discovered one more negative side-effect of the "roles & capabilities" strategy after upgrading from 1.6 to 1.8 on our university server (+20,000 potential users).sad

Previous situation (1.6).

General site policy is to disable instant messaging site-wide. So it was disabled: no-one could use the instant messaging facility. However, it was still possible for teacher to go to People/Participants list, tick a number of names and use the drop-down list With selected users -> Add/Send message. I used this a lot and still need it.

Present situation (1.8.2)

  • case A

Administration ► Security ► Site policies : Enable messaging

Teacher can Send messages to selected students; but now students can send each other instant messages, which we do not want.

  • case B

Administration ► Security ► Site policies : Disable messaging

Teacher cannot Send messages to selected students. Even if in Administration ► Users ► Permissions ► Define roles Edit Teacher role capabilities: moodle/site:readallmessages and moodle/course:bulkmessaging are set to Allow, nothing doing. What is the use of those capabilities, then?

  • case C

Administration ► Security ► Site policies : Enable messaging. Teacher can Send messages to selected students. And Administration ► Users ► Permissions ► Define roles Edit Student role capabilities: there is nothing there to prevent students from using instant messaging!

Is there any way out of this double bind? thoughtful

Joseph

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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: e-mail all students without enabling system messaging

by Steve Hyndman -

Joseph,

I don't think there is a fix for your problem using messaging, but you could install the quickmail block for 1.8 and do essentially what you were doing except, of course, you would be emailing the students instead of messaging them.

http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=92

Steve

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In reply to Steve Hyndman

Re: e-mail all students without enabling system messaging

by Joseph Rézeau -
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Hi Steve,
Thanks for the suggestion. However this is not an option, as our admin is reluctant to install non standard blocks/modules etc. on our university site. I'd rather have a solution which remains within standard Moodle installation. How come that working functionality in 1.6 is now no longer available? So far, from a teacher's point of view, I have not found one single advantage in the roles/capabilities system, only drawbacks.angry
Joseph
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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: e-mail all students without enabling system messaging

by Helen Foster -
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Hi Joseph,

I've just checked and found that teachers can send emails to selected students without messaging being enabled in Moodle 1.7 - it's only in 1.8 that there is a problem.

If you've not done so already, please report this issue in the tracker.
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In reply to Helen Foster

Re: e-mail all students without enabling system messaging

by Joseph Rézeau -
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Hi Helen,

Thanks for checking. You are right, the problem does not exist in 1.7, only in 1.8.x and 1.9. I have added comments to MDL-10028 and MDL-10112.

Joseph

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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: e-mail all students without enabling system messaging

by Joseph Rézeau -
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We need more people to vote for bug MDL-10028 to get it fixed. Please vote!
Joseph
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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: e-mail all students without enabling system messaging

by Steve Hyndman -

So far, from a teacher's point of view, I have not found one single advantage in the roles/capabilities system, only drawbacks.angry

With a 20,000 student install, I understand your admins reluctance to install nonstandard stuff...he could really have a mess on his hands if not careful. If it helps, I have used the quickmail block in all my installs since 1.5 and it seems to work flawlessly with no negative side-effects...not sure why it's not standard.

As far as only seeing drawbacks with roles/capabilities...I couldn't agree more.

Steve

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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: e-mail all students without enabling system messaging

by A. T. Wyatt -
I agree with you Joseph, I would like this bug to be fixed. So thanks for sending the links!

We have had some intermittent problems with quickmail (sometimes the attachments don't appear for the recipient, sometimes the messages themselves are not delivered (we never did figure out why), and we always have the problem of the spam filter catching student replies to bulk messages sent by teachers). I can't tell you if this is a server/email problem, a quickmail problem, or what. It doesn't happy often enough to track down many clues.

I would like the option to move to a robust internal mail system. (maybe I should go file some feature requests in the tracker! smile )

With regard to roles, I have so far been able to use the 1.8+ default roles fairly successfully. I might have changed 2 or 3 settings, but that was not difficult. I never used 1.7, so it seems to me that 1.8 has created a functional default roles set. I was happy enough with it.

I was not, however, as successful updating moodle courses after a cumulative series of patches and non-standard blocks over the last 2.5 years. Things catch up with you in unexpected ways, and although the problems are small in scale (maybe affecting less than 3% of the courses), as a user/instructor/admin you don't need any unexpected surprises! I can sympathize with your sysadmin's desire to have nothing but core!

atw
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In reply to A. T. Wyatt

Re: e-mail all students without enabling system messaging

by Art Lader -

> I can sympathize with your sysadmin's desire to have nothing but core!

Yes, I have slowly and reluctantly come around to this way of thinking, too.

-- Art
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