Social Forum requests - more info

Social Forum requests - more info

by Shane Symonds -
Number of replies: 24

Hello all: we are using the social format for our Student Notices forum BUT some staff have asked, is there a way to add a category to a post, ie Year 8, so that we can eventually filter the notices, say to display just the Year 8 Notices? Or they can be arranged/sorted according to Year Level?

I was thinking that it might be possible to edit the post.php file but it looks way too hard! Any other ideas?

Have I made my request clear enough? We had this level of functionality before using Sharepoint and it would be nice to get it back.

Looking forward to some responses, Shane

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In reply to Shane Symonds

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Jon Witts -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Can you achieve this using groups on your forum?
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In reply to Jon Witts

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Shane Symonds -
Maybe. I have started looking at this but the concept behind groups and groupings is more to do with members, yes? Rather than the posts themselves?

All I want is for the forum posts to be sorted some other way other than time posted. If they could be arranged via subject even, I could get the staff to add the Year Level to the subject, ie 8 , 9 and so on. That way, all notices with an 8 in the subject could be grouped together. Is that possible?

Regards, Shane
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In reply to Shane Symonds

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Jon Witts -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Groups is to do with members yes, but it pervades through all activities too. If your forum is set to group mode, and your teachers are members of the relevant groups, they will be able to filter the forum to display messages from only one group...
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In reply to Jon Witts

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Shane Symonds -

Jon : Thanks for the reply. Trouble is that I would need to place all students in various groups/groupings? And make all staff memebers of each? And until students are placed in a group, they might not be able to see anything? At the moment, I have it set so that guests can view all notices. Only staff can post. This is fine; it is just the sorting and grouping of notices that I need...

Will keep playing.../working...

Regards, Shane

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In reply to Shane Symonds

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Jon Witts -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Yes, you are right that is the trouble wink

We do it by a script... We can distinguish our students year group by the format their username takes; so we can run a script to select all Year 7 students and add them to a course and then also add them to a group within that course...

We also do this with staff too... Works quite well...

Jon
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In reply to Jon Witts

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Shane Symonds -
Jon : Thanks for the advice. I have tried this but cannot see any option to filter the forum posts according to anything, really. I am using Social format. They are still displayed according to date added. Is it really this hard to sort forum posts? I have tried a database and posted in that forum but can't get advice on how to manage the expiry dates for a post.

It's all getting to be too much! Thanks, anyway.
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In reply to Shane Symonds

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Jon Witts -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
As well as setting up the groups in the course you need to make sure they are set up for the individual activity too. Have a read of this page: Adding/editing_a_forum#Group_mode

Jon
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In reply to Jon Witts

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Shane Symonds -
Thanks, Jon, for the time you are putting into this. I have set up groups for the course, groups for the forum but according to the documentation, when a teacher goes to post, they should get a dropdown option to select which group it is posted to. Mine is till set to All participants, and there are no options. Where have I gone wrong?

This in a social forum and at the moment I am testing this on my laptop, using MAMP.

In my view, this is getting way too complex for something that should be simple, ie sorting the forum posts according to maybe a subject or a group.

Regards, Shane
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In reply to Shane Symonds

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Which forum type are you using Shane?
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Ok -does this help? Screenshot of social forum - course set to groups and I clicked update this forum and set it to groups and now there is a drop down for me to select group
Attachment groupforum.png
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Shane Symonds -
Thanks, Mary. But while I get this when I, too, view in a LIst format, I don't see the option to post to individual groups when I post a topic to the form. Nor do I see this when the forum is displayed as a series of posts with the subject visible which is how staff see it.

Attached is the view I mean. Ideas?

regards, Shane

EDIT: The next screenshot shows where I would expect to see this option.
Attachment Screen_shot_2010-07-18_at_10.06.34_AM.png
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In reply to Shane Symonds

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Shane Symonds -
This is the screen I was after - I did not realise I could only have 1 screen per post!
Attachment Screen_shot_2010-07-18_at_10.10.49_AM.png
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Shane Symonds -
Mary and others : Here is a sample of what I can do in SharePoint. Can this view be achieved in Moodle, then?

Thanks, Shane
Attachment Screen_shot_2010-07-18_at_10.18.00_AM.png
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In reply to Shane Symonds

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Is this not sufficient? Set the discussion to a certain group and post it. Then when you want to see all discussions on the same screen, selece the all participants link
Attachment groupforum2.png
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Shane Symonds -
Thanks, Mary. I can't get the option to post a topic to just a single group. The column which lists the Groups is blank and all the posts have no dropdown option. Have I not set something correctly?

Also, are you able to display the actual message? Rather than the Subject alone? It would be good if we were able to format the view. In my instance, there are no replies to the Notices posted. They are displays of information.
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In reply to Shane Symonds

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Yes -when you enter the course ( you said you have chosen social format) it will display the messages by default - go and checkout the Moodle Lounge which operates in the same way. If you are in a group then you will only see the messages for your group displayed. Re groups - do you not get the group dropdown box as I showed top left in the previous screenshot? I will try to create some sort of walk through today if you can't get it - it is simple actually - took me seconds once you know how smile
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Shane - how have you set up your groups? Have you gone to Groups in course admin and created some groups?
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Right ok - try the attached pdf helpsheet:
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Shane - did you try this? Did it work?
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Shane Symonds -
Mary: thanks for the help so far but I have not had time to "play" with the groups option yet. As you may have noticed, I am also trying a database module option (details in that forum) and my labors have been in that direction so far.

If I can't get that code to work, I will have another go at the groups and forums, though a quick look at your PDF suggested that I was doing all the right things yet still could not get the option to post to different groups. I shall keep you (and the forum) posted.

Regards, Shane
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Shane Symonds -
Mary : Thanks for the help (so far). I have put solving this on the backburner but I really need to fix it. So...I have followed your instructions (thanks!) and can see how Groups work but - there is always a but! - the main page of the course is where I want the sorting to happen. As it is, with the Groups as you have suggested, a staff member would have to 1. go into the forum via the Activities Block, 2. select the group, 3. let that refresh, 4. go back to the "revised" front page of the course and then print/view.

They would then have to go all the way back through this procedure if they wanted to view All Notices, then.

The addition of a notice for a select group requires them to again select the group, wait for the refresh and then add a topic.

Is there not an easier way? A way by which they can select the group at the post stage? and then have them sorted by Groups?

This would require some rewriting of the database and the php files, I imagine. Adding another field to the mdl_forum_posts can be easily done but the finetuning of the post.php files (and others) is going to be beyond me.

Any ideas, anyone? Thanks, Shane
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In reply to Shane Symonds

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Hold on..if you follow the instructions in my sheet it makes three (say) posts for three groups, y7 y8 and y9. The default view on the main page then will be those three posts in the separate groups if you are a teacher. If you are a student then you will obviously only see your own groups post. From then on a teacher just needs to click reply to one of the year group posts to make a new post on a new subject for that particular year. Unless you want to start up totally new discussion topics why not just keep replying to the one post you began for each group?
Attachment forums.jpg
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Shane Symonds -
Mary : Thanks for the reply. I think I see where you are coming from but correct me if I am wrong. Your "front page" of the social forum only has 3 posts then? One for each year level? If so, this is a different take on what I was after.

I want the "front page" of the Notice course to display all the notices. It would be great if they were in order according to their year level.

As I have it set at school, there are no groups. All users are guests and they can see and print the current notices. When a teacher logs in, they can add/edit notices. When students log in, they can only view all of the current notices; for this course, they are basically guests. I do not want to place every student in a group according to their year level (1. I don't know every kid, 2. we have 1400 students). Every teacher will need access to all of the groups.

I will keep playing with this as I think I can make it kind of work but it is nowhere as simple as it was in Sharepoint (the construction of views, that is). If I get a chance, I will post a screenshot of how we have it currently (using Moodle but without groups). That way, you might be able get a sense of what I mean...

Regards, Shane
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In reply to Shane Symonds

Re: Social Forum requests - more info

by Judy Steidl -
I'd love to see a screenshot. I also have a large number of users and no groups.
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