Best way to connect 2 Moodle instances

Best way to connect 2 Moodle instances

by olivier dechepy -
Number of replies: 7

We have 2 separate institutions using Moodle.

  • One of them is using LDAP to manage the users (register, sync...) 
  • In the other one, there is no LDAP, users are registered manually : through csv list, or potentially by self registration

They do not share users.

In a near future, we want that the users can "transparently" log into one Moodle where they have courses in specific domain (law, english...) but also go to courses to the other Moodle (Medicine) without to have to register again.

In the request to access one Moodle from another, of course there would be a check if the users can access the other platform, but before that, there would also be a check if a user from Moodle A exists in Moodle B.

In your opinion, what would be the best ways to achieve this  ?


Of course there are many issues to face, for instance if a user exists in Moodle A and Moodle B (same email), but does not have the same username, or password in both entities ?

Thank you in advance.

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In reply to olivier dechepy

Re: Best way to connect 2 Moodle instances

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
If you can melt both in to one, you will spare your users lot of hassle.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Best way to connect 2 Moodle instances

by olivier dechepy -

For many reasons, some of which are beyond technical reason (executive decision), this is not an option.


We need to have to separated Moodle instances, which are not on the same servers anyways.

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In reply to olivier dechepy

Re: Best way to connect 2 Moodle instances

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
I'm sorry. Moodle _is_ technical. How do you expect to go anywhere taking a turn "beyond technical reason"? Especially at the beginning of the journey?

The only clean way is for the two institutions to provide an authentication service outside theirs. That doesn't mean the present LDAP has to be abandoned. The local system has to answer requests from the external system, https://docs.moodle.org/en/Shibboleth for example. See https://docs.moodle.org/en/Authentication for more.

About duplicate usernames: make the (institution) e-mail address the unique ID. Moodle supports this.

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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Best way to connect 2 Moodle instances

by olivier dechepy -

Thank you for this answer where you provide actual solutions, which i will review for feasibility in our case.

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In reply to olivier dechepy

Re: Best way to connect 2 Moodle instances

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
There are more. MNet has already been mentioned. Then there is iomad https://www.iomad.org/ and also https://docs.moodle.org/en/LTI_and_Moodle. But your previous comment "We need to have to [two?] separated Moodle instances, which are not on the same servers anyways" tends to eliminate them.

Oh yes, we are looking for a technical solution to a problem caused by a non-technical decision.
sad
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