Moodle plugins directory: Notifications | Moodle.org
Notifications
Blocks ::: block_notifications
Maintained by Goran Josic
Not always logged in, you want to be up to date about new content, discussions or events in your Moodle courses? This moodle block implements a solution that periodically notifies learners about new content or activities included into a Moodle course. This solution will act as a sentinel that detects whether new contents or new activities have been included into the Moodle course, and notify the learners and/or the instructors about that. Notifications methods are:
e-mail message
RSS aggregator
SMS message
There is also a version of this plugin for Moodle 1.9 that can be downloaded from the Website.
Latest release:
367 sites
31 downloads
57 fans
Current versions available: 1
Useful links
Contributors
Goran Josic (Lead maintainer)
Please login to view contributors details and/or to contact them
Please consider adding your git repository and issues tracker links to the 'Useful links' section.
Here are the answers to your comments:
- As for the repository name I would like to avoid renaming the repository because it would break the update process for all people that are using git to manage the updates.
- The additional functionality is that the block provides notifications on course updates through two and potentially three channels. It monitors the course and notifies additions, deletions and updates on course modules. So both activities and resources are monitored. It is useful for all teachers that don't want to use the Forum news or Participants menu to warn their students when new course material is added to the course.
It seems to me that this functionality is not available yet in Moodle. If it is please let me know so I can stop developing and supporting this plugin.
- The SMS notification is an optional channel and it depends on the provider that offers the service. In the lib directory of the plugin there is an abstract class showing which methods have to be provided and a sample of how this implementation could be done. If no SMS.php file containing the SMS class is provided this channel is simply ignored. The functionality is just there for users that need this feature and have a contract with a telecommunication provider that allows them to send SMS notifications.
- Yes, the plugin has three levels of configurations. A channel can be disabled on platform level for all courses by and administrator. It can be disabled on course level by a teacher. It also can be disabled on student's level as preference.
- There is a version for moodle 1.9. I didn't use the same space because the repository field is single and I used two separated repositories for moodle 1.9 and moodle 2.x versions. The 1.9 version is here: https://github.com/arael/moodle_notifications_19
Maybe I'm wrong but it used to be two entries in the Moodle Plugin repositories. Now there are only Moodle 2.0 versions. The directory structure is a little bit different so are the filenames. That's one of the reasons I made two distinct plugins.
- I think that the current Moodle notifications system works well but it is not complete yet. I have developed the Notifications plugin because our university needed something like that. I guess other users might have similar needs so having something like that in the Moodle core would be great. If you guys want to use my code or part of it please feel free to do so. I don't know if it is good enough for your standards but maybe it can be a starting point.
It is the old entry and it is not needed anymore.
Thank you.