Though not sure if this is interesting for the community but we have been developing a group administration package. It uses standard tables and is not integrated as acs objects or acs subsite functionality for parties, groups, ... this migration still needs to be done.
The idea behind this all was to have something called group type which lets admins define parameters like:
- max members
- min members
- enrollment begin
- enrollment end
- multiple memberships (allowed or not)
- participation type
- user can request membership
- member can invite user
- requests and invitations
- only admins manage memberships
- distribution type
- no preferences
- with preferences
- optimized using assignment algorithm
- first come first served
- randomized
- white- & blacklists
- confirmations (required or not)
- group creation (user or admin)
There are also wizards so that for different scenarios some values are preset. The scenarios we have this package in use is:
- group competitions - here students can create threir own groups, invite others, request membership. The created groups participate on regularily release online tests that are processed automatically and a ranking is generated for the groups. At the end of a semester the winning group is announced and receives a price.
- assigning students to groups with limited space. thus the admin defines the amounts and sizes of the groups available and each student passes his/her preference for the groups. A solutions is calculated by maximising the total preferences. The solution can be reviewed by the admin and the memberships are then created. If required a full dotlrn community is created for that group.
The package works well (we use it in production) but since it was started as a student project there quiete a bit of improvements required so that is smoothly integrated with OpenACS and dotLRN.
Currently I am working on the dotLRN integration. The package is already i18n-ized. I hope to finish an improved version by the end of month.
Where most help is needed is the migration to subsite parties, groups...
I will send you the link on the test server soon.
