Sakai 2.6 Overview

Added by Peter A. Knoop, last edited by Peter A. Knoop on Dec 16, 2008  (view change)

What's in Sakai 2.6?

Below is an overview of new or modified functionality for Sakai 2.6. Projects have also been busy fixing bugs, however, they are not explicitly listed here unless they were considered significant in impact or scope.

Jira Tasks scheduled to be fixed for Sakai 2.6: 384 issues

Jira Bugs scheduled to be fixed for Sakai 2.6: 836 issues

Also note additional functionality will tentatively be included in the demo version of 2.6, (e.g., Provisional tools enabled, Contrib tools integrated); however, that version should not be used for production.

Cross-Project Activities

  • Accessibility
    • Minor improvements in some JSF tags.
  • Internationalization
    • Support for localized tool names, page names not currently localized (SAK-8908, SAK-14393, KNL-27)
    • Localized date/time picker for Announcement, Assignment, Schedule, and Resources (SAK-3825).
    • Localized start-of-week in Schedule (SAK-8459, SAK-12878).
    • Completed translations (expect translation work to start after String Freeze)
      • Basque
      • Swedish
    • Planned translations
      • Dutch (Edia, LOI, A New Spring, Portfolio4u)
      • Russian (Mike Ozornin, TANDEM; Philip Fedchin, Smolny College)
  • Kernel
    • A "K1" kernel release that brings all of the current components together in a single place.
    • See individual kernel components below for changes.
  • Performance
    • Implementation of a working, proof-of-concept generic Sakai performance testing environment, including data.
    • Establish baseline tests for tools and build a test results library for comparisons among releases.
  • Testing
    • Improvements to Sakai integration test support (SAK-12334)
  • User Experience (UX)
    • No major changes from 2.5.
  • Miscellaneous New Features and Functionality

Tools

  • Assignments
    • Refactoring of db to improve performance; involves moving selected meta data from XML blob into table columns and supporting migration code.
    • Support for multiple submissions of an assignment on an assignment-wide basis.
    • Support of custom fields, with timing and role control over who/when can see them (SAK-4384, SAK-7653, SAK-5803, SAK-10211).
    • Improved integration with Schedule and Announcement; when an assignment opens, expose link to the assignment from schedule and announcement items.
  • Blog
    • Replaced rendering framework with wicket.
    • Improved performance of db layer.
  • Calendar Summary
    • Added indicator with number of events to each calendar day.
    • Event description is now formatted as HTML.
    • Improved performance, so tool loads faster.
  • Citations Helper
    • New configuration option for maximum number of databases to search simultaneously (SAK-14166)
    • Support for populating direct vendor URLs from Search Library Resources and RIS import (SAK-13441)
    • User interface improvements (SAK-14326, SAK-14343, SAK-14338)
  • Email Archive
    • Performance improvements for handling a large number of messages in the archive (SAK-11544) .
  • Forums
    • Improved reporting.
  • Gateway
    • Improve performance when there is a significant number of sites.
  • Gradebook
    • Ability to add multiple items at the same time (SAK-12114)
  • Mailtool
    • Being deprecated and removed.
    • New version of the tool available in Contrib resulting from a major re-write, including switching from JSF to RSF, and improving recipient selection, email validation, and group awareness; not considered ready for production use yet.
  • Messages
    • Ability to reply all (SAK-12073)
    • Option to turn off 'send to email' option in message composition for a site (SAK-12176)
  • OSP
    • Improvements to UX.
    • Ability to edit and delete feedback and evaluations (SAK-8638).
    • Aggregation of Evaluations across sites via My Workspace (SAK-10139).
    • Better group awareness and filtering in Wizards tool (SAK-11545).
    • Ability to apply an OSP Style to more screens of a Matrix (SAK-12154).
    • Ability to control allowed general and item-specific feedback (0, 1, many) in Matrices and Wizards (SAK-13406).
  • Polls
    • Add entity support to Polls tool (SAK-14216).
  • Preferences
    • Customize Tabs is now the default initial page; pages can be re-ordered (SAK-6545).
    • Improved functionality for re-ordering tabs (SAK-12870).
    • User configurable number of tabs (SAK-11710).
  • Presentation
    • Retired and removed from the release for 2.6.
  • Resources
    • SAK-7670: Notification of items with release dates should be at release time
  • Rwiki
  • Schedule
    • iCal External Subscription support in Schedule Tool (SAK-12852)
  • Tests & Quizzes (a.k.a. Samigo)
    • Allow editing a published assessment.
    • Ability to release assessments to groups.
  • User Membership
    • Include the created and last modified date on the screen and in the CSV export.
    • Filtering the searching and viewing of users to only those users with the same named usertype(s).
  • Web Content
    • Option for displaying a link and user-entered WYSIWYG text.
  • Worksite Setup/Site Info
    • Add option to import and replace content from another site (SAK-12433)
    • Create sites from templates (SAK-12868).
    • Support for optional survey questions during site setup (SAK-12912).
    • More configurable control over adding tools (e.g., Chat) multiple times to a site (SAK-7209).
    • Deep delete of site data before importing content from other sites.
    • Enhanced group creation; ability to add a role or a provider id to a group (SAK-13413).
  • WYSIWYG Widget (FCKeditor)
    • FCKeditor upgrade to version 2.6.2, which brings in bug fixes and better Safari support (SAK-13844).
    • FCKeditor plug-in to allow users to embed entities.

The following tools have no changes in functionality for 2.6, incorporating only bug-fixes since the 2.5 release.

Services and Framework

(Note: Many of the services listed below, but not all, have been re-organized into a "kernel" package for Sakai 2.6.)

  • Calendar
    • Add CalDAV support to Sakai's calendar service.
  • Citations
    • Support for Serials Solutions 360 Search metasearch engine (SAK-13754)
    • Support for returning direct vendor URLs from Search Library Resources and RIS import (SAK-14322, SAK-14282)
  • Cluster
    • Improve performance by switching to a JMS-based implementation (SAK-12797)
  • Component
  • Content Hosting Service
    • JCR implementation, testing and migration.
    • Hooks for a virus-scanner service to support optional, add-on virus scanning capabilities (SAK-12985).
  • Course Management
    • Allow administrative control over which Academic Sessions are current or active (SAK-12883).
  • Email
    • Refactor email service
  • Entity Broker
  • JSF
    • Improved formatting and accessibility of ToolBar tag (SAK-13233).
  • Message
    • Improve performance and capabilities of the Message API and storage mechanisms (SAK-12837).
  • Portal
  • Providers
    • Configure the default authz group provider without editing source code and rebuilding (SAK-12583).
  • User
    • Support for context-sensitive display names (jira:SAK-7970}, SAK-10868).
    • Improved performance when retrieving many user records (SAK-14230).
  • Web Services
    • Added IP Address Filtering (SAK-13689).
    • New web services:
      • Get a list of users in an authzgroup (or site).
      • Remove an individual member from a site (acts on Site rather than AuthzGroup).
      • Returns title of a site.
      • Returns description of a site.
      • Returns site joinability.
      • Checks if a user exists in an authzgroup (or site).
      • Gets XML doc of all users in an authzgroup (or site) with the given role(s), including username, displayname, and role.
      • Modifies a site's title value.
      • Modifies a site's skin value.
      • Modifies a site's joinable value.
      • Modifies a site's iconurl value.
      • Creates a session for a given user without knowing their password (admins-only, for security reasons).
      • Gets the displayname of a given user (the original was session based, this is more flexible).
      • Get a custom property of a site.
      • Set a custom property for a site.
      • Remove a custom property for a site.
      • Check if a role exists in a given authzgroup.
      • Search for users that meet the given criteria and returns xml.
      • Add contact name and email to site given a siteid and username.
      • Get list of groups in a site.
      • Get list of participants in a group.
      • Another signature of addNewSite() that takes an additional flag to tell it to copy the site's resources over as well.

The following services have no changes in functionality for 2.6, incorporating only bug-fixes since the 2.5 release.

  • Access
  • Alias
  • Authz
  • Build
  • Content-Review
  • Courier
  • Database
  • Entity
  • Event
  • IMSTI
  • JCR
  • Memory
  • Portlet
  • Privacy
  • Profile
  • Quartz Scheduler
  • Realms
  • Reports
  • Rights
  • Site
  • Sites
  • Skins
  • Test Harness
  • Tool
  • Util
  • Velocity
  • WebDAV
  • WSRP

Sakai 2.6 Demo Release

The Sakai 2.6 demo release is not packaged for production use, and is only intended as a demonstration platform for the variety of additional functionality that can be added to Sakai. All Provisional tools will be enabled by default in the demo release. The following is a tentative list of what may be included in such a demo version for Sakai 2.6:

Cross-Project Activities

  • Populate several course sites, portfolio sites, and project sites with example content suitable for demonstration purposes.
  • Populate system with demonstration users, including students, teaching assistants, and instructors.

Tools

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