Perth Hackfest October 2012/Reporting spec

Introduction/Problems

• Better reporting within Moodle
• More reports
• “General solution for moodle as a whole”
• Easier for developers to create reports
• More configuration options to the reports
• We need side wide reports
• Existing spec: https://docs.moodle.org/dev/reporting_spec
• security issues related to those reports

• http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-30193

Requirements

• Site-wide reporting of user data
• Site-wide reporting of plugin data
• Ability for users to control report appearance
• Need to export data in multiple formats: PDF, CSV, Excel(?)
• Permissions:
  • Access to individual reports
  • Access to specific data within the report
• Scheduling:
  • Need to specify an exact time to send out a report
  • Hooks to make exports/scheduled reports available via CLI
• Control over the report’s appearance:
  • via the UI
  • Need ability to generate graphics (i.e. gas gauge, bar graph, line graph, etc.)
    • Needs to generate images for no-JS and export
    • Core Dev decision to use YUI graphic library for generating static HTML graphics
  • Ability to manipulate the appearance of report content
    • Header / footer information
    • Group headings
• We need an interface that’s nice and clicky (not nasty and typey)
• Multiple base report “formats”:
  • Table,
  • Graphical (i.e. bar chart)
• Must be able to display a report within a block that can go on a page
  • i.e. on My Moodle
  • could build new report “widgets” (i.e Jira dashboard)
  • could rewrite Recent Activity, Online Users and Recent Forum Posts as a report
• Support a “report DB” option that can be defined in config.php where report data can be pulled from
  • Could also be used in other areas of Moodle (stats?)
• Performance
  • Reports should be able to be run on a live site without significantly slowing down the site for users
  • Log start and end times of report generation (via events?)
• Accesibility?
  • Data needs to be available to a screenreader
  • Correct ALT tags for images

User stories/Use cases

• Existing user stories, as converted from Ray’s original wiki docs:
  • https://docs.moodle.org/dev/reportbuilder/spec_as_user_stories

External References

• Report builder technical documentation:
  • https://docs.moodle.org/dev/reportbuilder
• ELIS end-user documentation for reports:
  • http://rlcommunity.remote-learner.net/mod/book/view.php?id=63&chapterid=594
  • https://github.com/remotelearner/elis.reporting (filters are defined in elis.core and elis.cm as well)
• Configurable reports:
  • https://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Configurable_reports