Admin alert block

Administration Alert Block

This block alert the administration about things that can be wrong in Moodle site. Currently the following alerts are implemented:

• Courses with the same idnumber value;
• Courses without a teacher;
• Courses with many backup files;
• Inactive courses;
• Inactive users;
• Users that never logged on;
• Users without a role;
• Inactive teachers, course creators or administrators.

This information can only seen by administrators, but the block can also used inside a course.

A teacher can be alerted about:

• Users inactive in a course;
• Users that belong to a course, inactive in foruns.

The block support multiple instances and specifying a distinct target course, allowing a teacher to setup a course with information about all his other courses. The information about a course can only be setup and seen by a user with editing capabilities in that course.

There are also a fast search on users and courses.

This block does not create neither change tables in Moodle database, and now is not using the mdl_log table.

Installation

• Download the last version from moodle.org: http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1540
• Copy the admin_alert folder into the \blocks folder of your Moodle site
• Login in to Moodle as an administrator and go to the \admin page (Notifications) to install the block
• When prompted, set the default settings for the block
• Add the Administration Alert block to the front page or another course of your choice

Languages

Thanks to the generosity of translators, the Administration Alert Block is available in:

• English
• Portuguese
• German

Other translations are welcome. If you would like to provide a translation of this block, please create an issue in the tracker with the language file attached to the issue.

Global Configuration

All the parameters are the limit of number of warnings of each type. If set to zero, the parameter is turned off.

Site Administration » Modules » Blocks » Administration alert

• Course idnumber - If you need that course idnumber must be distinct, if not empty (for linking with other system), this alert will show the courses with identical idnumber.
• Course without a teacher - This alert show the courses without a teacher.
• Course backup files - This alert show the courses with more number of backup files than a specified amount.
• Number of backup files - Specify the number of backup files that are allowed, for be used in alert of course backup files.
• Inactive courses - This alert show the courses with more number days of inactivity.
• Inactivity in months - Specify the number of months that a course is considered inactive, for be used in alert of inactive courses.
• Inactive users - This alert show the users with more number days of inactivity.
• Inactivity in months - Specify the number of months that a user is considered inactive, for be used in alert of inactive users.
• Never logged on - This alert show the users that never logged on in the system.
• Users without roles - This alert show the users with no roles.
• Inactive teachers - This alert show the teachers, course creators or administrators with more number days of inactivity, or that never logged on.
• Inactivity in days - Specify the number of days that a teachers is considered inactive, for be used in alert of inactive teachers.
• Administration course - Specify the id for the only course allowing to see global information, or leave it in 0 for allowing to show the alerts in any course. The user always requires to be an administrator to see global alerts.
• Fast user search - 0 - do not include user list in fast search; 1 - include user list in fast search (turn on this setting only if you have below 1000 users)
• Fast course search - 0 - do not include course list in fast search; 1 - include course list in fast search

Fast search shows:

• for users: id | idnumber | username | Fullname | email
• for courses: id | idnumber | shortname | Fullname

Instance Configuration

Edit configuration of an instance:

• Course - Specify for this instance the course you want to see. This allow you to set in only one Moodle course, alerts for all your courses. You need to have course:update capability in order to select or see alerts for that course.
• Course inactive users - This alert show the users with more number days of inactivity in one course.
• Inactivity in days - Specify the number of days that a user is considered inactive, for be used in alert of inactive users in the course.
• Forum inactive users - This alert show the users of a course, with more number days of inactivity in foruns (of any course).
• Inactivity in days - Specify the number of days that a user is considered inactive, for be used in alert of forum inactive users in the course.

Examples

The following figure shows the block seen by the administrator. He write "14" in the fast search bar, and the links for users and courses with 14 apear below, in this case was the id value for the user and the course. There are two courses with the same idnumber of "ID1", that could be trouble if you use this field for linking with another system. There are listed four courses without a teacher (what append there?), one course with 3 backup files (did the teacher knows what to do with the backup files?), and two courses with inactivity (are the courses still necessary? can be deleted?).

The second parte of the block, shows the alerts over the users. It shows 3 users with inactivity (they giveup?), one user that never logged on (did he received the message with the instructions?), two users without any role (are they lost? who are they?), and three inactive teachers (are they supporting courses this year?).

The next figures show a course with two instances of the block, one (on the left) pointing to another courser, the "Disciplina de Demonstração". The user "Heraclito de Éfeso" has editing capabilities in both courses, but as we can see in the following figure, the user "Vasco da Gama" cannot see the block about "Disciplina de Demonstração" since he is only teacher of the current course. A student could not see any of the blocks. "Heraclito de Éfeso" can in one place control both courses. In the current course, there are two users inactive in the course (they know when the course start?), and three users that are students in this course, and are inactive in all foruns (they have time to comunicate with the collegues?).

To Do List

Feature requests and bug reports can be filed in the Moodle Tracker (http://tracker.moodle.org). Please use the Non-core contributed modules project and select Components and the Block: Admin_alert component. Your suggestions and feedback in improving this block are greatly appreciated.

Contributor/Maintainer

The Administration Alert Block was contributed and is maintained by José Coelho.

The block has code contributions from Mike Worth and Steve Bond, and other contributions from Andreas Grupp, Ken Gibson and Paul Baumeister