Groups

Improving the Groups design in Moodle 1.9

Summary of problems:

Can not define groupings at site level
Groupings not implemented in modules
Concept of orphaned groups
Not integrated into Moodle core
Unfinished and partially broken code

It would be very hard to improve current code without major refactoring and design changes. --Petr Škoda (škoďák) 02:37, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

Competing proposals

Change groups/groupings relationship

At present both groups and groupings may belong to course, you could use one group in several courses and groupings at the same time. This loose relationship of groups and groupings adds too much complexity and is a source of bugs in code.

Solution: Each group should be attached to exactly one grouping. The groups would not be shared in groupings anymore, instead groups could be linked using linkid. See attached db schema.

Benefits:

fewer tables
normalized
simpler SQL
faster
much easier backup/restore implementation

Linked groups

TODO

Group/grouping cloning

TODO

Enrolment synchronization

Global groupings can partially replace metacourses in some scenarios. They should support synchronization of enrolments based on group membership. Global groupings should allow:

automatic or manual sync of enrolments – reuse code from metacourses
setting of default sync role id with possible exception for teachers, tutors, etc.
import/export of grouping definitions
mapping of global groupings during course restore (course groupings always backed/restored)

Other code cleanup

Current group code does not follow Moodle coding guide, has several unfinished/broken/obsoleted parts, is not integrated into core, etc. To do:

integrate setup and upgrade into main lib/db/*.*
remove columns from groupings table that can be replaced by permissions
reduce the number of functions, rewrite or fix them, move them into lib/grouplib.php
split UI in /group/ – global groupings management and course grouping setup
implement module and course groupings support, fix all mods to use it (course edit form, mod edit form, etc.)
fix legacy functions
documentation

Needed time

1 month for implementation and testing.

Documentation