Folioz Orientation

Folioz is a SSHRC funded research platform and is powered by Mahara. Mahara is provided freely as open source software (under the GNU General Public License). What makes Folioz different from other ePortfolio systems is that you control which items and what information (Artefacts) within your portfolio other users see.

• Introduction
• What is Folioz?
• Folioz framework
• Accessibility
• Implementation: key principles for success
• Navigation
• Your Dashboard
• Main menu navigation
• User menu navigation
• User-specific information
• Your profile page
• Pages
• What are Pages?
• Your Overview Page
• Add a page
• Editing a Page
• Edit an existing page
• View a page
• Deleting a page
• Files
• Managing Files
• File browser
• Upload a file
• Upload multiple files
• Edit a file or folder
• Rotate an image
• File quota
• Blocks
• Content chooser
• Files, images and video
• Journals
• General
• Personal info
• External content
• Blocks in various pages
• Collections
• Add a collection
• Add pages to a collection
• Manage pages in a collection
• Deleting a collection
• Sharing your ePortfolio
• Share Overview
• Edit access to your profile page
• Edit access for users with an account
• Edit access for users without an account
• Privacy
• Skins
• SmartEvidence
• Troubleshooting
• Password reset links don't work
• I need to reset my password
• Notification of full file storage
• Institutions
• Institution staff access
• Institution administrators
• Glossary
• Updates
• August 2019 Update
• May 2020 Updates
• Sept 2020 Updates
• May 2022 Updates
• Change Logs
• Sept 2020 Fixes

Introduction

What is Folioz?

If you’re wondering what Folioz or an ePortfolio is, why you might want one and what it can do for you, then read on. You’re about to find out.

At the simplest level, Folioz is two things: an ePortfolio and a social networking system combined. An ePortfolio is a system in which students can record “evidence of lifelong learning” – such as essays, artwork or other such things they produce that can be stored digitally. Such things are known as artefacts in Folioz. Social networking systems need little introduction – think Bebo, Facebook or MySpace (back in the old days). Basically, they give a way for people to interact with their friends and create their own online communities.

But Folioz is much more than just a place to store files. Folioz also includes blogging, a résumé builder, and web services to integrate with other platforms.

Folioz framework

Folioz is built with Mahara, an open source e-portfolio application.

With Folioz, you control which items and what information within your portfolio other users see. Such items and information are termed artefacts. To facilitate this access control, all artefacts you wish to show to other users need to be arranged into one area. In Mahara this compilation of selected artefacts is called a ‘page’. You can have as many pages as you like, each with a different number of artefacts, intended purpose and audience. Your audience, or the people you wish to give access to your page, can be added as individuals or as a member of a group. It can even be made publicly available.

For example you could create:

• a page for your friends and family that includes holiday photos and a personal journal
• a page for your tutor, which includes assessments and your reflective learning journal
• a page to showcase your best pieces of work and your résumé for potential employers
• …

A single page or a collection of pages can make up your portfolio. Unless artefacts are placed in a page, they are not visible to anybody but you. You can use files that you uploaded or journal entries you wrote in as many pages as you wish. You only need one copy of your artefact.

Imagine you collected all your artefacts in a shoe box. Whenever you have a new artefact, you add it to the shoe box. When you are ready to create your portfolio, you take a look at the artefacts in your shoe box and choose those that you want to make available on a portfolio page. You can arrange the artefacts on that page to your liking.

Accessibility

Folioz aims to be usable by as many individuals as possible, including those with disabilities or special needs. Creating accessible web content is a requirement in many countries. In order to provide international guidelines, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) were created. There are three conformance levels under the WCAG 2.0, the latest edition of the guidelines: A, AA, and AAA. Each level requires conformance with previous levels and includes its own specific guidelines for how websites should be made accessible.

With the latest version of Folioz has reached level AA for user-facing areas of the system. The administration of Folioz is predominantly on level AA as well. We endeavour to keep up level AA to continue to provide good navigation of the site to everybody.

We can only control the accessibility of the navigation and overall platform. People uploading or creating content are responsible themselves to make their content accessible.

If you are a screen reader user, you can use the following access keys to navigate the main menu items in Folioz:

Regular user interface:

• d:Dashboard
• c: Content
• p: Portfolio
• g: Groups
• a: Administration

Implementation: key principles for success

The exemplars within this toolkit were judged to meet the five key principles for successful e-portfolio implementation that was an outcome of a prior study of effective practice (Joyes and Gray, 2010).

The key to effective practice as shown in the e-portfolio implementation model in figure 1 is to: 

1. Recognise that e-portfolio implementation involves a developmental journey for all those involved
2. Apply the e-portfolio implementation principles throughout this journey

 

 Figure 1: The e-portfolio implementation model  - the key implementation principles applied across one instance of adoption 

The table of e-portfolio implementation guidance for practitioners below sets out the key issues for practitioners together with statements of effective practice that are related to a consideration of the e-portfolio implementation principles.  The statements of effective practice are supported by some links to the case studies and to resources and events that were noted to support the development of effective practice.  This may be a helpful point of reference when thinking through your own implementation. However, you will know your own context best - the key for success is the application of the principles to your context. Further guidance may be found within Effective Practice with e-Portfolios (JISC, 2008) and the e-Portfolios infoKit (JISC, 2008).

 Table 1:  e-portfolio implementation guidance for practitioners 

e-Portfolio  implementation principles	The key issues from a practitioner perspective	Statements of effective practice with links to examples from the e-portfolio implementation case studies
1. Purpose needs to be aligned to context to maximise benefits.	The diversity of purposes for e-portfolios can lead to misunderstandings and ineffective implementation. There needs to be clarity over this at the start the implementation.	The e-portfolio purpose is clearly linked to programme or course objectives; it meets a defined need and supports the learning outcomes.  In most of the examples in this toolkit, there is both a formative feedback process involved and a summative assessment purpose - for examples of ways they can be integrated into courses see the exemplars taster of e-portfolio use . There is transparency of purpose for learners. This can be achieved through:  A course specific purpose such as achievement of competences/standards (Teacher Education, Midwifery, Clinical Practice ,Dentistry, NVQ course), CV creation (Journalism) development of academic and employability skills(Psychology). A whole university focus on personal development planning (University of Wolverhampton) employability or graduate attributes (University of Edinburgh) the latter being a key focus for Australian Higher Education (see Australian Case Studies). Benefits are made transparent to learners and are demonstrated. They need to be outlined when the e-portfolio is first introduced.  A video involving past students can be effective such as this one from the Business studies course at Birmingham City University and this Introductory video by Southampton Solent University describes the potential of e-portfolios to support undergraduate students for both assessment and CPD/employment purposes.
2. Learning activity needs to be designed to suit the purpose.	Familiarity with the e-portfolio tool is needed in order to understand what learning activities it can support.  This enables: conscious pedagogic decisions to be made about use ; an understanding of the scaffolding students need to carry out the e-portfolio based learning activity.	Staff ideally should develop a pilot e-portfolio themselves to understand its potential for learning. Some institutions encourage staff to use an e-portfolio themselves to support their continuing professional development and this can develop an understanding of appropriate application  with students (Thanet College) others make its use compulsory on the new lecturers course (University of Bradford) . Learning occurs from effective practice within the institution or elsewhere by seeking advice provided by: Central support staff, for example the Institute for Learning Enhancement at the University of Wolverhampton . Champions/mentors - the use of early adopters to support staff was a common feature of most case studies, eg Birmingham City University and Southampton Solent University. Attending e-portfolio conferences such as  epic ,  Mahara  and PebbleBash.  Accessing events and resources such as those provided by JISC , and the Centre for Recording Achievement.   Participation in  internal/external projects, eg JISC projects and the  Inter/National Cohort for Electronic Portfolios Research network.
3. Processes need to be supported technologically and pedagogically.	Support for the technology can be offered centrally and e-portfolio tools may offer some generic  pedagogic support, e.g. for action planning.   However what is required for processes such as reflection and presentation may vary across courses and so there is a need for course specific support.   It is important not to underestimate the level of support needed for both staff and students who may lack technical and/or the 'new' learning skills such as reflection.	An effective central support team is in place. This was a common element in all the case studies where implementation was established across the institution - see  the governance sections within the case studies.  The e-portfolio tool chosen has the necessary functionality to support the processes involved, such as information capture & retrieval and presentation - see How do we decide which e-portolio to use, and technical support is also provided centrally. This functionality and support is particularly important in  work based learning contexts. Completed example e-portfolios are provided and there are many examples within the cases studies, eg  Fine Arts, Business Studies. This could be a draft example or template with instructions . Pedagogic support is in place for reflection, peer review, information selection, presentation etc - see University of Bradford example and Southampton Solent University case study. e-safety aspects of what is shared in an e-portfolio are introduced, for example as part of an Internet Safety module .
4. Ownership needs to be student centred.	Both learners and those they need to share their e-portfolios with, need to access the e-portfolios to support the learning activity and understand the expected learning outcomes; but the e-portfolio in process needs to be private to the individual learner. How can the learner understand the value of the learner centred part of this process until they have experienced it? How can access be provided in all contexts including work based learning ones?	It is recognised that, even though the purpose within a taught course will have been defined by the lecturer rather than by the learner, the e-portfolio is a personal and private space whilst in construction, and elements of it are shared only when the learner decides to share them. It is also recognised that this aspect of e-portfolios has implications for some students with learning difficulties - see Thanet College case study . The e-portfolio is made available to all students and staff for use during their studies alongside the careful integration in courses - there is evidence that this results in rapid uptake  by students, e.g.,  Birmingham City University and Southampton Solent University, that provides a learning environment that encourages peer support.  The ability to use the e-portfolio and/or export this to other e-portfolios beyond the period of study is provided for. Student voice should be used to promote effective use - see the Business studies at Birmingham City University student video, also this video of students on a construction course at Dumfries and Galloway College  and this  University of Wolverhampton student reflection.
5. Transformation (disruption) needs to be planned for.	The benefits and implications of using the e-portfolio in a particular context are unlikely to be fully understood by others outside that context. This means that in spite of all the guidance and support that is available, a careful consideration of the ways the context may be unique and ongoing feedback from users is needed to ensure effective implementation.	It is understood that each particular instance of e-portfolio use is likely to mean new practice will need to be developed  by learners and those who are supporting them. The implications of this ‘new’ practice are planned for. This has been covered in 1, 2 and 3 above and the case studies provide examples of carefully thought through implementations. Evaluation of practice needs to be ongoing. This was a key feature within the case studies  and wider evaluation of pilot use of e-portfolios was common, in some cases more formal evaluation occurred - see the University of Bradford and Southampton Solent University case studies.

Source: https://epip.pbworks.com/w/page/40808690/Implementation%20guidance%20for%20practitioners  

References

JISC (2008) Effective Practice with e-Portfolios

JISC (2008) e-Portfolios infoKit http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/e-portfolios

Joyes, G. and Gray, L. (2010) The trouble with e-portfolio implementation: A threshold concepts perspective In The PDP newsletter Issue 20

 

Navigation

Your Dashboard

Overview

You can change certain aspects of your dashboard, namely the user-specific information, but a lot of what you see is static to allow you to quickly access other parts of Folioz.

Your homepage is your dashboard from which you can access a number of areas in Mahara conveniently.

1. Navigation: Use the Main menu navigation icon  to navigate to other areas of your portfolio.

   Administrators and staff who have access to the administration area, see the Administration menu navigation icon  in addition to the main menu navigation so they can navigate within the administration area.

2. User navigation: Click the User menu navigation icon  to reach your account settings, inbox, and logout link, or click your profile picture to be taken to your profile page.

3. Search: Search for users who have an account to view their profile page and check which pages they have made accessible to you. If your site has fulltext search available, you can search for anything on the site using this search box.

   In the User search box you can most often search for users’ display name. Depending on the settings that the site administrator made, you may also be able to search for users’ real name and username. If the site administrator allowed users to hide their real name, you can do so in your general account options.

   To provide you with the most relevant search results, you automatically search only for users within your own institution, but can choose to search for everyone on your Mahara installation on the “Find people” search page you are taken to.

   If the site administrator turned on exact user search, you need to provide the correct display name or real name in order to find another user.

4. Quick links: These quick links take you directly to certain areas of Mahara.

5. User-specific information: You can customise this area on your dashboard to put blocks there that you want to see every time you log in.

6. Edit dashboard: The Edit dashboard button allows you to jump directly into the edit screen for your dashboard without having to go to Portfolio → Pages first.

   You cannot add a skin to your dashboard page.

7. Personal information: This sidebar block contains static and dynamic information:

   • Your name is linked to your profile page.
   • Your profile picture is linked to your profile pictures page for easy uploading of new profile pictures.
   • If you are a member of any groups, they are displayed here.
   • Pending friend requests and group invitations are displayed.
   • If you tagged artefacts or pages with the tag “profile”, a link to them is placed here.

8. Online users: If this sidebar block is enabled, you see users who have been logged in during the last 10 minutes. Depending on the settings for your institution that the administrator chose, you may see all users, only users from your institution(s) or no users at all.

9. Profile completion: You see this sidebar block if your site or institution administrators turned on the profile completion functionality.

10. Links and resources: List of links to websites or documents that are visible to all logged-in users or the public.

Main menu navigation

The main menu is visible to all users and allows everyone to navigate to their content, portfolios, and groups.

The main menu is the same for everyone

User menu navigation

The user menu is visible to all users. It allows you to access your account settings, inbox, and profile easily.

The user menu is available to all users

1. Click your profile picture to be taken to your profile page.

2. Click the Arrow down icon  in the user menu to see additional options.

3. Your name: Your name is displayed to indicate who is logged in esp. when viewing portfolio pages where the profile block is not visible. You can click on it to go to your profile page.

   If an administrator masquerades as another user, this name helps to check quickly, in which account actions are undertaken.

4. Settings: Top level navigation item that gives you access to more options:

   • Settings: This link gives you access to your account settings and notifications
   • Notifications: Change your notification preferences.
   • Apps: See which apps you have connected to your account.

5. Inbox: Go to your Mahara inbox to check for new messages. When you have unread messages, the counter displays the number of unread messages.

6. Logout: Link to log out of your current session.

7. Click the Arrow down icon  to reach the second level navigation. You can then click the Arrow up icon  to close the second level navigation.

User-specific information

The default dashboard includes the following blocks:

• Latest changes I can view
• My portfolios
• Inbox
• Topics I’m following

These blocks are filled with content once you start using Folioz and create pages, receive messages from other users, have access to others’ portfolio pages and use the forums for discussions. You can customize these blocks to your liking by editing your dashboard. Click the Edit dashboard button  Edit dashboard directly on your dashboard or go to Portfolio in the navigation menu, click the Edit button  next to the dashboard page and change the blocks like you would change them on any page in Folioz.

Refer to the page editor for more information on adding and removing blocks from a page.

Your profile page

Your profile page is not visible to other users on Folioz by default except for those in the same institutional space. You can also make it visible to anybody on the Internet.

Per default only the following information is put onto your profile page:

We advise you not to use your profile page as your portfolio because you cannot control who can look at the information you make available on your profile. At minimum it is everybody in your institution or who has an account on Folioz. At maximum it can be everybody online. Always remember to think about your own personal security before releasing contact information on a publicly available page or even just for other Folioz users.

Once you have made your profile page or any portfolio page public, Google and other search engines can index and cache it. Even if you take the public access away at some point, the cached version may still be available online. Pages that are made available via a secret URL are not found by search engines unless you link to them from another page.

Use regular pages to create your portfolio and your profile page as a business card or brief introduction to you without disclosing lots of details.

You can edit your profile page like any other page. You can find more information about editing a page in the page editor.

Pages

What are Pages?

A page contains a selection of artefacts which you arrange and present to others. These may include:

• selected files
• résumé details
• text (your added commentary, instructions or orientation)
• journal posts
• video and audio files
• RSS feed to an external blog
• etc.

You can re-use the artefacts that you collected under Content in as many pages as you wish.

The same artefacts can appear in multiple pages

Your Overview Page

On the landing page of Portfolio, you can do the following.

The landing page of your portfolio

Icons on the overview page

The page and collection information boxes display a number of icons, which are described in more detail here.

Share your portfolio with others

If you have not yet shared your portfolio with somebody else, you see the Locked icon .

Ready to share your portfolio with others

Review existing sharing permissions

If you already shared your portfolio with others, you see the Unlocked icon .

Review with whom you already shared your portfolio

Start or end dates or whether copying is allowed are not displayed in the drop-down menu. You need to go to the Share screen to see that additional information.

Access pages within a collection

You can view how many pages are part of a collection and what their titles are by clicking the Pages icon .

View a list of pages within a collection

More options

You can find additional options for pages or collections via the More options icon .

More options for pages and collections

If you submitted a portfolio, you cannot edit or delete the page or collection until it has been released. Therefore, you don’t see those options anymore. However, you see when you submitted the portfolio to which group.

See submitted date and group

Add a page

You add a new page in your portfolio when you want to display artefacts together, e.g. for presenting them to others, for showing your progress in a project etc.

Create a portfolio page

Editing a Page

Navigation bar

You can add and remove content from a portfolio page on the Edit page screen.

The page navigation bar stays fixed in place on the right-hand side of the screen. That way, the buttons can be accessed on short and long pages without scrolling.

^{“Edit page”” navigation bar}

Add content to a page

 The static layout selector was replaced with a more flexible option. Now the layout can be created on the fly directly on the Edit screen of a page.

The new layout is based on the Gridstack plugin for jQuery. It is well-suited for responsive pages, adapts to the page width, and blocks can be resized directly in edit mode.

An extension to this plugin is the accessibility options needed to allow people working with a keyboard only or a screen reader to continue being able to create and modify pages as well.

When a page is created with an accessible layout (this page option is available if you set the Accessible page creation option in your account settings to “Yes”), the following will happen:

Be careful when choosing 4 or more columns. Your portfolio page may look very good on your big 21” screen, but a user looking at it on a laptop or tablet may not have the same experience. In most cases, up to 3 columns is the best choice.

Drag a block onto a page and resize it

Remember:

Edit an existing page

You can edit an existing page in two ways:

You find more information on how to edit artefacts on a portfolio page in the Edit content part.

If the site administrator activated clean URLs, your portfolio pages have human-readable URLs which you can change to a certain extend.

Change the URL for your portfolio page

Though you can change the URL to your page at any point, you shouldn’t do that because people who already know the URL to your page will not be able to access it anymore after you have changed it.

View a page

You can view a page to check what it looks like when somebody else sees it. Go to the Pages and collections overview page and click on the title of a page.

An example portfolio page.

Deleting a page

You can delete a portfolio at any time unless it has been submitted for feedback.

When you delete a page, text blocks and external content blocks are completely deleted. You cannot recover them. There is no revision history. All other artefacts are not deleted because they reside in your Content area.

If you are allowed to delete a page, you see the Delete this page option  in the More options button when you view your page directly.

Click the “More options” button to find the “Delete” option

When you attempt to delete a page or collection, you get the chance to export the portfolio first so that you can make an archive. If your page is part of a collection, the warning message also contains the title and a link to the collection for you to check whether you really want to delete the page and thus make changes to your collection.

^{Warning when you attempt to delete a page that is in a collection}

Files

Managing Files

Main menu  → Create  → Files

The Files area is a repository, i.e. a document storage for folders and files, that you can use within your portfolio. Both folders and files are considered artefacts and as such can be added to a page. You may create any number of folders or sub folders. To view which subfolders and files sit within a folder, click on the folder name. Use the Home link to return to the top level folder directory.

You can arrange files and folders by dragging and dropping the icon in front of the file / folder name onto another folder icon. A suitably named and organised filing structure will help you with the long-term organisation and retrieval of your artefacts. If you want to move a file or folder out of a subfolder, move it onto the parent folder icon .

You will find that some folders are automatically created by the system such as viewfiles or images. The viewfiles folder includes files from imported pages whereas the images folder includes your uploaded profile pictures. As with any other file, you can move them out of this folder and store them in a different folder.

You can move files and folders to your heart’s content without having to re-link them in the pages where you use them. Also renaming them will not have a negative impact on links.

File browser

In the Files area you have a file browser in which you can organise your files so you can find them more easily. You can sort your files into folders and also create subfolders.

Your file browser

Upload a file

Before you upload a file, make sure that you are allowed to do so. For any artefacts that you publish in your portfolio, you must have the sufficient rights. That means:

It can be that you have to agree to an upload agreement before you can upload any files to your Files area. The site administrator decides about that in Administration menu → Extensions → Plugin administration → Plugin type: artefact: file.

Upload a file

 

Upload multiple files

You can upload multiple files at once in three different ways:

Zip files in the Finder under MacOSX

Zip files in Ubuntu’s Nautilus

Zip files in Windows Explorer

Once you have uploaded your zip file to Folioz, you can unzip it there. Click on the Unzip button  next to the Edit button . Please follow the on-screen instructions.

 

Edit a file or folder

You can edit the properties of a file or folder at any time. The file does not have to be re-linked in portfolio pages, but the properties you changed will be updated automatically.

Edit a file

 

Rotate an image

When you upload images directly from a mobile device, the orientation may not be correct, and a landscape image might be displayed in portrait mode. By rotating the image in Folioz on the fly, you can correct its orientation.

Rotate an image

File quota

The default file storage quota size is 50 megabytes. If arrangements have been made with your institution it could be higher.

^{File quota}

Blocks

Blocks for internal and external artefacts are used to compose portfolio pages and group pages. Content of blocks can be shown on a page immediately, or just the block’s heading can be displayed. The retractable blocks allow you to be more flexible in what you want to show immediately on a page. If you choose not to give a block a title, you cannot retract that block as there would be no place to unretract it. When you started editing information in a block and you navigate away from it accidentally without having saved your block, you are being asked whether you wish to stay on the page or leave the page.

Content chooser

All different types of content as well as blocks that pull in external content into a portfolio page are accessible via the content chooser.

The content chooser is available on the left-hand side of a page when you are in the edit mode. It does not scroll. Thus, it makes it easy to add content items also further down on the page.

^{All content items are accessible in the content chooser}

1. You can select the Text or the Image block directly as these are two of the more frequently used content items.

   You may see additional or different blocks in this list of frequently used content items as it is up to the administrator of the site that you use which blocks to display here. There is an API available to make adding different items easier.

2. You can access all other content items via the individual panels:

   • Media: holds blocks for files that can be displayed as links, in folders or in the case of images and videos directly in the page
   • Journals: various content blocks which allow you to place journals / journal entries into a page
   • General: content items that are of a general nature
   • Personal info: choose profile information or your résumé to display in a block
   • External: contains blocks to place RSS feeds, external media or GoogleApps documents etc. into a page

   The functionality of each block that you can use in your portfolio pages and in group pages is outlined in the section on the individual artefact blocks.

3. Theme: You may be able to choose a theme for your portfolio page. If that is the case, you see the Theme drop-down menu. That allows you to select a theme in which that page is displayed to others who view your portfolio page.

   The site administrator must allow page themes in the site’s user settings for this option to be available.

4. Click the Block help icon  to be taken to the manual’s block section for the version of Mahara that you are using.

5. Click the arrow pointing to the left  to reduce the size of the content chooser. Only the icons will be displayed giving you more space on a page.

6. Click the arrow pointing to the right  to show the block descriptions in the content chooser.

   The content chooser is displayed per default only with its icons shown on small devices to maximize the screen size that is available to edit a page.

Files, images and video

These artefacts are internal Folioz ones to display:

• links to files that you have uploaded
• folders that contain files
• show images
• embed audio and video files

If you are on a mobile device and select to upload a file, you can take a photo or make a video or audio recording (Android only for audio) directly.

Embedded media

Display an embedded video or audio file from your uploaded files. Mahara comes with the Video.js media player that allows for the display of a number of file formats without having another player installed on the device.

The site administrator must allow media formats. Some of them can be displayed directly within Mahara while others need additional software installed on a device. See the list of allowed media formats.

Videos placed onto a page in this block scale to the width of their column. They also scale automatically when your browser space gets smaller.

Configure the Embedded media block

Only the files that you are allowed to embed are displayed. If you uploaded a mp4 file but it does not show here, you may have to check if it has the correct codec. Only H.264 mp4 files can be embedded.

iOS devices can even be trickier as these devices may only recognize the MPEG4 “Baseline” profile rather than the “High” profile. You can read the Apple specifications and convert a video if needed using Handbrake. Newer iOS devices (from the iPhone 5S on) should play “High” profile videos.

File(s) to download

Select files that viewers of your portfolio can download.

Configure the File(s) to download block

You cannot re-order files once you have selected them. You would need to remove them and select them again in the correct order.

When the block is placed on the portfolio page, you can view more information or download the files.

Details about files that can be downloaded.

When you click the file name, you are taken to the details page for that particular file and see some more metadata.

More details about a file that can be downloaded.

Folder

Select a folder to display all files within it as links on your page.

Configure the Folder block

When you place a folder with group, institution or site files into a page, beware that these files may not be available at some point anymore when the person in charge deletes them.

You can see information about the folder as well as the files contained within it when the block is placed on a page.

“Folder” block on a page

On the details page for the Folder block you see the following.

Details page of a “Folder” block

When you clicked on a file, you are taken to that file’s details page. You always see which folder contains the file.

Details page of a file within a “Folder” block

Image

Display a single image in a block.

In a default Mahara instance, this block is available in the content chooser at the top together with the simple Text block. It does not appear in the section Media as well.

Configure the Image block

Image gallery

Select a folder with images or individual images to show in a gallery or embed an external image gallery.

Image gallery with uploaded images

Configure the Image gallery block with internal images

When you place group, institution or site files into a page, beware that these files may not be available at some point anymore when the person in charge deletes them.

Image gallery from external images

Configure the Image gallery block with external images

PDF

 

Embed PDFs into a page.

Configure the PDF block

Once the PDF is embedded on a page, you can scroll through it and also download it for example. The PDF is displayed in its best possible fit to show one page completely.

Embedded PDF on a page

If you have trouble embedding a PDF file, you might have come across an issue that others have also experienced. The mimetype of the PDF may not be recognized correctly. The correct “mimetype” is “pdf”, but programmes can circumvent using this mimetype for PDFs to ensure that their file is downloaded instead of viewed in the browser for example. There is not an easy fix to this issue, and the discussion of possible solutions has started.

In the meantime, you can delete the incorrect mimetypes from your browser and ensure that only “PDF” is left.

Follow these steps to delete the incorrect mimetypes:

Some HTML

 

Display the content of an HTML file in a page.

Configure the HTML block

You can only display a self-contained HTML file in a page, but not an entire site because the links to the files are not retained correctly when you upload files.

Journals

You can embed content from your journals in various ways in a page:

• display an entire journal
• display only one journal entry
• show the latest journal entries
• display journal entries with a specific tag

You must create at least one journal in order to see anything in this block.

You can allow the copying of your journal (entries). Choose this option wisely because once a user copied your journal content into their portfolio, it looks as if they had written the journal entries. This could lead to plagiarism. However, it can be used very nicely to create templates and to scaffold learning.

Journals exist in all areas of Mahara:

• Personal portfolio
• Groups
• Institution level
• Site level

You can display journals or journal entries in these different contexts the following way:

• Personal journals: You can include personal journals and journal entries in your own portfolios and in group portfolios. If somebody else changes the block configuration in a group portfolio, they will not be able to choose your journals or journal entries though. Only you can place them there.
• Group journals: You can display group journals and entries only in the group in which they were created.
• Institution journals: An institution’s journals are only available for inclusion in pages for that institution.
• Site journals: You can add site journals only to site portfolios.

Journal

Display an entire journal on your portfolio page.

Configure the Journal block

If you share the page publicly in which you make an entire journal visible, your journal receives an RSS feed address to which your readers can subscribe in their favorite RSS readers.

Once you have included the Journal block into a page, you can create a new journal entry directly from that block when you are in the Edit mode for the page. When you click the New entry button, you will be taken to your journal and a new entry is started for you. It is then added to the journal automatically.

Create a new journal entry directly from the Entire journal block

Journal entry

Display one journal entry on your portfolio page.

Configure the Journal entry block

Recent journal entries

Display recent journal entries across all your journals on your portfolio page. You can use this block also in group, institution and site pages.

Configure the Recent journal entries block

If you have multiple journals, you can display recent entries from all of them.

Once you included the Recent journal entries block into a page, you can create a new journal entry directly from that block when you are in Edit mode for the page. When you click the New entry button, you will be taken to your journal, and a new entry is started for you. It is then added to the journal automatically.

Create a new journal entry directly from the Recent journal entries block - one journal only

If you enabled multiple journals and selected more than one for which to display recent journal entries, you will see a slightly different display.

Create a new journal entry directly from the Recent journal entries block - multiple journals available

Tagged journal entries

Display tagged journal entries across all your journals on your portfolio page.

Configure the Tagged journal entries block

Add new tagged journal entries directly from a page

Once you have included the Tagged journal entries block into a page, you can create a new journal entry directly from that block when you are in Edit mode for the page. When you click the New entry button, you will be taken to your journal and a new entry is started for you. It is then added to the journal automatically with the tag(s) whose journal entries are displayed on the page.

Create a new journal entry directly from the Tagged journal entries block - one journal only

If you enabled multiple journals and have a minimum of two journals, you will see a slightly different display.

Create a new journal entry directly from the Tagged journal entries block - multiple journals available

Select tags to include or exclude

When you want to choose which tags to use in your block, you can select multiple tags to include or exclude. That way you can be very flexible in which entries to display in your block and which ones to leave out. You must have tagged your journal entries beforehand. If you haven’t done that, please go to your journal entries and tag them. You can find them under Main menu → Create → Journals.

Display all the tags that you used on journal entries

Once the tags are in the field, you can see directly which ones are included and which ones are excluded.

A selection of tags for the tagged journal entries

When you display your page that has a tagged journal entries block, you see which tags are used to filter your journal entries. For example: Journal entries with tag “learning” but not tag “conference”.

Know which tags to include and exclude

You can add multiple tags to limit the results as well as indicate which tags you want to ignore. If you select multiple tags, a journal entry must match all selected tags in order to be listed.

Let’s assume, you tagged your journal entries with the following tags:

When you select:

You can also exclude tags from the results by putting a minus sign before the tag you want to select.

If you select:

The operators and and not are two of the so-called “Boolean operators”.

General

The artefacts in this tab are of a general nature or do not fit into any other category and can be used around the site.

When you create a page in a group, you do not have the plans block available as you cannot create plans in groups. Additionally, you can choose the following blocks when you edit the group homepage:

• Group info
• Group members
• Group pages

Annotation

Add a block to your page which lets you add an annotation for your page.

This feature is used in conjunction with SmartEvidence.

Write an annotation

Configure the Annotation block

Respond to an annotation on the SmartEvidence map

When you have access to a collection that contains a SmartEvidence map, you can leave feedback on an annotation. You may be able to assess it if you have staff or institution administrator permissions in the same institution as the portfolio author unless it is a self-assessment framework.

Respond to an annotation

Respond to an annotation on a page

You can provide feedback to an annotation, and assess it if you have the appropriate permission, also from the portfolio page on which the annotation is placed.

Respond to an annotation on a page

Delete an annotation

When you delete an annotation, all its feedback is deleted as well. You cannot retrieve it again easily.

Comments

You can move the comments section from the bottom of a page elsewhere onto your page to integrate it better with your page content. Please note the following:

What the feedback block looks like on a page

Creative Commons license

Add a block to your page which lets users know under which Creative Commons license your page is published.

Configure the Creative Commons license block

Group info

This block is a default block on the group homepage. There is no configuration possible.

This block can only be used on a group homepage.

Items in the group info block

The block contains information about:

Group members

This block is a default block on the group homepage. You can display member profile pictures and their names.

This block can only be used on a group homepage.

Configure the Group members block

Group portfolios

This block is a default block on the group homepage. You can display pages and collections created in and / or shared with the group in this block.

This block can only be used on a group homepage.

Configure the Group portfolios block

A page is considered as modified when the content of at least one block is updated, including the adding of a new Mahara journal entry into the journal block.

Inbox

The Inbox block displays the latest messages that you have received.

This block can only be used on your dashboard.

Configure the Inbox block

When you display messages from other users on your dashboard through the Inbox block, you can see quickly which messages you have not read. They are marked in bold.

Unread messages are displayed in bold

Latest changes I can view

The Latest changes I can view block displays the latest portfolios to which you have access across Mahara by other people. This includes pages and collections. Prior to Mahara 15.10 this block was called Latest pages.

This block can only be used on your dashboard.

Configure the Latest changes I can view block

The block on your dashboard page looks like the following.

Example of the Latest changes I can view block

Navigation

Add a navigation block to display links to pages in a collection.

You must create at least one collection in order to use this block.

Configure the Navigation block

Note

Add a note to your page. This feature is used when you do not want to keep the text in a journal, but still want to be able to re-use the text on other pages.

Add a new note

Configure the Note block

Add an image into a note

Please refer to the section “Insert an image into text” for more information.

Attach a file to a note

Attach a file to a Note block

Re-use text from an existing note

You can re-use text from other note from one page in another without having to copy the page first.

If you do not make a copy of the note content in the block configuration and change it, the text is changed in all other instances where this note is used.

Configure the Note block by copying text

Open a note that is submitted for assessment in another portfolio

Peer assessment

Allow peer reviewers to give blind feedback.

Add the peer assessment block to a page

This block allows somebody else to provide blind feedback on the portfolio author, e.g. in a formal assessment context where skills and competencies need to be assessed by the peer independently of what the portfolio author has stated.

The peer reviewer can see block headings, but not the content in the blocks themselves. If the portfolio consists of multiple pages, and one of them does not contain a peer block, the peer reviewer does not see the page content at all.

You must give a person the “Peer” role when sharing the portfolio page for them to be able to add their assessment.

Configure the Peer assessment block

• No: The block and its content is displayed at all times.
• Yes: Allow users to reduce the block to just the heading by clicking the Retractable icon .
• Automatically retract: Only the heading of the block is visible, and the user can click the Retracted icon  to view its content.

Set up a peer assessor

You can give someone the peer assessment permissions on the Edit access screen of your portfolio page.

Give someone peer assessment permissions

If the page is in a collection that contains pages that don’t have the peer assessment block, the peer assessor doesn’t see any content on those pages but the notice “You cannot see the content on this page because it does not require a peer assessment.”

Add a peer assessment

Peer assessments are blind assessments at the moment allowing the peer assessor to give their feedback independently of the portfolio author.

Add a peer assessment

When you are the peer assessor on someone’s portfolio, and a page contains a peer assessment block, you can add your assessment by clicking the Add peer assessment link.

Write a peer assessment

View a peer assessment

If a peer assessment is in draft mode, only the peer assessor can see it. Once it’s published, others can view it as well.

View a peer assessment

Plans

Display your plans in a block.

You must create at least one plan in order to use this block.

Configure the Plans block

Result of an embedded plan in a portfolio page. By clicking on the linked titles, you can show the descriptions of the individual tasks.

Recent forum posts

Display a specified number of recent forum posts from one group on a page.

You must be a member of at least one group in order to use this block.

Configure the Recent forum posts block

Sign-off

Portfolio authors can sign off a page, and a manager can verify it.

The sign-off and verification process allows for a visual indicator on a portfolio page showing whether the page has been finished and whether a manager has verified it before it can go for the final assessment. The verification by a manager is optional.

Set up a page for sign-off and verification

Configure the Sign-off block

Set up a manager for verification

You can give someone the manager permissions on the Edit access screen of your portfolio page to allow them to verify your portfolio.

Give someone manager permissions

Sign off a page

When you have a sign-off block on your page and you view it, you can see the sign-off and verification options below the page heading to the right.

View the sign-off as portfolio autor

When you are ready to sign off your page, you can click the red dot icon , and it will turn into a green tick icon  to indicate that the page has been signed off.

If the page also needs a verification, your manager can now perform it.

Verify a page

As manager, you can see the sign-off and verification options below the page heading to the right. You can only tick the verification option.

Verify a page as manager

When you are ready to verify a page that allows for verification, you can click the red dot icon , and it will turn into a green tick icon  to indicate that the page has been verified.

You cannot revoke the verification. Only the portfolio author can do so by revoking the sign-off.

Text

Add text to your page. This feature is used when you want to put a snippet of text onto a page that does not have to be re-used.

In a default Mahara instance, this block is available in the content chooser at the top together with the Image block. It does not appear in the section General as well.

Configure the Text block

Please refer to the section “Insert an image into text” for more information on adding an image to the text block.

Watched pages

The Watched pages block displays the pages that are either on your watchlist or belong to your friends and you have access to them.

You can only use this block on your dashboard.

Pages on my watchlist

If you want pages to be displayed, you need to add them to it first by clicking the More options button  on a page and then add the page to your watchlist.

Configure the Watched pages block for your watchlist

View your watchlist on your dashboard.

View the Watched pages block

Activities of my friends

If you have friends on Mahara, then you can use this block to display their portfolios when they have shared them with you:

Configure the Watched pages block for your friend activity

Personal info

The artefact blocks in this tab allow you to include information that you provided in the profile into your portfolio. If you want to make changes to the text or the images, go to User menu → Profile.

Furthermore, you can also put certain blocks on your profile page that only exist for that particular page:

• My friends
• My groups
• My pages
• Wall

My friends

Add a block that displays your friends’ profile pictures and their names to your profile page. This is a default block on your profile page.

You only need to place the block on your profile page. There is no further configuration possible.

My groups

Add a block that displays your groups on your profile page. It is a standard profile page block. You can decide on the sort order of the groups and also limit the number of groups to be shown before a paginator is displayed.

Configure the My groups block

My portfolios

Add a block that displays your pages and collections on your profile or dashboard page. It is a standard profile page block. This block should stay on your profile page because other users can see all your pages and collections to which they have acceess.

You only need to place the block on your profile page. There is no further configuration possible.

When other users view your profile page, they only see the pages and collections to which they have access. That also means that you see all your pages and collections while others may see none or just a few.

You see the following when you use the block.

The My portfolios block displayed in a page

Profile information

Add a block with profile fields to your page.

Only display as much information as you wish anybody to see. Especially when you make your pages available to the public, i.e. everybody on the Internet, or all logged-in users, decide carefully whether you want to display your street address and / or phone number.

Configure the Profile information block

Social media

Add a block with links to your social networks to your page.

Configure the Social media block

This is how the individual options are displayed on your page.

The 3 options for displaying your social media accounts

Wall

Add a block that displays your wall on your profile page. It is a standard profile page block. Other users can leave messages for you, i.e. write on your wall, and they can decide whether everyone looking at your profile page can see them or only they and you.

You only need to place the block on your profile page. There is no further configuration possible.

When you view your wall (or someone else’s wall) on your profile page, you see the following.

A wall on a profile page

When somebody else leaves a message on your wall, you receive a notification and have that sent to your inbox. Other people are not notified about new messages on your wall.

Résumé

You can display either your entire résumé or parts of it in any portfolio page. If you choose to display only parts of your résumé, you have more control over the arrangement of the information.

My entire résumé

Add a block with your entire résumé to your page.

Configure the My entire résumé block

When you use this block, you do not have control over the order in which the information is displayed, but Mahara decides that. In order to be more flexible, you can choose to display one résumé field at a time with the One résumé field block.

One résumé field

Add a block with one résumé field to your page.

Configure the One résumé field block

External content

With the help of the external content blocks, you can include RSS feeds, external media or GoogleApps documents etc. into a page.

External feed

Embed an external RSS or ATOM feed, e.g. to display an external blog.

Configure the external feed block

If your feed is not updated automatically, please ask your site administrator to check the cron settings.

If you click an entry in the RSS feed, it will open in a new window.

External media

With this block you can embed content from a wide variety of third-party sites. The sites that are allowed are listed below the text area in the configuration screen. You see only their favicons, but when you hover over an icon with your mouse, you see the site’s name as well.

Mahara comes with a number of sites that are allowed per default. These are listed on the page. Your site administrator can add additional iframe sources.

Configure the external media block

You can use the same iframe embed code around Mahara in notes, text and journal entries as well.

Watch the video Saving a video from iPad to MyPortfolio if you want to see how you can embed a YouTube video into your Mahara portfolio using an iPad. You can use a similar work flow for adding YouTube videos also via Android or on your computer. “MyPortfolio” is the name of a Mahara instance in New Zealand for schools.

Google Apps

Embed any of the following content available via Google (Apps):

You can only display the content, but not immediately edit documents, spreadsheets or presentations. You will have to be logged in to your Google (Apps) account to do so. You can use this block with a regular, personal Google account or if you have a Google Apps account via an institution, e.g. your school or university.

If certain documents are restricted to a Google Apps domain or to specific people, a login screen is displayed.

Configure the Google Apps block

Google document

Google spreadsheet

Google presentation

Google Drive folder

Google Calendar

Google Maps

Use steps 2 and 3 only if you wish to embed one of your Google maps. If you wish to embed any Google map, you can skip these steps.

Google Books

The link icon only appears if you are allowed to embed this book.

Badges

Open Badges are an answer for showing recognition of skills and competencies online with the help of an open framework.

Configure the block

Configure the Open Badges block

Since your badges need to be fetched from an external service, it may take a little bit until they are displayed on the page.

Create a collection of badges in the Mozilla Backpack

Drag a badge onto a new collection space

Blocks in various pages

Certain blocks can only exist in certain page contexts. For example, the wall can only be placed on the profile page whereas a note can be used on any page. There are a number of page contexts which can have different blocks:

The following list shows in which contexts a specific block and therefore a specific artefact can be used. It also shows which blocks can be copied.

Note

Blocks in a page that are copied from one user to another need to be checked for content accuracy and whether they can be retained as they are or need to be updated.

Blocks that display a * next to their check mark can be added to a group, institution, or site page and configured where possible to help with setting up templates. No content is displayed though when the page is viewed because user-specific content is required.

4.3.6.1. Files, images and video¶

4.3.6.2. Journals¶

4.3.6.3. General¶

4.3.6.4. Personal info¶

4.3.6.5. External content¶

Collections

Collections allow you to organize your portfolio into multiple pages so as to find individual sections more easily, you can create a multiple collections that reuse pages for different contexts of use..

Add a collection

If you want to organize your portfolio into multiple pages so as to find individual sections more easily, you can create a collection that holds multiple pages.

Create a collection

Add pages to a collection

In the next step after you have created your collection, you choose which portfolio pages you wish to include in this collection. You see all the potential pages that you can use. If you had already placed a page into another collection, it is not shown here.

Add pages to a collection

Manage pages in a collection

Once you have added your pages to your collection. You can move them around or remove them.

Manage the pages that are displayed within your collection

When you add pages to your collection that have different access permissions than the collection has, the page’s access permissions get added to the collection and the page is available under the same access permissions as the entire collection because it is part of the collection.

Notice about changes in permissions

If there is a change in access permissions, a warning will be displayed so that you are informed that changes have taken place.

View your collection by clicking on the collection title or any page that is part of your collection.

On a mobile device, you can swipe left and right to navigate through a collection when it has the page navigation bar.

A collection with the page navigation bar

Deleting a collection

When you delete a collection, the pages and artefacts within it are not deleted.

If you want to delete an entire collection, you can do so on Portfolio → Pages and collections by clicking the More options icon  and then the Delete icon .

^{Delete a collection}

Sharing your ePortfolio

When you have created portfolio pages (and collections), you may wish to share them with others, e.g. to receive feedback.

Share Overview

You can set the access permissions on the Edit access page. It is accessible via Portfolio → Shared by me or directly from the page editor when you edit a portfolio page.

The Share overview page shows you the following.

Share overview page

1. Decide whether you want to change sharing permissions for a collection or a page.
2. Collection name (or Page title): Your collections / pages are sorted alphabetically.
3. Access list: The list of users, groups or institutions who have access to a particular collection or page.
4. Edit access: The Edit access icon  next to each collection or page allows you to change the permission of who can view a page or collection.
5. Secret URLs: The Secret URL edit icon  next to each collection or page allows you to set up one or more secret URLs for a page or collection. The number of secret URLs that you have generated is displayed next to the icon.

Edit access to your profile page

Your profile page is restricted to only members of your institution by default.

Other users who have an account can only see basic information, e.g. your name, your institution membership and messaging information.

Restricted view of a profile

Edit access for users with an account

Basic settings

The Edit access page allows you to set the permissions for a single user or multiple users who should be able to view some of your portfolio pages or collections.

You can assign access to a single page or collection at a time or to multiple pages and / or collections at once.

Users and groups to whom you can give access to pages and / or collections

If you select individual people or a group with whom to share your portfolio, they will receive a notification. That notification contains a link to your portfolio. If you restricted access for your portfolio to a particular time, that time frame is mentioned in the notification as well.

Notification with time frame in which portfolio is available

Advanced options

You can choose a number of additional options which are applied to all pages and / or collections that you selected.

Advanced options for editing access to pages / collections

If you have not allowed comments in general, you can still choose to allow them for a certain person or group of people who are in your access list. That way you can regulate very flexibly who shall be able to place comments on a page / collection and who cannot.

Allow comments on a user-by-user basis

Select users

As owner of your portfolio, you are in control with whom you want to share your work. If you have a lot of portfolios, i.e. pages or collections, you may wish to review the sharing options from time to time and see if they need updating.

You select the users or groups with whom to share your portfolio under Shared with.

Share your pages and collections with others

Your friends or individual users with whom you shared your pages / collections receive a notification. Group members also receive a notification that you shared a page with them if the group administrator allowed that. You as page author and member of the group with which you shared your pages / collections do not get notified.

You do not receive a notification when users share their page with the public, all registered users, an entire institution or friends.

If you use the web services plugin, you can also share pages with “favourite users”. For more information, please refer to the specifications for this feature.

Edit access for users without an account

Besides giving users who have a login or the entire public access to your portfolio, you can also give users who do not have an account on Folioz access to your portfolio pages and / or collections without making your work publicly available and searchable by search engines. This can be interesting, e.g.

Add one or more secret URLs to a page or collection

You can create a secret URL the following way when you are on the share overview page:

Logged-out users or those who do not have an account can only leave comments on public pages or pages which they can access via a secret URL if the site administrator turned on the Anonymous comments function under Administration → Configure site → User settings.

Privacy

Nothing is public by default. Your profile page, which you can leave empty, is only viewable to those in the same institution but can be made public. Search engines cannot index your eportfolio unless it is made public.

You can create a portfolio using the collections feature and add pages to this collection:

There is no access to anything in your pages and collections until you set whether you only want friends or the public to have access:

You can set no access except those who have the secret link which you can send to classmates or instructor:

Skins

You can create skins yourself, edit them, use other people’s skins, and use them on your portfolio pages and your profile page.

Your Skins overview page

1. Click the Create skin button to design a new skin.

2. Click the Import skin(s) button to import skins that others have shared online.

3. Click the Export skin(s) button to export all your personal skins.

4. You can decide which skins you want to display:

   • All skins: All skins that you have access to
   • Site skins: Only skins created by a site administrator
   • My skins: Skins created by yourself
   • Public skins: Other people’s skins that they shared publicly on the site

5. Click the View skin information icon  to see metadata in a pop-up window about the skin such as:

   • Title
   • Owner
   • Description
   • Creation date
   • Modified date

6. Click the Edit button  to make changes to this skin.

7. Click the Export button  to export only this one skin.

8. Click the Delete button  to remove this skin.

   You only see the Edit, Export and Delete buttons when you have the permission to perform these actions for a skin.

9. Click the Like button  to mark someone else’s skin as one that you want to use on your own pages. The icon will turn grey. Clicking the button again will allow you to remove the skin from your list of favourite skins.

   You can only like another user’s skin, but not site skins. You can always select a site skin for a page, but only select other people’s skins when you liked them.

Create a skin

You can create skins as:

Depending on the settings of your skin, it will be available only to you or others.

In the following, the individual skin settings will be described. You do not have to change all settings for a skin but can pick and choose which elements of the theme that your page has you would like to change.

General Tab

General settings for your skin

Background Tab

Choose the background for your skin

Fonts and colours Tab

Change font properties

Wherever you have a colour field, you can either click into the field and select the colour you would like to use or type the colour code in.

If you do not want to use a custom colour but retain the theme colour, tick the checkbox Default.

Advanced Tab

Add custom CSS

Choose a skin

Portfolio → Pages → Edit a page

When the Skins feature is turned on, you see another item in the page editor navigation: Choose skin.

Choose a skin

The skin is only shown when you display your page. When you edit your page, you see the standard theme.

View a page with a skin

This is what a skin applied to a page could look like.

Example of a skin on a page

What is the difference between themes and page skins?

Themes

Skins

When skins and themes collide

SmartEvidence

SmartEvidence allows you to work with competency frameworks in Folioz and associate them automatically with an evidence map for a visualisation of the competencies already gained, in progress, and not yet started.

“Competencies” is used in a wide sense here. SmartEvidence can be used for multiple purposes including competency-based assessment, graduate attributes, skills accomplishment and many more. It can also be used for self-assessment purposes.

The implementation of SmartEvidence is experimental. While the majority of the functionality works as intended there are a few areas that still need to be sorted out, e.g. the export of the SmartEvidence map in both HTML and Leap2A.

Set up a SmartEvidence framework

If you have an assessment matrix you can request an admin to create a framework for you.

Select a framework

When an institution allows SmartEvidence, any user in that institution can work with the frameworks that are available. The framework is selected on the collection’s Edit screen for institution or personal collections.

Create a collection

Add an annotation

You can add as many annotations to a page for different standards as you wish. When you place an annotation onto the SmartEvidence map, it is automatically added to your page.

Write an annotation

Configure the Annotation block

Respond to an annotation on the SmartEvidence map

When you have access to a collection that contains a SmartEvidence map, you can leave feedback on an annotation. You may be able to assess it if you have staff or institution administrator permissions in the same institution as the portfolio author unless it is a self-assessment framework.

Respond to an annotation

Respond to an annotation on a page

You can provide feedback to an annotation, and assess it if you have the appropriate permission, also from the portfolio page on which the annotation is placed.

Respond to an annotation on a page

Delete an annotation

When you delete an annotation, all its feedback is deleted as well. You cannot retrieve it again easily.

SmartEvidence map

The SmartEvidence map, which is displayed as the first page in a collection that is associated with a framework, is modelled after an evidence map. It visualizes which areas of the framework have already been completed and where there is still more work to be done.

SmartEvidence map with competencies in different states of completion

Copy a SmartEvidence collection

You can copy a SmartEvidence collection. When doing so, the annotations are retained, but the feedback on the annotations is not. You can then make changes to the collection and update the annotations before submitting the new collection for assessment.

Troubleshooting

Password reset links don't work

If you see an error message about the reset link you get in your email not being valid it could be that it expired or the link might have a space at the end. If you follow the link but you are not given the option to set a new password it could be the browser cookies.

If your browser has not refreshed your cookie information you could be accessing your pages with expired session information. Restarting your browser might clear the old information or you might need to delete the Folioz cookies.

Deleting the cookies will force the browser to create new session cookies and should solve the problem.

Delete cookies in Firefox

In Firefox you can type about:preferences#privacy in the address bar and click on the "Manage Data" button under the "Cookies and Site Data" heading.

Delete cookies in Chrome

To delete the cookies you have to click on the information icon that appears to the left of the website address. This will bring up all the security information about the site.

Choosing to delete all the cookies will mean that you will probably have to login one more time but this will give updated session information.

I need to reset my password

There are two different account types in Folioz and resetting your password depends on the type of account you have. If you registered using the online form then you need to request your password be reset here.

If you have a ClassCloud Key as part of your school's class membership to our service you can go to the ClassCloud website to reset your password.

Notification of full file storage

If you have received a notification that your file storage is near full you might want to review what files are too big. The default file storage space is 50 megabytes which should more than enough to upload support documents and some pictures. The only way to raise the limit is for the Institution to subscribe for more space.

Folioz is designed to be a "hub" for you to collect all your evidence of learning from all over the internet. Most people use Google docs and YouTube channels where they can upload their larger files. Folioz has "External Media" and "Google Docs" blocks that make it easy to add content to your pages.

If you are a ClassCloud subscriber you already have a place to share your DOC/PPT/PDF files with Folderz and video/audio with Videoz. There really is no need to have large files consuming your Folioz space.

You can see and manage your files here, scroll past the upload boxes to the bottom:

https://folioz.ca/artefact/file/index.php

The kind of files that waste the most space are usually video and PowerPoints. Video is best uploaded to a service specifically designed to deliver an optimized streaming experience and greatly reducing the bandwidth needed to view. Can you imagine having to download a 1 gigabyte or more video file every time you wanted to share it with someone?

You can also reduce the size of your PowerPoint presentations by optimizing it: https://www.howtogeek.com/424648/how-to-reduce-the-file-size-of-a-powerpoint-presentation/

If you are using voice over in your PowerPoint converting it to video is quite simple: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn-your-presentation-into-a-video-c140551f-cb37-4818-b5d4-3e30815c3e83

You also should consider converting it to a PDF as it will optimize the slides and greatly reduce the file size, the only things you lose are the slide transition effects and embedded audio/video. Embedded audio and video hardly ever work anyway as they are linked and not embedded into the PPT file. Converting a voice over presentation to a video in PowerPoint would be a better way to share the presentation:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Turn-your-presentation-into-a-video-C140551F-CB37-4818-B5D4-3E30815C3E83#OfficeVersion=newer

Then you can easily upload it to Videoz, Vimeo or YouTube and embed it into your portfolio page. 

Institutions

Institution staff access

Institution staff members enjoy a number of additional rights to regular members, for example:

• creation of controlled groups
• viewing of the real names of users
• access to the User search page in the administration
• viewing of the access list of user’s pages if allowed

Institution staff members have an additional navigation item: Institution information.

Main navigation for staff members

User search

Administration menu → Users → User search

Staff members have the majority of the functionality available on this page as institution administrators.

When you are on the User search page, you can view all members of your institution or just a select few. You only see the following options if you have the permission to access user reports.

Staff members cannot manipulate user account information or access user pages to which they have not received direct access from the user. The reports page only lists the pages, but does not give default access.

^{User search page as viewed by a staff member}

Reports

Administration menu → Reports

The functionality available to staff members is similar to the one for institution administrators in the “Reports” section if the site administrator allowed staff members to view reports.

Institution administrators

You can give users administrator rights in an institution in which they are members. The administrator role will allow them to manage users in their own institution. This page allows you to do that in bulk for many users at once.

You can also give admin rights on the user account settings page.

^{Give users institution admin rights.}

Admin notifications

Administration menu → Institutions → Admin notifications

The Admin notifications page lists all users with institution and site administrator access on your site. It shows their selected notification preferences for all admin notifications. There should be at least one administrator receiving each type of message generated.

Institution administrators only see admin notifications for their own institutions.

Admin notifications are:

^{Overview of the admin notification types}

Glossary

The glossary has two parts. Every user encounters the basic terms in Folioz. The advanced terms are for users who want to understand more and are especially for administrators.

Access

Your content is generally protected and private and not accessible to others by default. You put your content into pages and collections. Then you decide to publish your pages and collections for other users, groups or the public.

Access means that depending on the access permissions you give for a page or collection, individuals, members of a group, all users on your Folioz instance or anybody online can read and possibly also comment on your content if that functionality is enabled.

Account

You have personalised access to Folioz via a login and password. Your account identifies you in the system. Your name (and profile picture) are displayed around the system, e.g. on your profile page, forum posts, portfolio pages etc. You can manage your account in your settings.

 

Artefact

Artefacts are all types of content that you add to your personal content area, i.e. text, journal entries, pictures, audio files, video files, images etc.

 

Authentification

Folioz can administer users fully internally by creating accounts manually of by CSV file. If user account data is stored in external applications, e.g. an LDAP directory, a SimpleSAML identity provider or Moodle, users can use their usual logins and passwords to connect to Folioz. The authentication methods used in an institution are managed in the institution settings byt the site administrator.

 

Author

In general terms, authors are content creators and have the full rights on their works be it text, audio, video, still images or any other form of expression. If you are not the author of your own artefacts but wish to use somebody else’s work, make sure that you are allowed to do so. If you cannot use their work, you should not put it into your portfolio or use it in groups.

 

Block

Blocks exist on pages. They contain your artefacts that are displayed in context on a page to make up the portfolio.

 

Closed topic

A forum topic can be closed for members by the group administrator or forum moderator. The group members can read the topic content, but they cannot reply.

 

Collection

A collection is a bundle of pages that contain your artefacts. A navigation block or the navigation bar helps to move from page to page in a collection.

 

Comments

You can ask other users and / or friends to comment on your pages and / or collections that you have shared. Comments should be constructive and helpful. They should point out things that you did well and others that you may need to improve by providing constructive suggestions and encouragement for further learning.

The comments area is at the bottom of each page, but can also be turned off by the author of the page or artefact.

Controlled group

Controlled groups are similar to courses in learning management systems. The administrator can place users into the group who then cannot leave it. Usually, the administrator allows the submission of pages and collections to this group for assessment purposes.

 

Course group

Course groups allow the administrator to assign certain members the tutor role. Tutors can then give feedback on submitted pages and collections if these are allowed, but cannot add or remove users from the group.

Cover letter

Generally, the cover letter is the first page in an employment application and forms part of your résumé. It could be the first page in a collection for an employment or internship portfolio.

CSV file

CSV means “comma separated values” and describes the structure of a text file in which table columns are separated by a comma (or sometimes also semi-colon). You can create a CSV file with your data most easily in a spreadsheet software such as Libre Office Calc or MS Excel. You can use CSV files in Folioz to create and edit user accounts and groups as well as manage group members.

Dashboard

The dashboard is your start and overview page after you logged in. You can customise the information you see on your dashboard and for example have easy access to pages shared with you, your notifications, forum topics you are following etc.

Display name

You may not want to use your first and last name around the site and can thus create a display name, i.e. a nickname, if the site or institution administrator allows that. Furthermore, in huge institutions where several members have the same first and last name, the display name can be used to differentiate between them.

Editability of a group

Group administrators can decide if group members should only be able to add content to a group during a certain time frame. This can be useful when a group is course-related and shouldn’t allow the adding of files or conversations after the end of a course. Group administrators and tutors can always add, edit and delete content at all times.

Embed code

You can make content from other websites such as videos, audio, animations and presentations visible in Folioz by linking to it. If the external content can be embedded via an iframe or code that starts with <object> or <embed>, it can usually be displayed in Text or Note block or journal entry. Iframes can also be displayed in the External media block on a page. The site administrator may need to add specific iframes that you wish to embed to the allowed iframe sources.

Exact search

Exact search reduces the number of search results you get for users. Only results that are identical to the search terms will be found. For example, if you search for “james smith” without exact search turned on, your results page lists everyone starting with “james” no matter whether the last name is “smith” or not. If you turn on exact search, only users whose first and last name is “james smith” will be found. There is no need to use quotation marks when searching. Quotation marks are only necessary if you want to search for a display name that consists of two names. You must be a site administrator to turn exact search on or off.

Feedback

See “Comments”

Files area

You can use files in different locations: in your personal portfolio, groups, institutions and on the site level if you have access to the latter ones. The site administrator defines the size of the files area. Organise your files area carefully by placing your files into folders and by adding metadata such as descriptions and tags to your files and folders. That makes it much easier to distinguish a file after months from dozens or hundreds of others.

Filter

You can limit your search results to find your search term in tags only when you search shared pages. Furthermore, you can also limit your search for pages that have been shared with you or others.

Forum

Written asynchronous discussions in groups are separated into topics for better organisation and make up a forum.

Forum moderator

Forum moderators can edit forum posts and add posts in closed topics. They can edit forum topics or create new ones in the forum for which they are moderators.

Friend

Friends are your contacts on the site. You can ask other registered users to become your friends. If they agree, you can then invite them into groups or share pages or collections with them more easily. However, you do not have to become someone’s friend to view their portfolio pages or collections. A user can always share pages or collections with you without making you a friend.

Grading

You can use the submission functionality in groups to lock portfolio pages or collections when giving feedback. Folioz itself does not have a gradebook, but you could still record any grading results in the comment section at the bottom of each page and make it visible only to the author. Some institutions use the rating functionality in the comments section for grading purposes.

For more formal assessments, you can link Folioz to a learning management system. In Moodle for example, you can use the Folioz assignment submission plugin to assess portfolios directly in Moodle using standard Moodle grading options such as outcomes or rubrics.

Group

You can create groups and invite other users into your groups to work collaboratively on projects. Groups can use forums for discussions, a group files area for sharing files, journals to reflect collectively and create and share pages and collections. The site administrator can disable the possibility to create groups for regular users.

Group administrator

Group administrators define group settings, create new forums and administer group members.

Group homepage

The group homepage is the starting point for activities in a group. You can show the group description, a list of group members, latest forum posts or any number of other blocks.

Inbox

Your inbox is the place where you can access the notifications and messages you received from other users or the system. You can decide whether you want to read your messages in your inbox or receive them via email.

Invitation

You can invite any other users to your groups if you are the group administrator, or you may be able to invite your friends into groups in which you are a member. The invited users can accept the invitation or reject it.

Institution

A Folioz site can consist of any number of independent institutions in which users and certain institution settings are administered. This allows the use of one Folioz instance for many organisations without the need to install Folioz for each.

Institution administrator

Institution administrators can manage institution settings and users. They do not have access to other institutions or settings on the site level.

Institution page

Institution administrators can create institution pages that can be used as examples or templates for institution members. They can be copied automatically into the accounts of new institution members.

Journal

You can collect personal reflections about a topic or learning progress in a journal. It consists of a series of these reflections that you write in individual journal entries. Per default, you have one journal, but you can add more if you enable multiple journals in your settings. You can add journals to pages as a whole, as individual entries or selected based on tags.

You can decide to publish a journal entry so others can see it if it is in a page or keep it as draft for yourself only.

Leap2A

Leap2A is a portfolio standard that is used by a number of ePortfolio systems for data exchange. In Folioz, users can export their entire portfolio or parts of it as Leap2A file and then have it imported into another Folioz instance or an ePortfolio system that supports Leap2A to continue straight away without having to re-create their portfolio. Since every portfolio system functions differently, a complete one-to-one transfer of information is not possible and in most cases some work is required after the transfer.

License

When you upload content to Folioz, you may need to agree to the upload agreement or specify a license for the content you upload so others know whether it is your own or was created by somebody else. You can use the Creative Commons block if you want to share an entire portfolio page under a Creative Commons license.

Mahoodle

Mahoodle is the term used for connecting Folioz and Moodle for single sign-on and content exchange.

Member

Users in an institution are institution members and users in groups are group members.

Message

Messages are sent to you by other users. The messages appear in your inbox and can be delivered via email as well.

Moodle

Moodle is a learning management system (LMS) and thus teacher-centred. Courses in Moodle are filled with learning content by teachers. Students (users) get access to the content and can discuss it and are often graded on their performance. Moodle and Folioz can be used in combination. If connected, users only need one account for both systems and can switch between them without a new login. Folioz can be used as personal repository for users, and they can copy their own assignments and course contributions into their Folioz account as artefacts.

Notification

Notifications are automatically created by the system and inform you about new feedback on your pages, new forum posts in groups, new access to other users’ pages and much more. The notifications appear in your inbox and can be delivered via email.

Objectionable material

On the page of a user to which you have access, you might come across content that is inappropriate, offensive or violates the terms of usage of the site. You can click the Report objectionable material link on the page or the artefact details page and give your reason why you marked this content as objectionable. Administrators are notified, can review the content and could block the offender from accessing the system until the content is removed. It cannot be defined in general terms what is considered inappropriate. The owner of the site has to define this based on the purpose of the site and the age of its users for example.

Forum posts can also be reported as objectionable by clicking the Report button.

Online users

This sidebar shows other users that have been online during the last 10 minutes. Institution administrators can limit this list to show only users from their own institution.

Open group

Open groups can be joined by anyone without group administrator approval.

Owner

The owner is the person or group that has created a page or collection or to whom artefacts belong.

Page

You can design pages by arranging artefacts on them. You define the page layout and - if enabled - the theme for it. You give other users access to pages so they can view your work and comment on it. Several pages can be added to a collection. All users can create personal pages and group members may be able to create group pages.

Pages can also be created as templates for further use by others.

Page layout

The page layout is responsive and adapts to the size of the screen. You can place blocks onto a page and change their size.

Plan

Plans are simple ToDo lists consisting of tasks. You can add your plans as blocks into your pages.

Portfolio

Portfolios gather stuff, i.e. learning artefacts and evidence. In Folioz you place your artefacts into pages which you can bundle up into collections. A page or a collection can then already be your portfolio. Thus, you can create many different portfolios. You decide whether you want to share your portfolios with others or keep them for yourself. You can create portfolios for many purposes, e.g.

• reflecting on courses;
• creating and reflecting on projects;
• personal reflecting on individual development or separate learning processes;
• creating résumés and your learner biography;
• creating a showcase of your best work and much more.

Privacy statement

Information about the use of private data from the Folioz site. Usually, there is a link in the page footer to it.

Profile

Your profile page is visible to other users on Folioz. You should only display as much information about yourself as you are comfortable for other users to see. Your display name or if you do not have one, your first name and last name, is displayed along with your profile picture. Users may also be able to contact you and invite you to groups. All other elements on your profile page are optional.

Public group

Public groups are visible to anyone on the Internet. You do not have to be a member of the group to follow forum discussions or view pages. However, you need to be a group member to participate in the discussions or create pages yourself.

Recommendation

You can recommend a group to your friends if the group administrator allowed that. The group administrator then still needs to approve the group membership.

Résumé

The résumé details your education and employment history, your achievements as well as skills and interests in a tabular format. Generally, you use it when you apply for an internship or job. However, as the elements in your résumé are reusable, you can also use individual elements in other portfolios.

RSS feed

RSS feeds aggregate news from portal pages, forums or blogs. You can add RSS feeds from external sites to your pages using the “External feed” block. The content will be updated continuously. Folioz can also create RSS feeds for forums in public groups and journals that appear in public pages.

Search

You can search for pages by title, description or tags on “Shared with me” and will see a list of results immediately. You can also search for users by using the user search box. If the site administrator turned on exact search, you need to provide the complete name of users in order to find them. Otherwise, a part of their name is enough but often yields too many results. Fulltext search is not available if the site administrator installed Elasticsearch on the server.

Secret URL

You can create secret URLs for pages and collections to give users who do not have a login to the site access to your pages or collections. The difference to making pages or collections public is that search engines cannot find these pages (unless a link to them appears on a web page).

Share

You can share your pages and collections with other users by giving them access to them. The people with whom you have shared your pages and collections may comment on them. You can also share pages with people who do not have an account on the system by sharing your pages and collections with them via a secret URL.

Single sign-on

Single sign-on (SSO) describes the process to log in to one application and switch to another connected application without having to log in again. Moodle and Folioz are often connected via SSO, which is called MNet. The other built-in SSO authentication method in Folioz is SAML. Others can be added via plugins.

Site

Site means the whole site and the administration on the global level for a Folioz instance.

Site administrator

Site administrators can define system (site) settings for an entire Folioz instance. They can add, edit and delete user accounts and have access to all content even in private user areas as they can log in as any user, e.g. to assist with troubleshooting issues.

Site files

Files area on system (site) level that the site administrator can work with. Files that are placed in the public folder in the site files are available to all users.

Site page

Pages created on site level that can be put into new user accounts automatically as templates.

Skin

A skin is a way of customising the look of a portfolio page on top of a theme. The use of skins must be allowed by the site and institution administrator. If they are allowed, users can create them themselves and change the background, fonts and font color for certain elements on their page. Skins can also be shared with others on the site or exported and imported.

Staff

Staff on the site or institution level have a few additional permissions compared to regular users. For example, they can create controlled groups and hide groups, and they can also view statistics if the site administrator allowed that. Institution staff are also listed alongside institution administrators on their institution’s contact page.

Sticky topic

Topics in a forum are sorted according to the date and time of posts. The topic with the latest post is normally shown first. Sometimes topics should get more attention even if there are no new posts. They can be marked “sticky” and stay at the top of the topics list. Group administrators and forum moderators can mark topics as sticky or disable this setting.

Tag

Tags are keywords that facilitate searching for your artefacts, pages and collections when the title and description are not enough. You can view all your tagged content in a tag cloud in the sidebar and find content again more easily.

Tag cloud

You can display your most often used tags in the sidebar in a so called tag cloud. The tags are shown in different sizes: A tag that is used more often is bigger than a tag that is used seldom.

Task

Tasks are created as part of a plan to provide more details on it. They can also be used to list items on a ToDo list. A task is defined by a title, a description and a completion date.

Template

Pages and collections can be offered as templates to other users. They can be copied, or institution and site administrators can have them added automatically into the portfolio area of new users. Templates are used to jumpstart the collection of content and the creation of portfolios.

Terms and conditions

The terms and conditions define the appropriate use of the site. The site administrator can display a link to this page in the footer of every page and also ask users to confirm them during registration.

Theme

The graphical interface design is called theme. If you have institutions on your site, they can have their own theme. Users can also use individual themes for their portfolio pages if the site administrator allows that.

Topic

Discussion forums are made up of topics that represent a discussion around a particular theme each.

Tutor

Tutors only exist in course groups. They can give feedback on submitted pages that are locked from editing while they give feedback. After they are finished, they release the pages or collections and the portfolio authors can fully edit their content again.

User

Users are people who have access to the Folioz site and can log in in with a personal account.

Wall

The wall is a block on your profile page. Other users can leave a message on your wall.

Watchlist

You can add pages and collections that have been shared with you to your watchlist. You will receive notifications when these pages are updated.

 

Updates

August 2019 Update

Page header update

The page header area was revamped to allow for a full-width page header when in display mode of a page. This is the first step towards further changes to improve the look of a page.

The buttons stick on the right-hand side of a page and stay in place when the page is scrolled for easy access.

The profile page shows a few more buttons for the various actions that can be taken on the page, depending on who is viewing the page.

SmartEvidence editor

You can create, edit, and copy SmartEvidence frameworks directly in Folioz as site administrator. The SmartEvidence editor makes it possible. You can still upload existing framework files, but can also take advantage of a visual editor filling in the framework details into a form.

Fill in a form to set up a SmartEvidence framework

Open links in a new tab or window

Links to external web sites are opened automatically in a new tab or window, depending on your browser settings. You can also open Mahara pages in a new tab if you like when you set up your link in the visual editor.

Open links in a new tab or window

Upgrade to Bootstrap 4

Folioz now uses Bootstrap 4 for theming taking advantage of changes and new functionality available in this responsive framework.

Forum enhancements

Enhancements have been made to the discussion forums in groups to offer additional features allowing group administrators more control over subscriptions and posts, especially in large groups and when groups are used in more formal learning settings:

Consolidation of “People” and “Groups”

The navigation areas of “My friends” and “Find people” have merged to “People” and “My groups” and “Find groups” have merged into “Groups”.

New menu items in the main menu

That makes it easier to search for and find relevant people and groups without needing to choose beforehand what to look for.

Isolated institutions

Isolated institutions allows for better separation between institutions. This is beneficial when privacy requires that people of different institutions shall not be able to contact each other or share portfolios.

Support Badgr for open badges

If you have an account on Badgr, you can display open badges from that account’s public collections in Folioz. You need to set up a connection to Badgr for that to work.

Add navigation block to all pages in a collection

When you add the “Navigation” block to a page that is in a collection, you can add the block to all other existing pages within that collection automatically.

Show person who uploaded a group file

When you upload a file to a group, the group becomes the owner of the file. Now you can see who uploaded the file in the group’s file area as well as when you view the details of a file when coming from a group page.

Navigation changes

The main menu navigation has changed and the items re-arranged. Feedback from people using Folioz has shown that the previous division of “Content” and “Portfolios” was not ideal and that it was hard to find things. The new main menu matches the 3 main areas of Folioz:

The additional item of “Manage” was added for the items that did not fit in any of these categories.

Populate a page automatically with tagged content

If you tagged content, e.g. files, journal entries, or plans, and blocks, then you can create a new page based on that tagged content. Choose the tag or tags for which you want to see all content items. They will be added to the page automatically.

You can then arrange the resulting blocks as you like or remove them.

Set up institution tags

Institution administrators can set up any number of ‘official’ tags. These can be used by institution members to ensure that they are using the correct tags at all times. Institution tags cannot be edited by institution members.

View someone else’s content based on a tag

If you are on a portfolio page by somebody else, and you want to know all the content that they have tagged with a specific tag, you can click the tag at the artefact or the page and see a list of all content items with that tag to which you have access.

Support the creation of templates more

There are a number of new features that support the creation and use of templates. These features are geared towards scaffolding the portfolio creation process and give people who are new to portfolios or need to create a compliance portfolios tools at hand to facilitate their work.

Submit a portfolio via LTI to an LMS

Personal portfolios can be submitted to an LTI-enabled learning management system (LMS). Assignments are set up in the LMS with the connection to Folioz. Portfolios are graded in Folioz, and the grade is transferred to the LMS via LTI. These portfolios can be archived in Folioz automatically if needed.

View old versions of a page on the timeline

You can save versions of your portfolio to your page timeline and jump back to old versions. This allows you to see how your portfolio has developed over time, what you have added, and what you have deleted.

Make a peer assessment

Peers can perform a blind review of a portfolio authors skills and competencies when the “Peer assessment” block is on a page. They are not able to see any content of the person they are assessing. Peer assessments can be saved as drafts before making them available to the portfolio author and others.

Sign off and verify a portfolio page

When portfolios don’t use SmartEvidence for assessment purposes, it’s still good to know which pages are ready for review and when they can be sent for assessment. That is where the sign-off and verification functionality comes in.

Adding that to a page allows the portfolio author to sign off their page indicating to a selected manager that their portfolio is ready for review. If required, the manager can then verify the content showing that they are happy for the portfolio to be taken to the next step in the evaluation process.

Revoke access to portfolios containing objectionable material

An institution or site administrator can revoke access to a portfolio temporarily when it was reported as containing objectionable material. While the portfolio is under review, nobody who would normally have access to it are able to view it until the administrator is satisfied that all objectionable material has been dealt with.

This allows the administrator to communicate with the portfolio author directly through Folioz and also view a report of all current objectionable material.

Update plan tasks directly on a page

You can update the status of a plan task or edit tasks of a plan directly from a portfolio page making it faster to keep your plan up to date.

May 2020 Updates

Placeholder block

When you create a page, you do not have to decide on the block type from the start but can put a placeholder block onto the page instead. This is a great improvement for those working with templates as they can create the structure of a page and then let the learners decide what type of content they want to place into the individual sections.

^{Put a placeholder block onto a page}

More flexible layout

When you have a block on a page, you can instantly change its size. Grab the arrow handles and resize it. You can also still move it around a page and align other blocks to it seeing changes instantly.

An accessible option to make changes via the keyboard only is available.

Change the layout directly from the edit screen

Comment on content without leaving the page

When you want to comment on a piece of learning evidence, click the evidence itself if it is an image or linked otherwise and you’ll see details about that evidence and can comment on it if the portfolio author enabled comments. There are no more “Add comment” and “Details” link below each artefact.

Click an image or a linked artefact to see its details

Details mode

Some artefacts are not so easily accessible for comments. In those cases, enter the details mode by clicking the “Details” button in the button bar and the blocks or individual pieces of evidence that have more information available are highlighted. You can then click on the comments and details bar to view metadata and leave comments.

Click the “Details” button to enter the details mode

Add a page header background

You can change the background of the header area of a page if your site allows the use of skins. Select a background colour and make sure that the text colour matches and is readable. When you view your page with that skin applied, you will see the change instantly. You can then apply that skin to any of your other pages that should have the same header.

^{Change the colour of the page header are}

You can also upload a background image to the header area. For best results, make sure to follow the sizing instructions. You may also need to try a few variations to see which one works best.

^{Change the background of the page header area}

It is possible to also use theme fonts in skins now.

Assignment plans

It is possible to create plans in your personal portfolio area that serve as templates and that can be used for assignment purposes. When you create a template plan, you can copy it into a group. Any associated task pages and template portfolios are copied along.

A learner can then select what tasks they want to complete. Any associated portfolios are automatically copied into their account and are ready for use.

Assignment plans

Notification about submission and submission report

When you submit a portfolio to a Folioz group, a notification advises you of that. You can keep that notification as proof that you submitted a portfolio.

An institution or site administrator can run a report over the submissions to groups to get a quick overview of the submission status.

Report of submitted portfolios

Support for embedding .m4a and .wav media files

You can embed .m4a video and .wav audio files via the “Embedded media” block making it possible to use video and audio recorded on your mobile device if the native formats are not .mp4 and mp3.

Revoke portfolio submission done via LTI

When you submitted a portfolio to an LMS that allows assignment submission via LTI and you want to or need to make changes to your portfolio, you can revoke the submission if the teacher hasn’t yet graded the portfolio.

Revoke the submission of a portfolio

Group category filter in administration area

A group category filter is available in the administration area of the groups to make it easier to find groups on large sites.

^{Group category filter}

 

Sept 2020 Updates

Users are now people

The language on the site has changed away from ‘users’ in English because of the negative connotations of the term. Instead you will see:

There is still the occasional ‘user’ around, in particular when the term is used in the administration area and better shows what is used in third-party piece of software.

We will update all the screenshots with time, and focussed on creating screenshots of new functionalities for the time being.

Note: The term ‘username’ has been retained for the time being.

Language toggle

If the site has more than one language installed, you can switch between languages easily by using the language toggle in the main navigation bar.

It allows you to change the language at any point in time. Note though that the page is reloaded. Thus, if you wrote some text, you’ll be asked if you want to leave the page or not to prevent that your text will be lost.

Priority to institution members

When you want to share your portfolio with other people, you can search for them on the Edit access page. Now you see members from your own institution or institutions first as it is most likely that you wish to share your portfolio with them.

Share your portfolio with others

Default group settings

Site administrators can change the default group settings to determine settings that are more suitable to their environment from the get go. Group administrators can still adjust them as usual.

Personal group labels

You can label groups in which you are a member. That allows you to filter for them on the Groups overview page, in the sidebar, and on your profile page, allowing you to focus on current or most frequently used groups. This functionality is particularly good for those that are in many groups and where some of these groups may not be active (any more).

Combined export

You export your portfolio content now in all available export formats. Per default, HTML and Leap2A are enabled and PDF may be available. This allows you to export everything in one go and be more flexible later on when you may need the HTML export yet also the Leap2A one. You no longer need to run two exports to get both formats.

Bulk export formats

You can export accounts in bulk not only in Leap2A but also any other available export format. Per default, HTML is available. Some sites may also activate the experimental feature of the PDF export.

Cover images for pages and collections

You can add a cover image to every page and collection. They are displayed on your Pages and collections overview page to make it easier to find your portfolios.

Overview page for ‘Pages and collections’ with cover images

Sign-off and verification details

You can see when a page was signed off by the portfolio author and verified by a manager, if verification is necessary.

See details about the sign-off and verification

Restrict file types to upload

You can restrict which file types account holders are allowed to upload via the config.php file. That gives you more control over the file types you consider safe to upload.

See which file types you can upload if there is a restriction in place

Delete entire sections of a SmartEvidence framework

When you set up a standard and associated standard elements with it, you can now delete all of them at once. Also, if you have a standard element that is a parent to others, you can delete all of them in one go, making it faster to change your framework and remove unwanted elements.

Move account to an SSO institution

You can move your account without administrator intervention on your own from one institution into another as long as the intaking institution uses SAML SSO. That allows you to side step seeking approval for the move and handle everything on your own.

Confirm your account move

More prominent SSO login button

Typically, when single sign-on via an external IdP is used on a site, the regular login form becomes secondary and is only used by administrators. In the past, the SSO login button was very subtle. Now it is displayed more prominently and easier to see for people thus preventing that account holders try to use the regular login form that wouldn’t allow them to sign in.

More prominent SSO login button

Single sign-on automations

There is a range of improvements to single sign-on to be found in Mahara 20.04. These changes make it easier for large organisations or groups of organisations to manage institutions and accounts on Mahara.

May 2022 Updates

Institution support administrator role

People providing support for an institution, e.g. helpdesk or hotline support, can now receive the ‘Institution support administrator’ role, which includes all permissions from the ‘Institution staff’ role and the possibility to masquerade as a regular institution member and as institution staff.

Install languages in the site administration

Site administrators can install any translation of Mahara directly in the site administration area. Languages can also be updated there. The translations make the interface available in languages other than English. No matter the interface language though, account holders can type text in any language.

Set up portfolio completion in group collections

If a group is created in an institution that allows the use of the portfolio completion functionality, you can set up group portfolio templates that add this page. Learners can then copy the template and have the page ready to go on their personal portfolios.

Prevent changes to ‘Sign-off’ block on copied templates

To prevent accidental changes to the ‘Sign-off’ block on portfolios that are copied from a template, the block settings are not available to portfolio authors once they made a copy of the template.

Download SmartEvidence framework

If you created your SmartEvidence framework on your Mahara site instead of uploading it as a JSON file, you can now download it from the SmartEvidence framework management page and upload it to another Mahara site. This makes sharing of frameworks easier and doesn’t require that they are uploaded first, but they can be created directly in Mahara.

Limit the number of groups in an institution

Site administrators can limit the number of groups that can be created in an institution in the institution settings. This allows for greater control over groups on multi-tenanted sites.

Upload files via web services

If you want to upload files directly into accounts via a third-party application, you can do so using the new file upload web services connection. It allows you to send a file from a third-party application with the consent of the account holder to Mahara.

Résumé changes

Education and employment histories are now separate menu items to be able to deal better with dragging and dropping files.

You can attach files on an education or employment history item or an achievement either directly from your Mahara files area or by uploading a file from your device.

‘Contact us’ notifications to institution administrator

Notifications sent by logged-in institution members go to the respective institution administrators instead of the site administrator. That way, site administrators do not have to forward requests meant for institution administrators as frequently. Notifications sent by someone not logged in still go to the site administrator.

SmartEvidence for group templates

If an institution allows to use SmartEvidence, a framework can be added to a group portfolio used as template for the creation of personal portfolios.

Include or exclude private comments from export

Decide whether you want to include or exclude private comments from your portfolio export to retain the original setting on private comments and not make them viewable by others.

Collapsible page comments

When you open a page, the comments area at the bottom of a page, when the portfolio author allowed comments, is collapsed per default to save space.

Skin stays with copied page

When you copy a page or a collection that has one or more skins applied to its pages, the skins come along with the pages if they are public or site skins that you are allowed to use.

LTI Advantage

LTI Advantage is implemented as experimental feature. At the moment, it has been tested with the Brightspace learning management system. The recording showcases the three main functionalities that are achieved:

• Authentication
• Setup of groups based on courses and enrolment information
• Portfolio submission

Current submissions across the site

View current submissions to the site from groups or external hosts that use LTI Advantage. The overview page allows site and institution administrators to quickly release portfolios that were submitted accidentally.

Accessibility improvements

We are consistently improving the accessibility of Mahara. In this release, we increased the base font size, made the viewing area of a page wider, and also corrected the heading levels so they now follow stricter rules.

In the visual editor, you now only have three headings available that comply with the heading level structure more closely.

Maroon theme

Folioz comes with a number of built-in themes. We added a new theme, ‘Maroon’, as alternative to these. It has an edgier feel with its slanted lines. Like the other themes, it can be used as basis for your own theme by using the ‘Subthemestarter’ kit.

Portfolio completion

The portfolio completion progress page can be used in conjunction with page sign-off and verification. It shows how many of these have already been attained, and which ones are still outstanding. The page displays a progress bar for a percentage overview of all sign-offs and verification as well as a list of all pages within the collection along with their sign-off and verification status.

Quick edit for ‘Text’ blocks

When you have a ‘Text’ block, you can now edit it directly from the ‘Display’ mode of a portfolio page. When the ‘Details’ mode is turned on, you see ‘Quick edit’ at the top of any ‘Text’ block and can open the configuration modal to start editing.

Instructions on ‘Text’ block

You can add instructions to any ‘Text’ block. They are displayed in both ‘Edit’ and ‘Display’ mode allowing assessors to see them as well. When a template page is copied, the instructions cannot be changed.

Lock instructions

You can mark a page as ‘Template’ in the page settings. At the moment that means that you can lock instructions, both page and artefact instructions, e.g. on ‘Text’ and ‘Peer assessment’ blocks. Direct copies of the template won’t allow changes to instructions.

Display course completions

You can display course completions from a learning management system (LMS) if you configured for both to exchange data. Depending on the configuration, you can see the course title, number of hours, organisation, and course type.

Assignment submission plugin for Moodle

A new Mahara assignment submission plugin is available for Moodle. It is based on web services and LTI rather than MNet and allows for the archiving of portfolios along with the previously available functionality.

URL redirect for external authentication methods

When you log in via an external authentication method on a multi-tenanted Mahara instance, you can now be redirected properly to the login screen for your authentication method as that can be configured, e.g. for LTI, if it doesn’t happen automatically.

 

Change Logs

A more technical breakdown of fixes and features found in updates to Folioz.

Sept 2020 Fixes

 * Bug 1800319: Revise merging of sharing permissions for a collection
 * Bug 1829943: Error deleting institution due to foreign key constraint with view table
 * Bug 1836984: Elasticsearch not restricting the user search when isolated institutions turned on
 * Bug 1840099: Library upgrade: CSS Tidy to 1.7.1
 * Bug 1840201: Elastic search: Search results are not restricted for aretfacts on pages shared with group
 * Bug 1843206: Peer assessment sign-off block has incorrect message
 * Bug 1843357: Library upgrade: remove jquery deprecations
 * Bug 1843847: Select2 accessibility for labelling and removing tags
 * Bug 1845228: Mahara installation issues with MySQL 8.0.17
 * Bug 1846994: Mozilla Backpack needs to be deprecated
 * Bug 1847379: The 'read' column for module_multirecipient_userrelation is a char and not integer
 * Bug 1848100: Skins - cannot Save changes once background image file previewed
 * Bug 1849771: Need a isGridstackRendering flag
 * Bug 1850220: Can't get to site's contacts page from profile page
 * Bug 1850578: TinyMCE editor does not appear in Chrome on Android
 * Bug 1850786: Upgrade script to 19.10 from 19.04.1 fails when converting artefact audio - elasticsearch triggers
 * Bug 1850859: Consolidate CSS for skins to work better with new header and details mode
 * Bug 1850869: Text block - internal anchor does not work
 * Bug 1851155: LTI duplicate email addresses causing problems
 * Bug 1851165: display_tag() missing index error
 * Bug 1851174: 19.10 upgrade is failing at artefact_plans_plan
 * Bug 1851175: Unformatted table name breaks matrix
 * Bug 1851176: Unformatted table name breaks skin editing
 * Bug 1851288: Error when altering the block placeholder name before choosing block type
 * Bug 1851418: Security upgrade simplesamlphp to 1.17.7
 * Bug 1851557: Members from other institution can be seen when sharing portfolios despite isolated institutions
 * Bug 1851699: cron.php with '$cfg->urlsecret' dosen't work on cronjob under PHP FastCGI enviroment.
 * Bug 1852020: Nav menu missing import / export items
 * Bug 1852522: 'Display page' button should not be displayed for site templates
 * Bug 1852584: Cannot delete a group collection if already pushed to users
 * Bug 1852644: Allowing a site admin to set an external app owner to be someone other than themselves
 * Bug 1853189: Not all fields are showing in xml-rpc auth modal
 * Bug 1853364: find_by_instanceid_username can cause error
 * Bug 1853387: jsform field defaults to no when field is disabled
 * Bug 1855023: Warning produced when adding/ editing an image gallery block
 * Bug 1855373: Update gulp
 * Bug 1855614: Problems with restricting profile access
 * Bug 1856506: gridstack - too much recursion error when translating from old layout
 * Bug 1856759: Issues with layout/tinymce/gridstack and IE11
 * Bug 1857274: "Display page" button is highlighted in edit mode when it shouldn't be
 * Bug 1857379: File attachment display consolidation
 * Bug 1857380: Profile picture settings page needs its own form_id
 * Bug 1857381: Cover letter styles can't be targeted independently for full resume and individual item
 * Bug 1858512: Stop displaying an email profile field as one of the normal fields
 * Bug 1859127: When having restricted file uploading it fails to restrict list on subsequent upload
 * Bug 1859355: Peer assessor can delete another peers assessment
 * Bug 1860050: module_assessmentreport module giving errors on portfolio submission
 * Bug 1860368: Arrow bar in Modern and Ocean not correct wen hovering over non-active tab
 * Bug 1863043: Don't display personal information beyond what is necessary in "Edit access" Ajax response
 * Bug 1863197: Primary school theme home page and dashboard widgets display incorrectly
 * Bug 1863820: navigation block html export - views titles link back to original site
 * Bug 1864757: Can't comment on artefacts on public or secret URL pages
 * Bug 1865400: Security Upgrade SimpleSAML 1.17.7 to 1.18.4
 * Bug 1865822: tagged posts blocktype broken when displaying a view
 * Bug 1866773: Auth SAML get disco list issue
 * Bug 1866942: user creation will set groupsideblocklabels to 'Array' on the DB
 * Bug 1868613: Design freeze prep for Mahara 20.04
 * Bug 1868916: Image Gallery Blocks do not allow retractable option other than no
 * Bug 1869548: Language string review for Mahara 20.04
 * Bug 1870256: Path to file listed in pdf export is not correct
 * Bug 1870989: Warning produced when trying to copy a group page
 * Bug 1870993: Site not respecting the usepdfexport flag
 * Bug 1871018: Importing page with embedded image not working in all cases
 * Bug 1871473: Incorrect theme displayed for new pages when saved
 * Bug 1873112: Export collections not creating the export pdf
 * Bug 1873113: Pdf export: print preview layout can cause placement / truncation issues of text / images
 * Bug 1873121: HTML / PDF export of Gallery block in slideshow mode is broken
 * Bug 1873357: Have exported pdf files for pages / collections end up in a PDF/ directory next to the HTML/ one
 * Bug 1874540: Page settings form not behaving as expected
 * Bug 1874961: 'Publish' button in peer assessment block does not have primary brand colour applied in theme 'Default'
 * Bug 1875103: Change the menu item and page 'Group settings' to 'Default group settings'
 * Bug 1875267: 'Login' button not visible in 'Default' theme when only a link
 * Bug 1690291: Behat: Combine multiple tests for webservices into one
 * Bug 1759054: datepicker not accessible by screen reader
 * Bug 1762845: HTML export still contains the 'details' /'add comment' links for blocks on the pages
 * Bug 1821813: Behat: Add inbox notifications functionality to Objectionable content
 * Bug 1823801: Behat: Confirm Inst tags can be used on Inst pages
 * Bug 1825918: A bit more space between action buttons and skin cards
 * Bug 1829080: Behat: SmartEvidence framework matrix editor functionality
 * Bug 1830811: Mahara.org feeds don't work in rss block
 * Bug 1837340: Behat: Isolated institutions scripts needed
 * Bug 1841501: Behat: check required to verify that the share icon is not displayed for Site page templates
 * Bug 1844076: Only 1 error message shown even though there are 2 on "Site options"
 * Bug 1845133: "Delete" button visible on timeline for comments
 * Bug 1848130: Behat: group_view_block.feature failing consistently
 * Bug 1850559: Problem with deleting a plan task
 * Bug 1850865: iPad iOS 13.1 block comments and details modal content scrolls horizontally
 * Bug 1850880: Profile completion tips links - some are inaccurate
 * Bug 1851193: 'skip to main content' link is not working
 * Bug 1851589: Console error in image gallery
 * Bug 1852513: Behat test coverage for details mode and changes to skins
 * Bug 1853230: Library upgrade: jTLine needs updating to fix jquery deprecations
 * Bug 1853905: keyboard navigation options not working in FF / Chrome
 * Bug 1854421: Get site options form to reload page on updating certain fields
 * Bug 1855349: Tagged Journal Entries are not importing in Leap2a
 * Bug 1857255: signoff/verify modal issue in IE11
 * Bug 1857370: Adjust color of "No tasks yet" in "Plans"
 * Bug 1857371: Left-align performance footer messages
 * Bug 1858707: Links in a header with skin turned on shows normal link color instead of header color
 * Bug 1859364: The gridstack drag icon is showing on the display page as well as edit page
 * Bug 1859528: Update adodb to version 5.20.16
 * Bug 1859605: Mahara portfolio as Moodle assignment cannot be previewed
 * Bug 1861046: Increase contrast of the class "text-midtone" to be accessible in all themes
 * Bug 1861370: group member search could result in fatal error message
 * Bug 1864581: Plan tasks in a block in 'Edit' mode need to have more space
 * Bug 1865409: Replace "user" with more appropriate term on auth.saml.php
 * Bug 1866148: add a function in class Collection to get the first view in the collection
 * Bug 1866528: Reorder options in the site options panels
 * Bug 1866710: Update PHP Mailer to 6.1.5
 * Bug 1866713: Update Chart.js to 2.9.3
 * Bug 1866720: Update htmlpurifier to 4.1.12
 * Bug 1866934: Upgrade Library: popper to v1.16.0
 * Bug 1867707: Add comments and details block headers not changing colour when active
 * Bug 1867999: Empty annotation in peer review mode is not working right
 * Bug 1868657: Image Gallery blocks that display from individually images don't have the details block header
 * Bug 1869966: Multiple html p tags on lang/en.utf8/export.php
 * Bug 1870998: Can accidentally choose yourself when sharing a page when isolated institutions is on
 * Bug 1871219: Footer help link to manual is incorrect during rc release
 * Bug 1871504: error when exporting an empty page
 * Bug 1871515: pdfunite and ghostscript availability check for RHEL/CentOS
 * Bug 1871718: Chrome browser availability check for RHEL/CentOS
 * Bug 1871722: manage collection pages: needs a cancel button and missing lang string
 * Bug 1872860: Choose skin option on edit page settings needs style fix
 * Bug 1873115: Page comments in html export not present in the pdf export
 * Bug 1873122: Comments block not displaying as expected in HTML / PDF export
 * Bug 1874140: Collection exported in PDF has page links that are not helpful
 * Bug 1874143: Websservice configuration page needs some UX tidying
 * Bug 1874375: file uploading message has a 'tick' background
 * Bug 1875118: When clicking a group label on 'All groups' screen, switch to 'All my groups' screen
 * Bug 1838999: Recaptcha link in admin is a 404
 * Bug 1852026: using URLSearchParams to get url parameters in js
 * Bug 1852358: need to update the name for Macedonia
 * Bug 1854297: Behat: fix custome_landing_Page.feature
 * Bug 1855348: Missing language string in elasticsearch: 'servererror'
 * Bug 1855553: Not show the change password required heading when auth method doesn't allow this
 * Bug 1860049: Webservices logs page fails to sort results correctly
 * Bug 1861252: JSON editor library - removed duplicated libray code in src/editors directory
 * Bug 1863804: "Can't use function return value in write context" for finding dwoo directory
 * Bug 1866289: obsolete code in groupviews.php
 * Bug 1825231: Allow bulk export page to export in options other than Leap2A
 * Bug 1826284: PDF export for collections and entire account
 * Bug 1833664: "Lock blocks" doesn't work in group pages
 * Bug 1839411: Update codebase for php 7.3 and php 7.4
 * Bug 1840195: Add a function to check if a cron callfunction needs to run before actually executing it
 * Bug 1846412: To be able to migrate a SAML authed account from one IdP to another
 * Bug 1848092: Add personal labels to groups to allow group filtering
 * Bug 1853066: Allow behat suite to ignore some features
 * Bug 1853069: Combine export options into one export file
 * Bug 1855327: Allow Mahara to record SAML auth attributes to help diagnose auth problems
 * Bug 1855331: Allow one to toggle language setting easier
 * Bug 1855333: Create groups with a pre-defined set of settings different to the default options
 * Bug 1855344: Allow institution short name to be a string containing numbers and allow the string to be minimum 1 char long
 * Bug 1855351: Allow the site to restrict what files are allowed to be uploaded
 * Bug 1855358: Allow the login box to adjust if there are both internal and external login options available
 * Bug 1855383: Create new user_roles system where you can assign custom roles to a user
 * Bug 1855556: Allow minimum information when creating a user via SAML
 * Bug 1855560: Allow SAML auth to set admin/staff roles on create user
 * Bug 1855561: Only set the Strict-Transport-Security header once
 * Bug 1855622: Allow SAML to create institution if it doesn't exist before adding new user to it
 * Bug 1855771: Allow non-mahara exceptions to show a bit more detail
 * Bug 1856260: SmartEvidence framework editor improvements
 * Bug 1857366: Allow Artefact File save_file() function to save image as profileicon if needed
 * Bug 1857374: Make the mobile logo appear at a proper break point
 * Bug 1857401: Make Mahara theming more efficient by consolidating elements and using variables
 * Bug 1857929: Add sign-off and verification details
 * Bug 1857934: Alert to peers when page has been signed off
 * Bug 1857935: Display people from own institution(s) first when searching for them during portfolio sharing
 * Bug 1858143: Replace "user" with a more appropriate term where possible
 * Bug 1859115: Allow SAML UserNotfound be SAML specific
 * Bug 1859120: Allow a 'parent' saml auth instance update the roles for all the similiar instances
 * Bug 1865095: when using mahara.php json_reply() function we are not able to return data on error
 * Bug 1870444: Cover image for page and collection to be seen on 'Pages and collections' overview page* Bug 1888163: Security issue: File / folder name not being escaped correctly in filebrowser
 * Bug 1889485: Security Upgrade SimpleSAML 1.18.4 to 1.18.7
 * Bug 1875154: PDF export not mentioned on export page when it's available
 * Bug 1876625: Date picker not working for Admin -> People when selecting a date to filter users
 * Bug 1876810: More of the count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable
 * Bug 1877001: Skins not showing after upgrade
 * Bug 1879410: Add a text block in Dashboard page using TestingDataGenerator.php
 * Bug 1880803: errors when copying a page after editing column widths manually
 * Bug 1882103: Wrong redirect when creating Pages when Mahara is in a subdir
 * Bug 1883043: collection pages unavailable as link options in tinyMCE
 * Bug 1885231: Class 'Institution' not found when viewing another user's profile page
 * Bug 1885784: Need to update site options submit function to use alias
 * Bug 1871280: Allow grouproles to be reset for users when roles updated via webservices
 * Bug 1875785: External links in Mahara no longer open in external tab/window by default
 * Bug 1875973: Mahara: Site information block needs link to download updated
 * Bug 1877906: MariaDB error when creating secret URL
 * Bug 1879847: String missing for allow public views in Reports
 * Bug 1882870: Button obscuring text on Install Fonts page
 * Bug 1883031: The cancel link (button) on forms has an odd style once clicked
 * Bug 1883179: Profile Completion has incorrect instructions
 * Bug 1883471: reduce block margin on gridstack
 * Bug 1886371: Migrate Institution is producing a warning message
 * Bug 1886596: Behat testing data generator throws null on openbadgedisplayer
 * Bug 1887317: LoadXML error when upgrading from 18.10 to 20.04
 * Bug 1875958: 'My groups' sidebar can get very long if you are in lots of groups
 * Bug 1880771: When adjusting group membership via the Engage -> People page the modal doesn't close on submit
 * Bug 1884466: The delete_inactive_users cli script can timeout