2.3 Sakai Tools

Note Current only for Sakai version 2.3

1.1 Worksite Tools

The following tools (with one exception, see below) are available in Worksite Setup and Site Info > Edit Tools by default. They show up because their registration files have 'category name' of project and course.

• Announcements (sakai.announcements)
• Assignments (sakai.assignment.grades)
  • (stealthed) Assignments (sakai.assignment) - the version of the Assignments tool not integrated with the gradebook
• Chat Room (sakai.chat)
• Discussion (sakai.discussion)
• Drop Box (sakai.dropbox)
• Email Archive (sakai.mailbox)
• Gradebook (sakai.gradebook.tool)
• News (sakai.news)
• Presentation (sakai.presentation)
• Resources (sakai.resources)
• Schedule (sakai.schedule)
• Section Info (sakai.sections)
• Site Info (sakai.siteinfo)
• Syllabus (sakai.syllabus)
• Web Content (sakai.iframe)
• Wiki (sakai.rwiki)

The following tools are not available for direct selection from Worksite Setup, but they are designed for use in worksites, and can be attached to sites as an admin action.

• Calendar Summary (sakai.summary.calendar)
• Site Home Page tools
  • My Workspace Info Display (sakai.iframe.myworkspace)
  • Recent Announcements (sakai.synoptic.announcement)
  • Recent Chat Messages (sakai.synoptic.chat)
  • Recent Discussion Items (sakai.synoptic.discussion)

1.2 Admin Tools

These tools are found within the Admin Workspace by default

• Admin: Archive Tool (sakai.archive)
• Administrator's Preferences Tool (sakai.admin.prefs)
• Admin: Alias Editor (sakai.aliases)
• Admin: Memory / Cache Tool (sakai.memory)
• Admin: On-Line (sakai.online)
• Admin: Realms Editor (sakai.realms)
• Admin: Sites Editor (sakai.sites)
• Admin: User Editor (sakai.users)

1.3 Pre-configured Template Tools

These tools all have some special function in some pre-configured region of Sakai, such as the gateway or MyWorkspaces.

• Help Documentation (sakai.help)
• Membership (sakai.membership)
• Worksite Setup (sakai.sitesetup)
• Account (sakai.singleuser)
• New Account (sakai.createuser)
• Message Of The Day (sakai.motd)
• Site Information Display (sakai.iframe.site)
• Service Information Display (sakai.iframe.service)
• Preferences Tool (sakai.preferences)
• Presence Tool (sakai.presence)
• Site Browser (sakai.sitebrowser)
• Profile (sakai.profile)

1.4 Other Tools

Tools that defy categorization and are not for the end user are collected here.

• Admin: Site Management (sakai.sitemanage) (stealthed)
• Gradebook Service Test (sakai.gradebook.testservice)
• Job Scheduler Based On Quartz (sakai.scheduler)
• Sakai OSID Unit Test Servlet (sakai.test.tools.OSIDUnitTest)
• Sample use of RepositoryManager Component (sakai.sample.tools.OSIDRepository)
• Simple Sample Servlet Tool (sakai.sample.tool.servlet)
• Simple Sample Servlet Tool 2 (sakai.sample.tool.servlet2)
• Test Link (sakai.rutgers.testlink) (stealthed)

2. Provisional Tools

A provisional tool is one which is considered to be mature enough to be included in the release distribution, but is not (yet) considered to be an official part of the enterprise bundle, and which does not come enabled by default. Additional steps are required to enable these extra tools. However, a provisional tool may meet a need that the standard tools do not. Since one of the criteria for provisional status is that the tool must already have seen successful production use at more than one member institution, and since provisional tools are included in the code QA'ed for a release, you should be able to deploy a provisional tool in production with some confidence.

The basic idea of provisional tools is to allow implementors to have ready access to blossoming tools for testing and evaluation. If they meet needs and broad success is reported in production, they may be included as a standard part of the bundle in future releases. Your feedback on the suitability of these tools for inclusion in an upcoming Sakai release is therefore an important part of this process. You'll find a more complete description of the criteria for provisional status among the "community practices" posted on Confluence: Criteria for Provisional Status

2.1 Making Provisional Tools Visible

Provisional tools are, as a general rule, "stealthed" by default. This means they do not appear as options in either the Worksite Setup or Edit Tools lists - they effectively require the intervention of an admin in order to be added to a site.

Stealthing can be overridden in sakai.properties through a combination of two settings: one for revealing stealthed tools, and the other for hiding tools (whether they are stealthed or not). To add tools to these settings, simply include the particular tool ID in a comma-separated list, e.g.:

visibleTools@org.sakaiproject.tool.api.ActiveToolManager=sakai.messagecenter,sakai.samigo
hiddenTools@org.sakaiproject.tool.api.ActiveToolManager=sakai.announcements

2.2 Provisional Worksite Tools

A brief overview of each provisional tool is provided below. For more detailed information visit the Confluence links provided, or send your questions to the listed contact.

2.2.1 Blog

Overview: The Blog is a tool that allows the creation of journals that are available on the web. The information written in the Blog is instantly published in the Web site, so it is available virtually wherever the potential readers are and whenever they want. The Blog is not just a personal blog. It is a team-oriented blog. That means that all the information you publish to the team blog can be revised, modified and appended to by any member of your team. All your team members can also add comments to any blog entry.

Configuration: Change your JVM startup configuration by adding this option:

java.awt.headless=true

This is necessary for the JPEG convertor.

2.2.2 LinkTool

Overview: Linktool is intended for calling external applications, e.g. written in PHP. It requires the application to be able to do web services calls back to sakai. Other than that, it is very light-weight.

2.2.3 Message Center

Overview: Message Center is Indiana University's solution for discussion and private messaging, facilitating one-on-one and group communication. Through private messaging, users within a site can quickly and easily communicate and can even auto-forward private messages to their favorite email client. By providing authors with extensive control over permissions and forum/topic status and giving users a more intuitive navigation, the discussion forum feature complements private messaging well.

Configuration:System administrators need to set the role-to-permission-level mapping in sakai.properties. OOTB generic roles are set to the following:

mc.default.Student=Contributor
mc.default.Instructor=Owner
mc.default.Teaching\ Assisant=Contributor

Note: If you add a role to sakai.properties that has a space, you must escape it with a backslash (e.g., mc.default.project\ owner=Owner).

2.2.4 OSP

Overview: The Open Source Portfolio (OSP) has been a significant standalone product in its own right, and it has been merged with Sakai as a suite of tools designed to work in concert for portfolio-based learning and assessment. Using OSP, individuals can collect items, reflect, design portfolios, and publish them to designated audiences. Instructors and program administrators are able to provide structure and guidance to an individual's work that include step-by-step (sequential) wizards, matrices of goals/standards, and hierarchies to organize related work. Please visit http://www.osportfolio.org for more information on the Open Source Portfolio (OSP).

2.2.5 Podcasts

Overview: a podcasting tool which takes advantage of the Resources tool for storage, but displays podcasts in a user friendly way and provides an RSS feed for access through one's favorite podcatcher.

2.2.6 Post 'Em

Overview: Post 'Em is an automated reporting system that enables faculty to post grades and comments without compromising student privacy. Post 'Em accepts CSV files, empowering faculty to track student grades in a spreadsheet application of their choice. Keep in mind that Post 'Em files are not restricted to grades and comments, so the research community may also benefit from this functionality.

2.2.7 Roster

Overview: Roster allows users to view the names, photos and profiles of site participants who have made their information accessible through the Profile tool in My Workspace. If an institution has institutional photos, the photos can be made accessible separately to site maintainers.

Configuration: Some extra work may need to be done to provide photos for it from campus systems.

2.2.8 Search

Overview: The search tool aims to provide a tool that allows a Google-like search of all content in a Sakai instance. It also provides a service component that can be used by other tools to provide search functionality. When search is turned on, an indexer runs in the background that treats content as it is added to the system,

Configuration: To turn on search indexing, add the following to sakai.properties:

search.experimental=true

2.2.9 Tests & Quizzes

Overview: Samigo is the historical project name for the tool that appears in Sakai as Tests & Quizzes (the terms are often used interchangeably). It is an online assessment tool that supports teaching and learning, in both formative assessments and summative assessments.

Configuration: Samigo is a relatively complex Sakai application, and as a result maintains its own set of release notes - including configuration information. These can be found on Confluence: http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/confluence/display/SAM/2.3+Release+Notes.

2.2.10 TwinPeaks

Overview: TwinPeaks is a capability to search external repositories while using the HTMLArea WYSIWIG editor (note: Sakai 2.2 uses FCKeditor by default). TwinPeaks was originally developed by the Indiana University Library and was extended and merged into the Sakai 2.1 release by the MIT OKI project.

To add a repository to TwinPeaks, one must write or obtain an OKI DR OSID implementation for that particular repository and then install the OSID implementation in their Sakai instance. Documentation for installing and registering a new OSID implementation within Sakai is available in the Sakai Development Resources area on collab.sakiaproject.org.

TwinPeaks is suitable for use on development servers and can be used to enable sites to begin the development of their DR OSID implementations. The TwinPeaks implementation in the Sakai 2.2 release should not be turned on in production systems without additional work.

Configuration: TwinPeaks can be enabled by changing the following sakai.properties setting to true.

# enable the twinpeaks feature in the WYSIWYG editor in legacy tools: true or false
wysiwyg.twinpeaks=false

2.3 Provisional Admin Tools

2.3.1 Sakaiscript

Overview: Sakaiscript is essentially a logical web service wrapper to the Sakai API, opening up a number of common admin functions to easy scripting from other languages. You'll find HTML documentation for it, including sample scripts from Python, in reference/docs/webservices/html/index.html.

Configuration: Sakai web services and SakaiScript are included in the release and need to be turned on using a property in the sakai.properties file:

# Indicates whether or not we allow web-service logins
webservices.allowlogin=false

This parameter is set to false so as to make sure that no one can robot-guess Sakai passwords using web services out of the box. If you want to support the login, you must set this property to true in your Sakai instance.

Security: While it's true that you have to enable the above property to log in via webservices, webservices are always "on". In other words you could, in principle, always navigate to the Axis page to view the SOAP methods, and use SakaiScript as long as you have a SessionID (you could just copy it from your browser cookie). Any site enabling web-services should understand the security implications of Sakai web services. Web services should be run over HTTPS in any production environment as IDs, Passwords, and Sakai Session Keys are passed back and forth in plain text using SOAP.

2.3.2 SU

Overview: SU is a tool for administrators to use to log in as another user. It is code developed at Texas State University for their local brand of Sakai called TRACS: Teaching Research and Collaboration System. It is meant to be used within the Admin Workspace, and so it does not need to be stealthed or unstealthed (it will never appear among the tool options in "Worksite Setup"). It features a simple form in which you type the user id of the user you wish to "become" in the system.

The name stands for Super User, and comes from a command-line tool in Unix that serves the same purpose. It is often pronounced "Sue."

Configuration: In order to use the tool, edit the !admin site (i.e. the Admin MyWorkspace) through the admin Sites tool, add a page or edit an existing page, and place the tool on that page. The SU tool will appear in the list with the title "Become User" and the id sakai.su. When you've placed the tool, remember to click the Save button.

The tool itself is very simple. There is a text field to type a user id, and there is a Submit button. Your session will continue as though you had logged in as the specified user. This will work even if that user is already logged in at another location. To change back to yourself, you must logout and log back in.

Security: The SU tool is hard-coded only to work for users with administrative privileges. Naturally you should take care whom you give these privileges to. The ability to have more fine-grained control of permissions on the tool may be developed for a future version.