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1. Enterprise Bundle Tools
Tools that are integral to every Sakai release are called "Core" tools. Such tools are those that are deemed most tried, tested, and follow best practices for Sakai. They are visible out-of-the-box, and require no special configuration to begin using them. With each new release some provisional tools are considered for promotion to "Core" status (see Provisional Tools below).
3 tools were promoted to Core for the 2.4 release:
- Messages (the former Private Messaging component of Message Center)
- Forums (the former Discussion forum component of Message Center)
- Post 'Em
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1.1 Worksite Tools
The following tools (with one exception, see below) are available in Worksite Setup and Site Info > Edit Tools by default.
- Announcements (sakai.announcements)
- Assignments (sakai.assignment.grades)
- (stealthed) Assignments (sakai.assignment) - the version of the Assignments tool not integrated with the gradebook
- Calendar Summary (sakai.summary.calendar) - a synoptic tool for events created in the Schedule tool
- Chat Room (sakai.chat)
- Discussion (sakai.discussion)
- Drop Box (sakai.dropbox)
- Email Archive (sakai.mailbox)
- Forums (sakai.forums) - discussion forums, formerly part of "Message Center"
- Gradebook (sakai.gradebook.tool)
- Messages (sakai.messages) - for sending private messages, formerly included in "Message Center"
- News (sakai.news)
- Post 'Em (sakai.postem) - for quick uploading of feedback with an Excel import
- 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, as they are designed to be components of the Home page of a worksite.
- 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 core tools are found within the Admin Workspace by default. Provisional admin tools are also visible by default (see below for details).
- 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)
- Job Scheduler (sakai.scheduler) - based on Quartz
1.3 My Workspace and Special Tools
These tools all have some special, specific function in a particular region of Sakai, such as the My Workspace or Gateway sites.
- Account (sakai.singleuser)
- Help Documentation (sakai.help)
- Membership (sakai.membership)
- Message Of The Day (sakai.motd)
- New Account (sakai.createuser)
- Preferences Tool (sakai.preferences)
- Presence Tool (sakai.presence)
- Profile (sakai.profile)
- Service Information Display (sakai.iframe.service)
- Site Browser (sakai.sitebrowser)
- Site Information Display (sakai.iframe.site)
- Worksite Setup (sakai.sitesetup)
1.4 Other Tools
Tools that defy categorization and are not for the end user are collected here.
- Admin: Site Management (sakai.sitemanage) (stealthed) - unfinished tool
- Gradebook Service Test (sakai.gradebook.testservice)
- 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)
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: SCP: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.
 | Tools Unstealthed in the "Demo" Release
The release is distributed in a few forms, and the "Demo" release is designed to showcase Sakai's functionality as much as possible. As a result, provisional tools are often unstealthed in the demo, but stealthed in the source distro and in the default settings in subversion. |
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.:
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:
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 Mailtool
Overview: The mailtool is a group-and-role-aware mail composition client, allowing site participants to send email to targeted subsets of site participants. See the functional specification.
Configuration: There are a couple optional mailtool settings for sakai.properties:
2.2.4 OSP
| Tool ID |
osp.evaluation, osp.exposedmatrix, osp.exposedwizard, osp.glossary, osp.guidance.sample, osp.matrix, osp.presTemplate, osp.presentation, osp.reports, osp.synoptic, osp.synoptic.design.publish, osp.wizard, sakai.metaobj |
| Confluence Space |
OSP |
| Contact |
 Chris Coppola (rSmart) |
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 Page Order Helper
Overview: The Page Order Helper is actually designed to be a portion of the "Site Info" tool, and allows a drag-and-drop interface for site maintainers to reorder the lefthand tool menu for their worksites.
2.2.6 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.
2.2.7 Polls
Overview: The poll tool allows site maintainers to post simple multiple-choice polls for the voting of site participants.
2.2.8 Roster
| Tool ID |
sakai.site.roster |
| Confluence Space |
None |
| Contact |
Kristol Hancock (Indiana University) |
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.
2.2.9 Search
| Tool ID |
sakai.search |
| Confluence Space |
Search |
| Contact |
 Ian Boston (Cambridge University) |
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:
2.2.10 Tests & Quizzes
| Tool ID |
sakai.samigo |
| Confluence Space |
Samigo |
| Contact |
Lydia Li (Stanford University) |
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.
2.3 Provisional Admin Tools
Admin tools are designed to be available in the Admin Workspace only, where there is little point in obscuring them (apart from forcing an admin to click through a few screens to add them). The provisional tools below are thus available in the Admin Workspace by default.
2.3.1 SU
| Tool ID |
sakai.su |
| Confluence Space |
None |
| Contact |
Zach A. Thomas (Aeroplane Software) |
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.
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 to whom you give these privileges.
2.3.2 User Membership
Overview: The user membership tool offers user lookup features beyond that of the default Admin Users tool. It allows searches to be conducted for external users, by user type, and full lists of site membership for any given user. It also provides CSV exports of the results of any of these searches.
3. Contrib Tools
"Contrib" tools are neither included with Sakai releases nor housed in the main Sakai subversion repository. They are either available in the Contrib repository (https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib), or hosted locally by a particular institution. They range from the very new and experimental to the very mature (e.g. Melete), but they have not undergone QA bundled with the rest of the Sakai code, and may not be as well integrated with the framework (e.g. they may not inherit the Sakai skin or make full use the Sakai APIs), so they should be used advisedly.
That said, a great deal of useful functionality can be found amidst contrib tools, and many schools choose to deploy one or two of them of particular value in production. Deploying contrib tools in production is a first, crucial step for that tool to later be considered for provisional status.
To see the latest state of the known contrib tools, visit the Contrib Projects page in the Project Management space.
Posted by 
I would suggest adding a final section on Contrib Tools. Even if you have the time to list them out, as you did for Provisional, I think it would still be good to say what they are in general and perhaps provide one link to their SVN directory and one link to the list of them in the Management space.