Sakai's Tool Integration

Introduction

OpenSyllabus offers the possibility to integrate different Sakai tools by providing a minimum interface and a link. The interface allows creating or modifying references to the tool and the link gives access to the tool. We have already done an integration with Assignment tool and we are working on Citations List.

Philosophy

The principles underlying the integration of the Sakai's tool are as follows.

1. Choose bare minimal functionalities necessary to develop the tool on the client side.
   Since each Sakai's tool comes with a complete user-interface, we won't reinvent the wheel. We choose the minimal parameters that will be used to implement the tool on the client side of OpenSyllabus based on the essential needs of a course outline. This way we make sure that we have a better control of the synchronization process, we are not reimplementing the tool and we are using it to our best interest.
2. OpenSyllabus minimal user-interface we will offer the possibility to:
   1. Create a new reference to the Sakai tool and link it to the course outline
   2. Link an existing reference of the the tool to the course outline
   3. Directly modify one of minimal functionnalities defined or access th tool to modifiy other parameters
   4. Access the tool remove a reference

Synchronization

When it comes to integration, synchonization is always a big issue, for openSyllabus, in order to insure the integrity of the data, most of the modifications are left to the original tool or automatic. From the OpenSyllabus client-side, we create a new  reference to the tool or modify the minimal parameters defined, for the deletion or the big modifications, we refer the user to the tool user interface. Also, each time we open, close or save a course outline, a process of synchronization is launched. For each reference to a Sakai tool (resources, assignment, citation ...) we check if the reference still exists:

• If yes, we do nothing
• If no, we send a warning to the user telling him about the reference. We also point the invalid reference to a static bogus reference in the database so that the course outline won't  raise an exception

Limits

The synchronization process can be improved, we are not monitoring updated references

The stability of the CORE APIs for each integrated tool is mandatory

Sakai's Assignement Tool Integration

Following our integration procedure the minimal fonctionalities appearing in the user-interface in the client side are:

1. Title
2. Short description
3. Open Date
4. Close Date
5. Notification
6. Join files to an assignment that will come later

The creation, deletion, modification and synchronisation follow the same ones as mentioned above.

For the files added to assignment, as a first step, we will leave the management of the downloaded files to the assignment tool. From the OpenSyllabus user interface, we will offer the possibility to add files to an assignment, change files added to an assignment. We will also try to retrieve files added to an existing assignment that is linked to the course outline and present them with the user interface.

Later on we will explore the possibility to save those files in the course outline in order to ease the process of transfert and classification.