Using SakaiAdminX

Information

This guide will show you how to perform the various functions within SakaiAdminX. Before we begin, a term you should know:

• modal window: a child window that requires you to interact before you can return to the parent window. SakaiAdminX uses lots of these, its a handy way to perform large inline edits.

Login

In order to do anything in SakaiAdminX, you must first login. Click the button to login and you will be presented with a modal Login window:
Login window

Login with your Sakai username and password. If the login fails you will be notified:
Failed login

If you are successful, the modal window will fade away and you will get your customised site list.

Site List

Your site list is customised to what sites you are attached to, or a complete searchable list of all sites if you are an administrator or helpdesk user (See the Administrative functions section below)
Site list

You can view the site profile by clicking the Site ID, or go to the site in Sakai, by clicking the Site title. You can also view other information about the site, like what client it is attached to, and what type it is.

Site Profile

The site profile is the main part of SakaiAdminX and is the place where all administration of a site occurs. Here you can add and remove instructors, add and remove participants, upload a list of participants, edit the site title, edit the site skin, and much more.

Adding users to a site

There are several types of users in a Sakai site managed by SakaiAdminX. Instructors are the equivalent of the 'maintain' role in Sakai and can change everything in a site. They can also mange the site profile in SakaiAdminX. Guests are generally temporary users that the instructor has allowed access to, and they have the same level of access as normal participants. Participants are the equivalent of the 'access' role in Sakai and are a normal user of the site.

Instructors and Guests are grouped at the top whilst Participants are listed in the bottom section.

Adding instructors or guests

To add an instructor or guest, click the 'Add a user' button.

You will be presented with a modal window where you can enter the username and role (Instructor or Guest) for the new user, then click 'Add User'.
Adding a user window

The username must be a valid username for your Sakai server (either a local Sakai account or provided via LDAP etc). If it fails, you will be notified.
If you want to quit without adding a user, Click 'Cancel' or the red X.
Adding a user that failed

Adding participants

To add participants, click the 'Add a participant' button and enter the username of the user you want to add.

Uploading a list of participants

You can also upload a comma separated list of users by clicking the 'Upload Participants' button and browsing for the file. The file needs to be correctly formatted according to username, role_id where role id is generally 'student'.
Uploading participants

Changing site properties

As an instructor you can change many of the site properties like the site title, the site skin, the site icon etc. Click the 'Edit' button next to the property you want to edit. You will be presented with a modal window where you can enter the new value, then 'Save' the changes.

Edit the title of a site

Edit the site skin, from the list of available skins

Support functions

Super helpdesk users are able to view all sites and change some aspects of the sites (see above) but can also search for users. In future releases this list will be expanded.

Query users

SakaiAdminX allows helpdesk and admin users to query for other users. At present this is limited by the Sakai API and only returns either local Sakai accounts, or users that are attached to sites in Sakai but as new methods are introduced this will be more inclusive.
To query for a user, click 'Query a user' from the side navigation bar, enter the search criteria and click 'Search'.

This will return any records that match:
User query

Administrative functions

This section of the guide is aimed towards system administrators who are listed in SakaiAdminX as super admin users. IF you have no super admin users, you will need to login as the Sakai 'admin' user, and add some normal users to the list of super admin users.

Creating a site

Creating a site is as simple as filling out a form and clicking a button. This will create a site with a default set of tools, based on the template you choose. You should already have a template site created, with the roles and tools all setup (see the Installation Guide if you have not done this).

Choose 'Create a site' from the side navigation bar, fill out the form and click 'Create Site':
Create a site

Deleting a site

Deleting a site is also very simple, choose 'Delete a site' from the side navigation, enter the siteid of the site, and click 'Delete Site':
Delete a site

Creating a user

To create a user account in Sakai, choose 'Create a user' from the side navigation, fill out the form and click 'Create User'. If you want the new user to be notified of their details, click the checkbox 'Send details' and an email will be sent out to the user with their username and password and instructions on how to login and navigate around their 'My workspace' site. You should assign them a random password, or use the 'Generate password' helper button to automatically do this for you.

Create a user

The contents of the email that the user receives if you check the box to send it, looks like this:

...where the URL to your Sakai server and 'Your institution' are setup when SakaiAdminX is configured and built

Deleting a user

To delete a user account that you have created, choose 'Delete a user' from the side navigation, enter the username of the user account you want to delete, and click 'Delete User':
Delete a user

Note: This will only delete accounts that have been created in Sakai. Provided accounts from LDAP etc are not affected.

Managing clients

The concept of clients in SakaiAdminX is that every site is attached to a client, or owner. This was born out of the idea of running one Sakai installation for multiple institutions or 'clients' - then one instance of SakaiAdminX could administer these multiple clients. You need at least one client to create sites. In a future release, if you have only one client, you will not need to choose clients when administering SakaiAdminX.

To view the list of clients, click 'Client Management' in the 'Admin' section of the side navigation bar:
Client management

Here you can add new clients by clicking 'Add a client', edit existing clients by clicking the edit icon and delete clients by clicking the delete icon.

When editing a client you can change the client's name and its sort order, the position it appears in lists:
Editing a client

Managing client admin/helpdesk users

Client admin/helpdesk users have access to all sites that are attached to the particular client. Client admin users have write access to all client sites and to the site profile in SakaiAdminX for these sites, and helpdesk users have read only access, but can change some things in the site profile. These users are synchronised via the set of Quartz jobs that run on the Sakai server (see the Installation guide for more info on the Quartz jobs).

To view the list of Client admin/helpdesk users click 'Client admin users' from the side menu and then choose the client:

Client admin/helpdesk users

To add a new client admin, click 'Add a client admin/helpdesk user', enter the username and role for the new user in the modal window, and click 'Add user':

Adding a client admin/helpdesk user

To delete a client admin/helpdesk user, click the remove icon next to their name.

Managing super admin/helpdesk users

Super admin/helpdesk users have access to all Sakai sites. Super admin users have write access to all sites and to the site profile in SakaiAdminX for these sites, and helpdesk users have read only access, but can change some things in the site profile for all sites. Admin users have instant access to all sites, whereas the helpdesk users are synchronised via the set of Quartz jobs that run on the Sakai server (see the Installation guide for more info on the Quartz jobs). The reason for this is in the design of admin users in Sakai.

To view the list of super admin/helpdesk users click 'Super admin users' from the side menu:
Super admin/helpdesk users

To add a new super admin, click 'Add an admin/helpdesk user', enter the username and role for the new user in the modal window, and click 'Add user':
Adding a super admin/helpdesk user

To delete a super admin/helpdesk user, click the remove icon next to their name.

Managing SakaiAdminX internal data

As a super admin user you can manage the data that SakaiAdminX uses to render lists, as well as maintain the mapping between the user roles in SakaiAdminX and Sakai itself.

You can view the data that SakaiAdminX uses by clicking 'Data management' from the side navigation bar:
Data management

You can edit the values here by clicking the edit icon next to the item you want to edit. This is useful for changing the display values or changing the sort order of values in lists, ie skins or the site type:
Editing a data item

You can add a new item to an existing category by clicking 'Add a new item', choosing the category and filling in the values:
Adding a new data item

You can also add a new category of data items, but unless you are creating a new module for SakaiAdminX, you don't need to do this:
Adding a new data category

Site skins

SakaiAdminX allows an instructor/admin/helpdesk user to change the skin of their site in the Site Profile. In order to do this, the Sakai skin needs to be located on your Sakai server in the right spot.
Skins are located at:

SAKAI-SRC/reference/library/src/webapp/skin/YOURSKIN/

then built using Maven and deployed to:

http://your.sakai.server/library/skin/YOURSKIN/

In order to allow a user to switch between skins, you need a corresponding entry in the 'sakai_skins' category for YOURSKIN. The list value should be YOURSKIN (which matches YOURSKIN on your Sakai server) and the list display can be anything you like, its what will be displayed on the Site skin dropdown list:

eg:
list value=newskin
list display=My new cool skin!

will render the new skin dropdown list like so:

with the value 'newskin' being updated in Sakai for the site.