Eliminate automatic bulk permission syncing (i.e. ditch view.accessconf)

Bug #1423410 reported by Aaron Wells
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Mahara
Fix Released
Wishlist
Robert Lyon
15.10
Fix Released
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

It's confusing that we make secret URLs and sharing into two separate screens. Many other web applications also offer the functionality to create a secret URL, and they group it under the other sharing permissions.

I believe the reason we have to separate them is because of how we handle bulk permissions currently. That is, every page & collection in Mahara has a "accessconf" field in the database, which is a hash of all their permissions. When you go to the Sharing screen, we look or other pages & collections with an identical hash (which means they have identical permissions), and we pre-tick the checkboxes for those ones.

In essence, this means that every visit to the "Sharing" screen is treated as a "bulk" visit. And since secret URLs apply to an individual Page/Collection and not in bulk, it forces us to make them separate.

But this is not a great way to do this. It often "gotchas" our users. For instance, if you go to edit the permissions on a page you've made Public, you will automatically edit the permissions for all of your Public pages, and you probably won't realize that, especially if you have a LOT of pages & collections.

So what we should do is to stop making this screen automatically in bulk:

1. We retain the checkboxes (or a Select2, see Bug 1423406), to allow for bulk operations

2. BUT we DO NOT tick any checkboxes in advance.

3. AND we DO NOT make the "current" page one of the options. You cannot untick it, because you are editing ITS permissions

4. So if you do use the bulk selector under this new paradigm, what you're saying is, "make these specific other pages have the same permissions as this current page"

This will have the advantage of 1) no longer surprising users by automatically bulk-changing permissions, 2) individualize the sharing screen, so that we can put Secret URLs onto it.

Tags: usability
Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)
Changed in mahara:
status: New → Confirmed
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
Robert Lyon (robertl-9)
Changed in mahara:
status: Confirmed → In Progress
assignee: nobody → Robert Lyon (robertl-9)
Revision history for this message
Mahara Bot (dev-mahara) wrote : A patch has been submitted for review

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/5034

Revision history for this message
Mahara Bot (dev-mahara) wrote : A change has been merged

Reviewed: https://reviews.mahara.org/5034
Committed: https://git.nzoss.org.nz/mahara/mahara/commit/d86115cbc75c35c6fd926bcf0bcbde0234852f61
Submitter: Robert Lyon (<email address hidden>)
Branch: master

commit d86115cbc75c35c6fd926bcf0bcbde0234852f61
Author: Robert Lyon <email address hidden>
Date: Mon Aug 3 13:46:52 2015 +1200

Bug 1423410: eliminate bulk permission syncing on view/access.php page

Also allow the default selected option (this view/collection) from
being removable in the select2 selector

Change-Id: Ide9f23c0ea9c53a0eab0cf0306dda45c29e43f9d
Signed-off-by: Robert Lyon <email address hidden>

Robert Lyon (robertl-9)
Changed in mahara:
status: In Progress → Fix Committed
Revision history for this message
Mahara Bot (dev-mahara) wrote : A patch has been submitted for review

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/5915

Revision history for this message
Mahara Bot (dev-mahara) wrote : A change has been merged

Reviewed: https://reviews.mahara.org/5915
Committed: https://git.mahara.org/mahara/mahara/commit/7b7021414ba0ffd1fc8f5a838d8b66911b055bc8
Submitter: Robert Lyon (<email address hidden>)
Branch: master

commit 7b7021414ba0ffd1fc8f5a838d8b66911b055bc8
Author: Robert Lyon <email address hidden>
Date: Mon Aug 3 13:46:52 2015 +1200

Bug 1423410: eliminate bulk permission syncing on view/access.php page

Also allow the default selected option (this view/collection) from
being removable in the select2 selector

Change-Id: I08187f8e8e131a508abafd3883a3c97e6df7922d
Signed-off-by: Robert Lyon <email address hidden>

Changed in mahara:
milestone: 15.10.0 → 16.04.0
Revision history for this message
Mahara Bot (dev-mahara) wrote : A patch has been submitted for review

Patch for "15.10_STABLE" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/6184

Revision history for this message
Mahara Bot (dev-mahara) wrote : A change has been merged

Reviewed: https://reviews.mahara.org/6184
Committed: https://git.mahara.org/mahara/mahara/commit/67685d07fa24f83fc157c5909b005e0cb790aab4
Submitter: Robert Lyon (<email address hidden>)
Branch: 15.10_STABLE

commit 67685d07fa24f83fc157c5909b005e0cb790aab4
Author: Robert Lyon <email address hidden>
Date: Mon Aug 3 13:46:52 2015 +1200

Bug 1423410: eliminate bulk permission syncing on view/access.php page

Also allow the default selected option (this view/collection) from
being removable in the select2 selector

Change-Id: I08187f8e8e131a508abafd3883a3c97e6df7922d
Signed-off-by: Robert Lyon <email address hidden>

Changed in mahara:
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
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