Oahu Developer's Manual
Introduction Administration Settings Posting User Groups Message Groups Procedures
add_instructor_to_course add_message_group_members add_message_poll_item add_message_poll_vote add_message_to_usergroup add_message_vote add_student_to_course add_ta_to_course add_user_to_group create_message create_message_group create_message_reply create_message_thread create_user_group create_usergroup_thread db_add_user db_admin_activate_user db_admin_add_admin db_admin_add_user db_admin_create_course db_admin_deactivate_user db_admin_delete_admin db_init_user db_login db_set_global_setting delete_message delete_user_from_course delete_user_from_group edit_message get_active_courses get_all_courses get_course get_limited_search get_limited_thread_messages get_limited_usergroup_threads get_message get_message_group_members get_message_poll_votes get_message_threads get_message_votes get_my_active_courses get_my_all_courses get_my_messagegroups get_my_usergroups get_setting_for_course get_user get_user_settings get_usergroup_members get_usergroup_threads get_users_in_course local_login_create_user local_login_get_user local_login_validate mark_message_as_read mark_message_as_unread mark_thread_as_read mark_thread_as_unread remove_message_from_usergroup search_messages self_enroll_student set_course_default_setting set_course_default_tsetting set_group_member_type set_school_default_setting set_system_default_setting set_system_default_tsetting set_user_default_setting set_user_default_tsetting set_user_setting set_user_tsetting update_course_settings

User Groups

Group procedures are used to create a group of users that can interact inside a course or even outside of a course. An example of this might be Lab1 and Lab2 user groups setup by the Instructor to allow different groups of students to work together on a project.

There are two types of user groups. The first group is created automatically by the system when specific users are added to a message using create_message(). The second group type is created manually using create_user_group() and specific messages are later added to the group. The second type allows for assigning visibility options when using the create_user_group() function. Visibility levels determine if a group is included in the list when get_my_usergroups() is called. User groups have 4 Visibility levels:

  1. Global Visibility - All users can see the group, even users not in a course
  2. Course Visibility - All users in the course can see the group.
  3. Group Visibility - Only members of the specific group can see the group.
  4. Message Visibility - Only groups created using create_message() can have this visibility level. User Groups with this visibility do not show up at all in get_my_usergroups().

It is worth noting that security restricts users so that user groups with global visibility can only be created by Administrators and user groups with course visibility can only be created by TAs and above.