Design Document

Goal

Online learning platforms should allow group discussion or one to one discussion. That will gives students and teachers a platform to interact.
Sunbird’s online learning platform does need one such discussion forum. Design a solution that allow discussion forum like functionality within a group or to individual. Solution to fit in with current design of My Groups in Sunbird platform.

Functional Flow

Check this UI mocks to visualise flow. Its not final UI though. https://whimsical.com/HkMM1JyvpsN3Pv6bBCbFhC

Normal User:

• My Groups tab in Sunbird App can have multiple groups which user is part of.

• In My Group if Discussion feature is enabled then User will see a option called `Discussion Forum`.

• Each My Group will have a corresponding group in Forum (called Forum Group) if Discussion feature is enabled in My Group.

• Once clicking on Discussion Forum User will see all Categories which he is part of as a member of that group.

• One clicking of any category User we see all the topics under that Category.

Group Admin User:

• Should see additional options that allow him to

  • Add members to the group.

  • Edit\delete topic.

  • Take action on flagged topic\post.

  • Change category level permissions, such has only see Topic?

User Level Functionality

Normal User:

• User should be able to post question(Create Topic) and reply to the Topic (Create Post).

• User should be able to Flag a topic\post as Inappropriate, spam, off-topic something else.

• User should be able to make announcements?

• User should be able to bookmark a topic\post?

Group Administrator User:

• Who should be a Group Admin? Any User OR Teacher OR Head Teacher OR School Principal OR State Eductaion Secretary OR Central Education Secretary?

• Group Admin should be able to add members into Group. Which all Students who should be able to see and add? ( I think middleware should be able to get relation between users; Say Teacher of School A can see and add students of same School; Else Teacher should see warning that Student S is not part of your school; or something like that, Lets think further)

• Group Admin should be able to control Category\Topic creation permission.

• Group Admin should be able to edit/delete Topic. (In case content is not correct; Inappropriate, spam, off-topic)

• Group Admin should be to take action on Flaged Topic\Post.

• Only Group Admin should create announcement.

• Only Group Admin should pin Topic.

• Only Group Admin should delete Topic.

• Only Group Admin should close Topic.

• If System Admin deactivates Group Admin User than Other member of Group should be made Group Admin? But Who? (Let’s think)

System Admin:

• Name is enough. It should be able to do anything. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Public API Design (Frontend to Middleware)

• Usere createion will be done through KeyCloak. That is yet to explored after keycloak integration.

• There should not be any user in Forum which is not part of Sunbird platform (Keycloak Identity provider). Exception System Admins.

• As of now as discussed, API should allow all user to create Group, category, topic, post. From UI side we will hide non required functionality for different roles.

• API should will be Rest API and will return Json output.

Public API List:

To be attached

Accessing Forum APIs

• Interaction to Forum will be done via its RestAPIs.

  https://docs.nodebb.org/api OR https://docs.discourse.org/

• To consume APIs first generate Access Keys in Forum

• Access key should be generated for each user so that Invalid access could be avoided at Forum level without aditional effort.

• We will also need to have master key because not all the features are allowed at user level, such as create category, activate user etc, so user key will not work for these APIs.

Mapping between Sunbird Entity to Forum Entity

User Roles

For now largly there will be 4 kinds of users Admin, Staff, Teacher, Student.

• Admin: should be able to do anything.

• Staff: should have privileges to assit in fixing user issues. Should have access less than Admin but more than Teacher.

• Teacher: should be able to create and manage Category and Groups.

• Students: should be able to create group but not category.

System Design (Service level):

Frontend:

Backend:

Middleware:

Open

Open

Implementation plan

TBD

System Requirement

Discourse:

NodeBB:

Disk Space: Let’s start with 50 GB disk space? Also Let decide which system to use for uploaded files, Based on that we may need more or less space.

Installation guide

Init Configuration

Run these configuration after setting up Forum Software. Should be through Devops tools. TBD based on Discourse or NodeBB

Open Questions

1. What level of accesses should be given to State Secretary, Central Secretary etc?

2. Who should do staff role?

Extras

• Discussion Forum Benefits:

  • For Students

    • To ask questions.

    • Learn from questions asked by other students.

    • Read and understand answer at his\her own speed.

    • Revisit\reread answer later.

  • For Teachers

    • To explain topics in details.

    • Make announcements

    • Get recognition at National level for good answers.