Real-time chat system

Indeed it would be cool :). Did you have any ideas in particular about how it might work within Mahara - or any systems on which to base the functionality?

I suppose the one I know best is facebook's chat system.. but even something like the Gmail system would be great. anything that would facilitate instant messaging wuold be great :D

In terms of how it would work within mahara, the general idea I had was that you'd be able to just basically click on any of your friends that are online, and it would give you the opportunity to view, email, message, etc.

I think instant chat would allow 'surgery' type functionality between eg learners and tutors and would facilitate its uptake as a PLE. It would also be good for the communities of practice and group work. Perhaps it could be a field in the groups table. This would stop 'random' messages from unwanted users, but if two people wanted to chat they could create their own private group.
Glen (TDM)

The topic came up again in https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=1128#post19918

A chat service would be a great asset to groups in order to improve Mahara as a collaboration tool.

I support a chat function. It would enhance collaboration and communication.

On Group Level:
I would use it in most groups, but would need the possibility to disable it, if it is not needed for the certain task of the group (decission by group admin).

it is important... please

I agree: a chat feature would be nice.

Is this request being actively worked on by anyone?

I have had a brief look at doing something simple like incorporating together.js into the theme which we use for mahara however would love to see a more chat focused system in place.

I notice there is this: http://www.phpfreechat.net

It might also be worth exploring to see if would meet the requirements of a chat in mahara

Thanks for the link Robert.

Although I do not have much time to commit to this myself I will be having an intern look at this over the next couple of weeks and see if we can incorporate it into mahara in a way which allows the use of the chat functionality for groups, institutions and possibly ad-hoc friend rooms.

Although on the surface this does not seem like a large task, as we have not worked with mahara before it will no doubt bring up some questions related to permission and user information checks, is there an active irc channel anywhere which would be useful to get feedback/support from?

Hello Richard,

We are in the same time zone so IRC should work out nicely. :-) You can use either #mahara-dev or #mahara on Freenode.

Cheers
Kristina

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/3401

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/3412

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/3417

Attaching a document describing performance testing of this feature.

Added some feature suggestions that were brought up during review:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1329140
https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1329142
https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1329143

A bit of chat implementation notes:
- Chat allows conversation with users friends and groups where user is a member.
- For friends it show if users are online. Groups doesn't have this indicator. In future versions list of online users will be added.
- Users can enable/disable chat in their profile settings.
- Institution admins can enable/disable chat for institution. This will disable chat (and remove relative settings in user profile) for members of this institution unless they also members of other institutions where chat is enabled. If chat enabled for at least one institution (except "No institution") where user is a member, then chat will be enabled for them.
- No institution also has chat setting which effective only for users who do not participate in any other institution.
- Admins can enable/disable chat site-wide by show/hide chat plugin in Extensions admin page.
- If cookie consent is enabled, chat window displayed on top right corner of browser window. Otherwise it is displayed on bottom right corner.
- Chat stores only session cookie which mahara does when cookie consent is enabled.
- If user during his current session has new message, top menu button will show number of channels (users, groups) that have one or more new messages. So, if user has 2 messages from one group and 5 messages from some user, button will show 2 (because 2 channels)
- When chat window is open and some channel is chosen, others channels will show number of new unread messages.
- Switching to channel shows last 50 messages. If there more messages - they are removed.

- If user refreshes/changes web page, new messages counter will reset.

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/3445

Reviewed: https://reviews.mahara.org/3445
Committed: http://gitorious.org/mahara/mahara/commit/5922a5588b38ff4c84aa03b6a584bcd66d7e76e5
Submitter: Yuliya Bozhko (<email address hidden>)
Branch: master

commit 5922a5588b38ff4c84aa03b6a584bcd66d7e76e5
Author: Valerii Kuznetsov <email address hidden>
Date: Mon Jun 16 14:42:38 2014 +1200

Change to mahara required by chat module (Bug #547932)

Change-Id: I5558449a0d5c4911bfaec166d185ebd1da863f1c
Signed-off-by: Valerii Kuznetsov <email address hidden>

Reviewed: https://reviews.mahara.org/3408
Committed: http://gitorious.org/mahara/mahara/commit/d14a5cfe520af6ef5a31a09d14bfc71fa16af7df
Submitter: Yuliya Bozhko (<email address hidden>)
Branch: master

commit d14a5cfe520af6ef5a31a09d14bfc71fa16af7df
Author: Valerii Kuznetsov <email address hidden>
Date: Thu Jun 5 12:29:42 2014 +1200

Add phpfreechat engine (Bug #547932)

Change-Id: Iab28c0e52f1fcb393e9f06e595b5ec8dc59134ac
Signed-off-by: Valerii Kuznetsov <email address hidden>

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/3455

The module bootstrap block in init.php was causing 1.9 -> 1.10 upgrade to crash. I pushed another patch that fixes this by disabling the bootstrap check during upgrade, whereas previously it was only disabled during install.

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/3458

Reviewed: https://reviews.mahara.org/3458
Committed: http://gitorious.org/mahara/mahara/commit/b25d16e4ed862912a55606b8f5b1a6c3a0205a5d
Submitter: Aaron Wells (<email address hidden>)
Branch: master

commit b25d16e4ed862912a55606b8f5b1a6c3a0205a5d
Author: Valerii Kuznetsov <email address hidden>
Date: Mon Jun 23 15:51:52 2014 +1200

Reverting patch 3408 (Bug #547932)

Change-Id: Ic81c34a2bbd448bca78f353fa75317073844a19c
Signed-off-by: Valerii Kuznetsov <email address hidden>

Totara has changed plans and backed out of their implementation of this feature.

Reviewed: https://reviews.mahara.org/3455
Committed: http://gitorious.org/mahara/mahara/commit/54ec7b980039c0b94a945374f39961e17eeeb27e
Submitter: Robert Lyon (<email address hidden>)
Branch: master

commit 54ec7b980039c0b94a945374f39961e17eeeb27e
Author: Aaron Wells <email address hidden>
Date: Fri Jun 20 15:19:24 2014 +1200

Don't call the module bootstrap code during install/upgrade

Bug 547932: The module bootstrap code relies on the existence of the
module_installed table, which isn't present until after you upgrade.

Change-Id: I34075dec8e4d8671b71b3023774b44343a5d50ca