Docs:WebUI
The web-based processor interface is a web application that wraps up and hides most of the complicated and advanced work needed to export material from a supported wiki and convert it into a package suitable for end-user use. The version supplied for use with this wiki is accessible at https://elearn.cs.man.ac.uk/processor/, and the application is based around a simple 'wizard' system that splits the process up into a series of discrete steps, where each step concentrates on one aspect of the process of exporting and processing material.
This page describes each stage in detail, along with additional information you may find useful while using the tool. Each stage explanation is accompanied by one or more images shown as thumbnails to the right, to view the larger version of an image click on the thumbnail in question.
Stage 0: Welcome
The first stage in the wizard is purely introductory text, explaining the information you will need to have available to you in order to use the web interface. It should be noted that, as stated in the welcome stage text, before you can successfully export material from a wiki into a processed package, you must ensure that it is correctly structured and it has all the appropriate metadata: if your material is incorrectly structured, or missing metadata, it will either export incorrectly or the export tool will fail to export it at all.
Once you have confirmed that you have the necessary information, and the material you want to export and process is in a suitable state to do so, click on the 'Next >' button to proceed to the next stage.
Stage 1: Login
The login stage is where you select the wiki you want to export your material from, and provide your login credentials for that wiki. The wiki selection is done via a dropdown box, and the titles and URLs of all wikis supported by the web interface are shown in the dropdown. If the wiki you have been working in does not appear in the dropdown, click on the Contact Support button at the bottom left of the page to send a message to the support team to report the problem (see below for more about the Contact Support button).
Once you have selected the wiki to export material from, you should enter your login details for that wiki in the Username and Password boxes. The credentials you enter here are not stored by the web interface, instead it will verify that your credentials are correct, and from that point on all wiki interactions are handled by a special internal account (this is necessary for security, and to ensure that user-based restrictions used to prevent denial of service attacks do not interfere with exporting your material).
Once you have filled in the requested information for this stage, click on the 'Next >' button to proceed to the next stage. If you encounter any problems - the wiki you need is not listed in the dropdown, your login credentials are not accepted, or the system reports communication problems with the wiki, for example - click on the Contact Support button to report the issue.
Stage 2: Options
The options stage is where you select the material to export and process and the options to use while doing so. For the development wiki this minimally involves selecting a Course, and for the OurWikiBooks wiki you must select a Book (the page will automatically reword the text and options shown in the wizard to match the naming paradigm used in the wiki you selected in stage 1). The list of courses (books, etc) that can be exported from the wiki allows you to select a single entry: exporting and processing multiple courses simultaneously is not supported! If you need to export and process several courses, you need to go through the wizard several times, once for each course.
If you can not find the course/book/etc you need in the list, you need to ensure that it is listed on the appropriate page in the wiki. The message above the list contains a link to the page that your course/book/etc needs to be listed on to appear in the wizard. Once you have added the appropriate entry to that page you can reload stage 2 of the web interface to refresh the contents of the list.
Each time you select a course from the list, the system will look through the material in the wiki to find any filter keywords you may have defined in its course and theme metadata. While it is doing this, the contents of
the "Select filters" box will be cleared and the following message will appear in the box:
Once the course has been checked for filter keywords, this will be replaced by either a list of defined filter keywords, or a message indicating that no filters are available for the selected course. If a course has one or more filter keywords defined, you may select the ones you want to apply during processing here. The "Select filters" list box supports multiple selection, so you may choose more than one filter keyword to apply by holding down the Control key and clicking on the required keywords. It is important to note that the web interface makes no attempt to ensure your selection is sane: you may select any number of defined filter keywords, even if it makes no sense to have some them selected at the same time! The processor will do its best to handle any combination of filter keyword selections, but the generated material may not be quite what you expect if you don't take care while selecting your filters!
Some wikis will allow you to select a template theme other than the default theme. If the wiki you have selected supports this, you will be given a dropdown from which you may select the template theme to use. If the wiki does not support the use of non-default themes for whatever reason, the "Processor template theme" section will not appear on the options page at all.
At the bottom of the page you will see two check boxes, and ticking one or both of these boxes will turn on additional information reporting from the exporter and/or processor scripts. These boxes should generally only be ticked if you are encountering problems with either exporting or processing of your material, and you require more data than the scripts normally provide in order to narrow down the location of the problem in your material.
Once you have selected the course/book/etc to export and process, and made any other option selections you require, click on the 'Next >' button to proceed to the next stage. As ever, if you encounter any problems on this stage, click on the "Contact Support" button to report the problem.
Stage 3: Export
When you proceed to the export stage you will see a page with an "Export progress" box and a 'spinner' above it indicating that the exporter is currently working:
The spinner will remain visible at all times while the exporter is working, and you will periodically see the progress box update with status messages generated by the exporter. The 'Next >' button will be ghosted and unclickable until the exporter finishes working without errors - you can click the '< Prev' button at any time to return to stage 2 if you want, but you can only proceed to stage 4 when the exporter has finished working successfully.
When the exporter has finished, the spinner above the "Export progress" box will be replaced by a message indicating the success or otherwise of the exporter:
- if the exporter encountered a serious problem and exited with a FATAL error, the message will be in red and inform you that a problem occurred. In this case you must determine what the problem was from the progress report, and take the appropriate steps to correct your content. If you manage to do this, you may reload stage 3 to start the exporter again, or return to stage 2, select the appropriate entry from the list, and click '
Next >' again. - if the exporter generated one or more WARNING messages, the message will be in orange. In this situation you should check through the export progress report to look for any orange WARNING lines and decide whether they are actual problems or things you can safely ignore. If you determine that they can be ignored, you can proceed to the next stage.
- if the exporter finished without any warnings, the message will be black and you can proceed to the next stage without checking the report.
Once the exporter has finished successfully, and you have determined that you can go on to the next stage, click the 'Next >' button to proceed if possible. If you encounter any problems - FATAL errors or WARNING messages you can not understand, for example - click on the "Contact support" button to report the problem.
Stage 4: Process
The Process stage looks much like the previous Export stage, except that you will now see a "Processing progress" box and a 'spinner' above it indicating that the processor is currently working:
Much like the previous step, the spinner will remain visible at all times while the processor is working, and the "Processing progress" box will periodically update with messages generated by the processor. The 'Next >' button will be ghosted and unclickable until the processor finishes working without errors - you can click the '< Prev' button at any time to return to stage 2 (this is not a typo: clicking '< Prev' on the Process stage will return you to the Options stage, as there is no point in returning to the Export stage from this one), but you can only proceed to the final stage when the processor has finished working successfully.
Once the processor has finished, the spinner will be replaced by a message indicating the status of otherwise of the processing:
- if the processor encountered a serious problem, the message will be in red and inform you that a FATAL error occurred. You should check through the processor progress report to find the red FATAL line and use it to determine what went wrong. You will need to return to stage 2 (click on the '
< Prev' button) and go through the Export stage again in order to have any changes you make to your material in the wiki show up for the processor. - if the processor generated one or more WARNING messages, the message will be orange. In this situation you should check through the processor progress report to look for any orange WARNING lines and decide whether they are actual problems or things you can safely ignore. If you determine that they can be ignored, you can proceed to the next stage.
- if the processor finished without warnings or errors, the message will be in black and you can proceed to the next stage without checking the report.
Once the processor has finished successfully, and you have determined that you can go on to the next stage, click the 'Next >' button to proceed if possible. If you encounter any problems - FATAL errors or warnings you can not understand, for example - click on the "Contact support" button to report the problem.
Stage 5: Finish
The final stage provides you with the ability to preview your processed material online, and (after a short delay while the material is zipped up) a downloadable zip archive containing the processed material that you can then upload to a VLE, pass on to your students, or do whatever you need to do with it.
It is important to note that the links on this page are temporary! Do not pass on the preview link to your end-users, as the copy at that URL will be deleted when your session expires (usually 1 hour after your last access). Similarly, the downloadable zip version of your material will be removed when your session expires, so if you want your users to be able to view your material or download copies of it, you need to download the zip copy and upload it somewhere else.
If you click on the preview link, your material will open in a new window (or new tab, depending on how your browser handles such things). You can check through it and, if you find any problems, you can update your material in the wiki, press the '< Prev' button in the wizard to return to stage 2, and then export and process your material again.
As ever, if you have any problems or queries, you can click the Contact Support button to contact the support team about it.
The 'Contact Support' page
At the bottom left of every stage in the web interface wizard, with the exception of the Welcome stage at the start, you will see a "Contact Support" button. If you click on this button a form will open in a new window (or tab), a screenshot of this form is shown to the right.
The form is split up into three sections: the top section shows you information that the system has worked out about where you were when you clicked the "Contact Support" button, which wiki you have logged into (if you have), and other information. Below it you will see text boxes where you can enter your name and email address - the name field is optional, but the email field is required, and must contain a valid email address that you have access to. If you supply a 'fake' email here, the support team will not be able to contact you! Below the name and email section you will find the section where you describe the problems you are having with the system. The fields are much like you will find in an email client: you have a summary box much like the Subject field of an email, and a problem description box where you can describe the issues detail.
When you have filled in the fields in the form, click the "Contact support" button at the bottom right of the form to notify the support team about your problem. Behind the scenes the system will automatically attach copies of any logs the system has created for you (so, for example, if you have exported your material the export progress report will be sent along with your problem description so that the support team can see it).
Please use the Contact Support form when reporting any problems with, or asking questions about, the web interface - if you contact the support team directly by email, you may not be able to include sufficient information for them to help you!
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