Good Morning, just thought I’d write a quick post about the blocks within the Boost theme in Moodle 4.

I’ve noticed that every block has the block’s name as a title. In our instance of Moodle 4 we do not want them as it duplicates what the content already displays.

So this is the CSS you need to pop into Boost / Advanced Settings /admin/settings.php?section=themesettingboost#theme_boost_advanced in the box ‘Raw SCSS theme_boost | scss’

/* Hide My Office365 block title */
.block_microsoft  .card-title {
    display: none!important;
}

/* Hide My Overview block title */
.block_myoverview .card-title {
    display: none!important;
}

In our case this does the following, the two blocks goes from this

To this

Hope that helps someone out there. I’m documenting this so I do not forget it when we go live to Moodle 4.1 in June 2023

The Course view on Moodle 4 looks very mobile like. If like me you’d prefer the course page to use all available space then do the following change it to the percentage that you think looks the best 90 or 100%

Site administration > Appearance > Themes > Boost > Advanced settings

/* Change course width to 90% of screen real estate */
$course-content-maxwidth: 90% !default;

Within the Microsoft Office365 suite of plugins

You’ve noticed that the UPN (User Principle Name) from Azure AD is represented within the email field within Moodle, even though all you have done is update the Office365 plugin suite set to the latest plugins.

What is going on there then?

If like us you have LTI which allow users access via their email address, then you will most likely find that these are now broken.

How to fix

Run the following SQL on the database

SELECT * FROM mdl_config_plugins WHERE plugin = 'local_o365' AND name = 'aadtenantid';

Does this return a blank entry ?

It should not be, it should return something which looks like this

You need to go here and get a Azure Administrator to login on the other side of the ‘Provide Admin Consent’ button : <a href=”http://<Your Moodle Site>/admin/settings.php?section=local_o365

This writes back the above required information so the sync can correct talk to Azure AD, rather than it only talking in a guest mode, in guest mode it can only get your UPN and not your email details.

Now perform a Full user sync by first going here : http://<Your Moodle Site>/local/o365/acp.php?mode=maintenance_cleandeltatoken This clears the delta tokens and forces the sync to do one full sync.

Then allow ‘Azure AD Sync’ in task scheduler to run, it will take a while to do so, it takes around 1.5hrs on our site.

Now check that username is UPN and email is email from Azure AD, although redacted the below gives you an idea that there is a difference.

Why has this happened? one of the updates has blanked out the settings in the database. I’ve asked the developers to consider adding whether the connection to the tenant is good by showing that in the Moodle frontend.

Time (again) has come around again for a major upgrade of Moodle 3.10 to 3.11, with this bring the fun of making sure the theme is working okay. Adaptable has just released their latest theme for Moodle 3.11, so I’ve taken this and cloned it. This makes it easier for us to know which theme works on which version of Moodle we have installed, rather than it to be just named Adaptable. In the past we’ve needed to flip the DNS to a new production server and without this it’s difficult to know which theme works.

Hopefully the below will work for you, it took me 3 attempts to crack it (this year), without having random php / file errors or SCSS (which this version has now started using) issues showing on the browser or in dev tools.

Step 1

Download the latest version of your theme, we are using the 3.11 version of Adaptable here. In Notepad ++ use the ‘Find in Files’ function to locate everything ‘Adaptable‘ which is the current name of the theme, replace that with your new name ‘ManMet-Adaptable‘. This should be two hits in one file, then hit ‘Replace in Files’. This just changes the naming in the language pack

Step 2

Now search for ‘theme/adaptable‘ and replace all with ‘theme/manmet_adaptable‘ (dont use a minus symbol in the theme path). This should find 24 hits in 8 files, now replace all with ‘Replace in Files’.

Step 3

Search for the original name of the theme ‘adaptable‘, change this to ‘manmet_adaptable‘.

Step 4

Now search the theme code for ‘/adaptable/‘ and replace with ‘/manmet_adaptable/‘.

Step 5

Now find ‘theme_adaptable‘ and change that to ‘theme_yourname‘, in my case this is ‘theme_manmet_adaptable‘.

Step 6

The unknown step.. I think it is required 🙂 I think it’s to do with the tabs in the theme settings. Search for ‘THEME_ADAPTABLE‘ and replace with ‘THEME_MANMET_ADAPTABLE‘, this should return around 18 hits in 7 files.

Step 7 – Change the name of the Language file

Rename ‘manmet_adaptable\lang\en\theme_adaptable.php’ to ‘theme_manmet_adaptable.php’
And any subsequent language packs in \es etc folders.

Step 8 –

Check places like config.php in the root of your theme and add any extra theme .css or .scss file which you might have in the \styles dir. Also check that the naming in \jquery\plugins.php file matches the name of the .js file in \jquery it should be under

$plugins = array(
    'manmet_adaptable' => array('files' => array('adaptable_v2_1_1_2.js')),

Step 9 – Change Theme CSS name

Rename the main SCSS file from ‘\scss\settings\adaptable.scss’ to ‘\scss\settings\manmet_adaptable.cssc’.

Step 10 – Zip deploy and test

Change the name of the theme folder to match, in my case ‘manmet_adaptable‘, zip it up and deploy for testing. Bitnami Moodle local installs are idea to do this

Good luck ! should the above method not work for you, do try the one which was working for Moodle 3.10 themes or the one which was working for Moodle 3.9 themes which I wrote in 2018.

We are putting into place a video repository deletion rule, for the first run we need to alert the 170 video owners that their videos fall into this policy and will be deleted.

Here’s how I went about notify those users with a email merge

Start off by creating the data set of Mail Merge Recipients in Excel

How my data set looks:

Now start a Mail Merge in Word and load in the above data set as the recipients

Step 4 of the Step-by-Step Mail Merge Wizard is to write your e-mail message

This is how mine looks once the Paragraph button has been pressed

& the Field codes are showing, press Alt + F9 to toggle to this code

What does the above all mean!! – I’ll try and explain as easily as I can

Dear GivenName is displaying the GivenName of the users ID taken from Azure AD using the following method this has been add in Word by simply using Insert Merge Field then the GivenName column.

I’m next displaying the Owner ID at this point and Setting an ID1 flag again that field, to create the extra { } you must use Ctrl + F9 – Do NOT type them, your merge will not work

I’m then comparing the Owner column with an offset by one on Owner_Compare column, this is so the merge knows when I’ve come to the end of entries for one particular user. By an offset of 1 I mean this (copy the full Owner column addresses, insert a blank line at A2 across and paste in what is in your clipboard to Owner_Compare column then delete the row A1) so you have something like this:

Then on the main code block line To do this use Ctrl + F9 to insert { } then type in IF and Insert Merge Field from the menu of MERGEFIELD Owner then = and insert more { } braces and insert MERGEFIELD Owner_Compare from the menu. Then insert move braces { } and put in { SET ID2 “{MERGEFIELD Full_URL}” }

Now the really complex part on how to get clickable text in the email which will take you to a URL – It might look as simple as writing { IF ID1 = ID2 “” “{ HYPERLINK { MERGEFIELD Full_URL }{ SET HL1 “”} \ * MERGEFORMAT } but it isnt.

**If you do not want a clickable hyperlink, then just replace the above with { IF ID1 = ID2 “” “{ MERGEFIELD Full_URL } and now jump to the end of this post**

To get the HYPERLINK you need to do the following :

In Word Select Insert tab & Find Quick Parts / Field…

Select Hyperlink

This will paste in the following to your merge document { HYPERLINK \* MERGEFORMAT } now press Alt + F9 and you will see Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. double click on the word Hyperlink to highlight it, now use Insert Merge Field to select the text of the link, in my case this is Name now you will see something like

Which is the current recipients file inserted in the text, delete all the text around this, so you are then left with

Now press Alt + F9 & insert the merge field of the URL so you have something which looks like this

Now copy that into the code block

**Be careful after editing your mail merge several times you might notice that this then shows as something like this, at this stage your whole code is messed up and you will need to paste back in the above formatted code, otherwise all your links will be incorrect locations based on one of your users and not necessarily the user you are on.**

I noticed the above happened on every single load of Word !!! But do not worry, if you followed the above you’ve wont see the issue I had. The explanation is below.

Completely unacceptable, so I did so more searching and figured out that you need to add a Bookmark to the HYPERLINK to stop the static URLs, so it looks something like the below, the part you care about is that it has a { SET HL2 “” } before the \ *. This should stop you from having to edit the Mail Merge document each time before you run a merge. Please note, I’ve also noticed that there seems to be a limit of Bookmarks allowed – its around 44 – 48 I think. I need 50 ! Typical..

Okay now copy your IF block and change the IF to a NEXTIF (I’ve noticed people not doing this and some versions of Word then ignore your first record). Now paste that down the page as many times as you like or as many times as your computer can handle, you may notice your machine slowing down a this stage. I have it 50 times in my email merge – meaning it’ll display up to 50 entries per email, if there are that many available for that user.

Right now is the time to test your email merge to a small set of email addresses and check that the URLs been sent are correct, test again before the day comes that you send it to the full amount of people – and just before, do make sure that in Alt + F9 mode, it hasnt replaced the formatting of the url to a actual url.

One further part to note, I attempted to get to be sent from a alternative mailbox, I couldn’t because Office365 needed a licence on the alternative account, which it did not have.

Good luck – this took me 4 days to crack.

I needed to search our Azure AD for who of the usernames contained in a CSV were real ID and who were not.

This is how I did it.

First of all you need to installed the Azure Active Directory module in Powershell, make sure you launch as a Administrator

Install-Module -Name AzureAD

Connect-AzureAD

Then

$data = Import-Csv ‘C:\Users\OneDrive\ids.csv’

$data | ForEach-Object {
Get-AzureADUser -ObjectId $_.UserPrincipalName | Select-Object DisplayName,UserPrincipalName,Department | Export-csv -append -notypeinformation “C:\Users\OneDrive\names.csv”
}

In the ids.csv I have a list with the header of ‘UserPrincipalName’

Run the above one part at a time and it’ll write DisplayName,UserPrincipalName,Department into the names.csv

When I get chance I’ll change the above to show a username does not exist entry if that is the case, current it just tells you this in the powershell window.

After the recent Microsoft Azure AD outage of 15/0/3/2021 I thought how can I actually see whether our page is displaying what should be there and not just a API call error generated because of the Microsoft outage.

To do that I added step 6 ‘find text’ see below.

/**
 * Script Name: {Moodle Login}
 * 
 */

/** CONFIGURATIONS **/

// Theshold for duration of entire script - fails test if script lasts longer than X (in ms)
var ScriptTimeout = 180000;
// Script-wide timeout for all wait and waitAndFind functions (in ms)
var DefaultTimeout = 30000;
// Change to any User Agent you want to use.
// Leave as "default" or empty to use the Synthetics default.
var UserAgent = "default";

/** HELPER VARIABLES AND FUNCTIONS **/

const assert = require('assert'),
	By = $driver.By,
	browser = $browser.manage()
/** BEGINNING OF SCRIPT **/

console.log('Starting synthetics script: {Untitled Test Case}');
console.log('Default timeout is set to ' + (DefaultTimeout/1000) + ' seconds');

// Setting User Agent is not then-able, so we do this first (if defined and not default)
if (UserAgent && (0 !== UserAgent.trim().length) && (UserAgent != 'default')) {
  $browser.addHeader('User-Agent', UserAgent);
  console.log('Setting User-Agent to ' + UserAgent);
}

// Get browser capabilities and do nothing with it, so that we start with a then-able command
$browser.getCapabilities().then(function () { })
	.then(() => {
            logger.log(1, "https://your.site.co.uk/login/index.php");
            return $browser.get("https://your.site.co.uk/login/index.php"), DefaultTimeout;
        })
	.then(() => {
            logger.log(2, "click Sign in on Moodle page");
            return $browser.waitForAndFindElement(By.linkText("Sign in"), DefaultTimeout)
                .then(function (el) {
                    el.click();
                })
        })
	.then(() => {
            logger.log(3, "Pass Test Username");
            return $browser.waitForAndFindElement(By.name("loginfmt"), DefaultTimeout)
                .then(function (el) {
                    el.sendKeys($secure.USER);
                })               
        }).then(function(el){
            //Find and click the login button.
            return $browser.waitForAndFindElement(By.xpath("//input[@value='Next']"), DefaultTimeout)
                .then(function (el) {
                    el.click();
                })
        })            
	.then(() => {
            logger.log(4, "pass the password securely");
            return $browser.waitForElement(By.name("passwd"), DefaultTimeout)
                .then(function (el) {
                    el.sendKeys($secure.PASS_ID);
                })               
        }).then(function(el){
            //Find and click the login button.
            return $browser.waitForAndFindElement(By.xpath("//input[@value='Sign in']"), DefaultTimeout)
                .then(function (el) {
                    el.click();
                })
        })      
    .then(() => {
            logger.log(5, "find YOUR text");
            var textToFind = "YOUR TEXT";
            var pageText = $browser.waitForAndFindElement(By.tagName("html"), DefaultTimeout).getText()
                .then(function(body){
                    assert.ok(body.indexOf(textToFind) != -1,"Text "+ textToFind+ " not found in page");
	        });
        })             
	.then(function() {
		logger.end();
		console.log('Browser script execution SUCCEEDED.');
	}, function(err) {
		logger.end();
		console.log ('Browser script execution FAILED.');
		throw(err);
	});


//** Export Functions
const logger=(function (timeout=3000, mode='production') {

    var startTime = Date.now(),
        stepStartTime = Date.now(),
        prevMsg = '',
        prevStep = 0;


    if (typeof $util == 'undefined'  ){
        $util = {
            insights: {
                set: (msg) => {
                    console.log(`dryRun: sending to Insights using ${msg}`)
                }
            }
        }

    }

    function log(thisStep, thisMsg) {

        if (thisStep > prevStep && prevStep != 0) {
            end()
        }

        stepStartTime = Date.now() - startTime;

        if (mode != "production") {
            stepStartTime = 0

        }

        console.log(`Step ${thisStep}: ${thisMsg} STARTED at ${stepStartTime}ms.`);

        prevMsg = thisMsg;
        prevStep = thisStep;

    }

    function end() {
        var totalTimeElapsed = Date.now() - startTime;
        var prevStepTimeElapsed = totalTimeElapsed - stepStartTime;

        if (mode != 'production') {
            prevStepTimeElapsed = 0
            totalTimeElapsed = 0
        }

        console.log(`Step ${prevStep}: ${prevMsg} FINISHED. It took ${prevStepTimeElapsed}ms to complete.`);

        $util.insights.set(`Step ${prevStep}: ${prevMsg}`, prevStepTimeElapsed);
        if (timeout > 0 && totalTimeElapsed > timeout) {
            throw new Error('Script timed out. ' + totalTimeElapsed + 'ms is longer than script timeout threshold of ' + timeout + 'ms.');
        }
    }

    return {
        log,
        end
    }
})(ScriptTimeout)

Time has come around again for a major upgrade of Moodle 3.8 to 3.10, with this bring the fun of making sure the theme is working okay. Adaptable has just released their latest theme for Moodle 3.10, so I’ve taken this and cloned it. For this makes it easier to know which theme works on which version of Moodle we have installed. In the past we’ve needed to flip the DNS to the new production server.

Hopefully the below will work for you, it took me 10 attempts to crack it, without having random php / file errors showing on the browser or in dev tools.

Step 1

Download the latest version of your theme, we are using the 3.10 version of adaptable here. In Notepad ++ use the ‘Find in Files’ function to locate everything ‘Adaptable‘ which is the current name of the theme, replace that with your new name ‘ManMet-Adaptable‘. This should be two hits in one file, then hit ‘Replace in Files’. This just changes the naming in the language pack

Step 2

Now search for ‘theme/adaptable‘ and replace all with ‘theme/manmet_adaptable‘ (dont use a minus symbol in the theme path). This should find 24 hits in 8 files, now replace all with ‘Replace in Files’.

Step 3

Search for the original name of the theme ‘adaptable‘, change this to ‘manmet_adaptable‘, this is a massive file and replace with 3199 hits in 149 files.

Step 4

Now search the theme code for ‘/adaptable/‘ and replace with ‘/manmet_adaptable/‘. This should replace 33 hits in 9 files.

Step 5

Now find ‘theme_adaptable‘ and change that to ‘theme_yourname‘, in my case this is ‘theme_manmet_adaptable‘. This should be replacing around a large 2201 hits in 148 files.

Step 6

The unknown step.. I think it is required 🙂 I think it’s to do with the tabs in the theme settings. Search for ‘THEME_ADAPTABLE‘ and replace with ‘THEME_MANMET_ADAPTABLE‘, this should return around 18 hits in 7 files.

Step 7

Check places like config.php in the root of your theme and see that the main theme’s .css matches what is in /styles dir, also check that the naming in \jquery\plugins.php matches the name of the .js file in \jquery it should be under

$plugins = array(
    'manmet_adaptable' => array('files' => array('adaptable_v2_1_1_2.js')),

Step 8

Change the name of the theme folder to match, zip it up and deploy for testing – Good luck ! should the above method not work for you, do try the one which was working on < Moodle 3.9 which I wrote in 2018.