Re: [Fwd: Re: [WWdevel] feedback e-mail subject line]

[Sam H. <sh...@ma...>]

On Sep 16, 2005, at 13:14, John Jones wrote:

> The one request I have heard related to this came from a high  
> school teacher using webwork.  She wanted to be able to suppress  
> the feedback buttons altogether on the grounds that her students  
> had enough opportunities to see her.  I explained that she could  
> have her e-mail address blank in the system and then she wouldn't  
> get any e-mail.  This works, but it means her students might  
> compose something through the feedback mechanism, click Send  
> Feedback, and learn only then be told "No recipients specified".   
> Since the student isn't the one specifying the recipients, the  
> message may look foreign to them.
>
> One approach to improve this is to have the feedback page check to  
> see if there are any recipients before it gives the feedback  
> textbox.  If there are none, give a message like "Feedback to the  
> instructor has not been enabled for this course."
>
> Another approach would be to supress the feedback buttons if there  
> are no recipients for feedback.  This looks cleaner, but it would  
> slow things down a little.  Almost every page needs to check for e- 
> mail addresses for feedback while it is generated.

Ok, I've implemented some things based on these comments. First, the  
feedback button will now not be shown if the current user does not  
have submit_feedback permission. Second, Feedback now gets the list  
of recipients before showing the feedback form, and if there are no  
recipients, it will display the message "No feedback recipients are  
listed for this course.".

Also, I thought I saw a request for an "additionalFeedbackRecipients"  
setting recently, although now I can't find it. So now, Feedback will  
append the feedbackRecipients list from global.conf to the users who  
have permission to receive_feedback and have an email address. As  
noted in the comments, to get the old behavior back (overriding the  
normal list of recipients), set receive_feedback to $nobody in % 
permissionLevels. I'll note this change in the release notes for the  
next release.
-sam