GETTING STARTED

THE EDUROLE PLATFRORM

MANAGEMENT MANUAL

Welcome, this is the managers manual to the EduRole Student
Information System. This manual will help you set up your
institutions student information system and serves and an
introduction to the project.



How your institution
can benefit

Setting up EduRole.

Installing EduRole in
your institution

Training your staff

Extending EduRole

EDUROLE
www.edurole.com
info@edurole.com
01/04/2014
Version 2.1.4

EduRole Getting Started 2014 / Page 2
1. How your institution can benefit
EduRole is a Dutch non-for-profit aiming to strengthen the education sector by
improving information access and management within developing countries. To enable
institutions to manage the growing information needs in todays education system a
Student Information System stands at the foundation of our services.
With the help of local Research and Education Networks (NREN) EduRole has been
able to support institutions in Zambia and is currently expanding its footprint across
Africa fast.
EduRole offers a full service platform for digital student information management, a so
called Student Information System (SIS). The EduRole platform is designed with
colleges and universities in mind, however could also be implemented in primary and
secondary education (K-12).
Originally designed for universities in Zambia (central Africa), EduRole is able to run
on a wide array of systems and has a low footprint, yet high performance. EduRole is
built to be implemented with the greatest ease, no matter the level of ICT expertise.
EduRole works together with other popular academic solutions to create a central
platform that integrates all services with single-sign-on (SSO). EduRole even has the
option to enable webmail using Roundcube directly in the system. To allow for easy
identity management of students, EduRole can connect with LDAP to automatically
manage institution wide user accounts for all systems such as email, VLE, or computer
access.


EduRole Getting Started 2014 / Page 3
2. Installing the EduRole Student Information System
Installing EduRole is easy. We have developed a simple installation process to guide
you through the needed settings.
Server Requirements
We recommend the use of Ubuntu Linux on your server however this can be any
operating system capable of running Apache, PHP5 and MYSQL.
In terms of hardware EduRole is a lightweight system that needs little hardware in
order to be able to run. We recommend a system configuration with at least:
Recent dual or quad core processor 2ghz+ (Xeon, I5, I7 or recent AMD)
2GB RAM
For the storage of information we recommend at least a RAID-1 setup of 250GB+ to
ensure the safety of your disks always ensure that both disks are operational. If you
are not able to run a RAID level setup please ensure a redundant system or
continuous backup solution to prevent data-loss.
3. Setting up EduRole
This short chapter will show your institutions ICT heroes how to install EduRole in
your institution. In case you dont have any ICT employees around, get in touch with
us, we offer non-profit support to most countries. Through your local research and
education network (NREN) we can organize training and help you and other
institutions benefit.
EduRole has the following dependencies:
PHP dependencies: php5-ldap, php5-imap, php5-gd
Apache dependencies: mod_rewrite

3.1 EduRole on Windows XP/Vista/7/8 or Windows Server
For Windows users you can setup Apache, PHP5 and MYSQL with XAMPP a simple
solution containing all the software you need:
https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html

EduRole Getting Started 2014 / Page 4
3.2 EduRole with a new Ubuntu installation.
You can pick your operating system of choice and install Apache, PHP5 and
MYSQL, for Linux we recommend using Ubuntu (preferably server and LTS version)
a short tutorial for a full server setup:
1. Download Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server
2. Install on a system of your liking. (remember to setup networking)
3. Set a root password and become root:
a. sudo passwd root
b. su
4. Install required packages, remember the mysql password you enter:
a. apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5 php5 php5-mysql mysql-server php5-
imap php5-gd
5. a2enmod rewrite
6. Setup your vhost or keep the default:
a. nano /etc/apache/sites-enabled/000-default
7. Ensure this file contains the following:
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
8. service apache restart
9. cd /var/ww/
10. wget https://github.com/EduRole/edurole/archive/master.zip
11. unzip master.zip
12. mv edurole-master edurole
13. Open your web browser and visit your server.
14. http://serverip/edurole
15. Follow the system installer, under the MySQL settings enter:
a. root
b. enter the password you entered at step iv.1.
c. pick a name for your database: edurole

EduRole Getting Started 2014 / Page 5

4. Managing EduRole
Access Management
EduRole features a full access control system to manage access to each of the systems
available functions. To manage access it is important to first define the roles and groups
we have in our organization.
Setting up User Roles
To set up user roles we enter the Permission Management function under the
Administrators menu. User roles are the various levels within your organization throughout
which privileges are separated. For example:
Academic Office.
Would define a role for all users employed in the academic office, however some
privileges might need to be separated from the basic academic office employees so
we also define a role
Registrars Office
Within this role we can separate functional privileges from the basic academic office.
We can manage roles under the submenu Role Management.
To add a new role press the Add New Role item and enter the name for the new role
that you wish to define .After we have defined the role we are able to go to user
management and assign a user this role.
To be able to share access to
certain system functions we
need to define groups, these
groups consist of multiple
roles. A user is connected to a
role but is shown menus for
the group the role is a part of.
If you create a role you
automatically also create a
group with the same name. If
you wish to give access to a
certain function to multiple
EduRole Getting Started 2014 / Page 6
roles you can define a group that contains these roles.
By default the system contains a number of groups:
The group Staff contains all roles with a user access level (an access level higher
than 100)
The group Students and Admitting Students contains the role Students as well
as Admitting Students.
The group Everybody contains ALL roles even none authorized users. (role 0)Under
the system settings menu the administrator is able to setup each of the systems
available functions.
Managing access to specific functions
System management is divided in three segments:
1. Access Management
2. Block Management
3. Translation Management.
Under the Access Management panel the administrator can define the basic title and
description for each of the available views, these are visible by default. Each view has a
required permission dropdown, using this setting you can define the group who has
access to the view.
Menu Management
EduRole features a dynamic menu structure, you are able to define a menu position for
each view the system has. This means that any function that the system has can be added
to the menu for easy access.
Menu blocks are named after the group that the user is in. Only the members whose role
is part of the group will see the menu specific to their role. To show all students the Show
Accommodation Information view we can select the group Students to be the required
permission for this function. After which you can enter a number to the menu field at the
end of the function. The number of the function represents the relative placement in the
menu, meaning that if you want function x to be first in the menu and function y second,
you would define x as 1 in the menu field and y as 2 in the menu field. Extending EduRole


EduRole Getting Started 2014 / Page 7
Extending EduRole
To extend EduRole developers can build their own function modules to replace, extend or
build functionality in the system. EduRole uses a model view controller system to
implement functionality.
The main system is located in the system directory, inside of this directory a number of
directories are present, the views, forms, services and classes
The system core classes are located inside of the system directory itself, EduRole utilizes
its own framework to be able to be as light as possible and allow for easy development by
new PHP developers. Lets make an example module for attendance monitoring.
First we will need to create a new view in the views directory, the file will need to have the
same name as the class. In this case call the filename: attendance.view.php. We can
make this a new file or we can copy the example.view.php skeleton view class located
in the views directory. The class will need to have a configuration function to set
component dependencies and if required JavaScript or CSS required by your module.
The class configuration is not mandatory from Edurole v2 onwards but it is still
recommended because it makes development easier. Edurole knows automated view and
service routing. Meaning that by default ALL your public functions in a view are accessible.
The routing principle is quite simple and utilizes the following URL key:
www.site.com/edurole/modulename/functionname/item/subitem
If you have created the attendance.view.php and created a public function called
manageAttendance you will be able to access this function as such:
www.site.com/edurole/attendance/manage/