Course Home page manipulation, is it possible?

[Samson Chung]

Hi all,

I haven't really been this deep into Valence coding so I am not sure if this is even possible... 

i want to add a widget to multiple courses' homepage. Is this possible with Valence? 

thanks,

Sc.

[Desire2Learn Staff: Sarah-Beth]

Hi Samson

We have a few blog posts about our Remote Plugins, including the widgets. We also have an overview of extending the LMS via LTI and the Valence Learning Framework APIs. As with most tools in Brightspace, remote plugins can be inserted where permissions and configuration allow. So if you create a remote plugin widget, you can insert it into any homepage provided you've enabled the widget for that org unit (course-level, department-level, etc). Check out the blog, give it a try in your test environment using one of the samples, and come back if you run into any particular issues during your experimentation.

~Sarah-Beth

[Samson Chung]

Thanks, I will take give it a shot!

[Samson Chung]

Sarah-Beth,

I've read some of the posts, especially the ones on Remote Plugins and I am getting a feeling that it is not what I am after. Let me elaborate on my initial question slightly as when I reread my initial posting, i realized there isn't much details that I put in. Also when I looked at the remote plugins setup page on the LE, I am not sure I have the information required for a Remote Plugin setup.

So here goes... the reason I am trying to do this via Valence is that I have been asked to add a particular widget to 900 courses, but not add it to all of the courses on our system. This widget is from eXplorance Blue and I will be provided with a list of courses from our side. 

I have Valence codes that can easily identify courses for me on the system, this is from an attempt at Valence back in 2012... so hopefully nothing has changed since 9.4.1 to 10.3. However, even when I can alter the class enrollments or user information via Valence, I am not sure where to start for manipulating the course's homepage by adding an already existing widget to it. 

Side note, From what I can tell so far, eXplorance uses jQuery from the widget to perform the LTI link, so in theory, it is all taken care off there by the eXplorance side, I will most likely just need to take a institutional wide accessible Widget and place it in the homepages of selective courses.

Thanks,

Sc.

[Desire2Learn Staff: Sarah-Beth]

Thanks for providing the extra detail to clarify what you are trying to achieve. My understanding is that you're looking for a way to automate the insertion of a particular widget within the homepage of selected courses across your organization. Unfortunately, we don't have any APIs for manipulating the homepage layout. If you think this would be a valuable product enhancement - either as an administrative tool within the D2L LE or as a new Learning Framework API, you could share this information with your D2L Account Manager. Or, if you have an account for the old D2L Community site, you could post this idea in the Product Ideas Exchange.

[Samson Chung]

.....T_T

Well, tell to start up Selenium.... 

thanks Sarah-Beth...