appsembler / appsembleredx

Common migrations, management commands, models, templates, etc. for Appsembler Open edX projects

appsembleredx

A poorly named common package with extensions and modifications for Open edX course certificates. It is deprecated past the Ficus Open edX release but known to work on Dogwood, Eucalyptus, and Ficus releases.
Its successor is https://github.com/appsembler/appsembler_credentials_extensions.

Course certificates and possibly badges will eventually move to the credentials package, so this package may need to be reworked to run in that service, or in both services.

(Built on Appsembler edx boilerplate by Filip Jukic.)

HTML certificate setup

The appsembleredx package provides a means to perform common setup to tailor HTML certificates to the way we want to use them with our clients.

The appsembleredx package contains several monkeypatches adding signal handlers to the course/courseware publication events. Any new course, provided the relevant feature flags are included in EDXAPP_APPSEMBER_FEATURES (see below) will be set up with an activated HTML certificate for 'honor' code students, which will have the signatories included in the configuration (also see below).

Configuration via Ansible

In server-vars.yml:

• Add to edxapp_extra_requirements:
  • - name: 'git+https://github.com/appsembler/appsembleredx@master#egg=appsembleredx'
• Add to ADDL_INSTALLED_APPS
  • - appsemblerdx
• Add to EDXAPP_APPSEMBLER_FEATURES:
  • If the customer needs HTML certs, will typically want to set the following basics, which are used as feature flags and configuration options by appsembleredx. The following will set the default course mode (since Dogwood, default from edx-platform is audit which does not confer a certificate; allow certificates to be generated before a specific close date; allow HTML view of certs; and allow self-generated certs.

  DEFAULT_COURSE_MODE_SLUG: 'honor'
  USE_OPEN_ENDED_CERTS_DEFAULTS: true
  ALWAYS_ENABLE_SELF_GENERATED_CERTS: true
  CERTS_HTML_VIEW_CONFIGURATION:
    default:
      accomplishment_class_append: "accomplishment-certificate"
      platform_name: "{{ EDXAPP_PLATFORM_NAME }}"
      url: "{{EDXAPP_LMS_BASE_SCHEME}://{{EDXAPP_LMS_BASE}}"
      logo_src: "/static/themes/{{ edxapp_theme_name }}/images/branding/brand-logo.svg"
      logo_url: "{{EDXAPP_LMS_BASE_SCHEME}://{{EDXAPP_LMS_BASE}}"
      certificate_title: "Certificate of Completion"
    honor:
      certificate_type": "Honor" 
      certificate_title": "Certificate of Completion"
      document_body_class_append": "is-honorcode"

By default, if you set USE_OPEN_ENDED_CERTS_DEFAULTS to true, appsembleredx will activate all new certificates as well as create them. Some customers (ASU Starbucks is one example) will not want them activated by default (in their case, certs are simply a required bridge for badges). If you don't want to activate them, add ACTIVATE_DEFAULT_CERTS: false to EDXAPP_APPSEMBLER_FEATURES.

TODO: verify this: (note, it turned out that this flag was not enough. Using just ACTIVATE_DEFAULT_CERTS: false did keep them from activating, but due to the architecture of edx-platform, a useless button for "Request Certificate" would still appear on the student Progress page. Until that's fixed, you cannot use USE_OPEN_ENDED_CERTS_DEFAULTS at all unless you want that button to appear on all courses.)

Not all customers use signatories. If they do not, you will need to add here: DEFAULT_CERT_SIGNATORIES:[]; otherwise something like:

  DEFAULT_CERT_SIGNATORIES:
    - name: "Dennis Calvin"
      title: "Director"
      organization: "Penn State Extension"
      signature_image_path: "themes/{{ edxapp_theme_name }}/images/cert-sig-dennis-calvin.jpg"

You will need to make sure your customer-specific comprehensive theme subdirectory has copies of cert signature image files under both cms/static/images and lms/static/images, since the CMS service variant is used to create the course certificates.

If the customer is using LinkedIn-certificate integration, also add similar information to EDXAPP_APPSEMBLER_FEATURES

LINKEDIN_ADDTOPROFILE_COMPANY_ID: 0_g6VnTfEs2C9maEwUDNA0hgeSWfTlTH8r9zCkw7mBYW7erPuKj__xxxxxxxxxxxx-m0L6A6mLjErM6PJiwMkk6nYZylU7__75hCVwJdOTZCAkdv

our customizations to the LinkedIn-cert integration also support sending a value for LinkedIn's License Id field, which you can use by adding to EDXAPP_APPSEMBLER_FEATURES :

LINKEDIN_ADDTOPROFILE_LICENSE_ID: NASBA 103413

Commands to run on the server

Some steps must be run using Django management commands on the server; as it has reached end of life there are no longer plans to automate these in Ansible. appsembler_credentials_extensions does not require running these manually as part of a normal deployment.

To run manually on the server, as edxapp user

• cd /edx/app/edxapp/edx-platform
• source ~/edxapp_env
• ./manage.py cms migrate appsembleredx --settings=aws_appsembler
• ./manage.py cms enable_self_generated_certs --settings=aws_appsembler
• ./manage.py cms generate_cert_html_view_config --settings=aws_appsembler
• ./manage.py cms appsembler_setup_courses --all --settings=aws_appsembler - (this one is run last and will set up the default HTML cert for all pre-existing courses, or for a specific course if you use a course id instead of the --all argument.)

If the customer is using LinkedIn-certificate integration, also run

• ./manage.py cms created_linkedin_config --settings=aws_appsembler

Troubleshooting

If you encounter an error running the management commands, it is probably because the process that generates the new default certs can't find the signature image files for the cert signatories. These files are included in the theme package and you may need first to make sure they are included in the static files dirs. In this case you should manually run ./manage.py cms collectstatic --settings=aws_appsembler, ./manage.py lms collectstatic --settings=aws_appsembler and try again.

Another common problem spot is having more than one enabled certificate html view configuration, particularly Eucalyptus+ which for cert previews will just grab any html view configuration. If you are getting NameErrors or other Mako errors displaying the certificates, this is probably the problem. Try something like

sudo su edxapp -s /bin/bash
./manage.py lms dbshell --settings=aws_appssembler
sql > delete from certificates_certificatehtmlviewconfiguration where id != (YOUR GOOD ID)

You may even need to manually create a new certificate html view configuration through the admin panel, copying and pasting the latest good value which will have been created via the management command. I don't yet understand why, but old html view configuration seem to be getting cached.

appsembleredx's Issues

Can't run manage.py create_linkedin_config

./manage.py cms create_linkedin_config --settings=aws_appsembler
Throws an error:

Couldn't enable a LinkedIn Add to Profile configuration
CommandError: Couldn't enable a LinkedIn Add to Profile configuration

I tracked it down to this line:

>>> enable =  models.LinkedInAddToProfileConfiguration(company_identifier=company_id, license_id=license_id or "", enabled=True)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<console>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/edx/app/edxapp/venvs/edxapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/models/base.py", line 480, in __init__
    raise TypeError("'%s' is an invalid keyword argument for this function" % list(kwargs)[0])
TypeError: 'license_id' is an invalid keyword argument for this function

https://trello.com/c/wwTbd7Ct/900-4-nyif-production-push-microsites-certificates-reports

Rename this repo

This was originally meant to be a repo holding various Appsembler specific Django apps, but it's better to make this specific to certificates setup. Also, consider making this private if this is meant to be "secret sauce" / used in Tahoe. We will still be contributing some fixes to certs upstream. @natea @abeals ?

Rework way to help populate default certs without activating them

Creating default certificates and activating them can be tedious, especially if the client is using signatories, as those images would have to be added manually to each course. However, some clients want to use HTML certificates on some courses but not all. Our approach to this so far has been to add the optional ACTIVATE_DEFAULT_CERTS FEATURE flag. Currently, if this is false, a default cert will be created and populated, but not activated.

This isn't working well. If the advanced setting, "Certificate Web/HTML View Enabled", is set to true, a "Request Certificate" button will always (it may also depend on the env flag CERTIFICATES_HTML_VIEW being True but that will always be the case) appear on the Progress page if the student has passed the course. When clicking that button, they will just get a "We're working on it" message, which will be confusing.

Instead, make a different Appsembler feature flag like ACTIVATE_COURSE_HTML_CERT_VIEW, defaulting to True. If this is set to False, the student should not see a button on the Progress page even if they have an active certificate.

This way the harder work of creating the certificate is automated, and the client who only wants certs for some courses has a single place to go turn them on.

To investigate:

• will this work as well to remove useless Request Certificate buttons from the student dashboard once we get that fixed for HTML certificates (edx-platform upstream issue)?
• alternate idea: don't activate certificates by default, but maybe make the Activate button also flip the advanced setting "Certificate Web/HTML View Enabled" switch to true if not already so.