15. Mobile Mahara — Mahara 19.

10 manual

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Table of Contents

15. Mobile Mahara

15.1. Mobile browsing
15.2. Mahara Mobile
15.2.1. What is Mahara Mobile?
15.2.2. Requirements
15.2.3. Connect Mahara Mobile to your account
15.2.4. “User” screen
15.2.5. “Add” screen
15.2.5.1. Upload a file
15.2.5.2. Add a journal entry
15.2.6. “Pending” screen
15.2.7. Technical information
15.3. Previous Mahara apps

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15. Mobile Mahara

You can use Mahara to a certain degree from a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet that has
internet browser capabilities. Depending on the device, not all functions may be available to you.

When you have an Android device or an iPhone, you can use an application to upload files directly from
your device to Mahara.

15.1. Mobile browsing

  This section needs to be updated for Mahara 18.10 and tested if device detection is still
relevant.

Mahara comes with a responsive design. The purpose is to provide the best viewing experience on any
device, but in particular mobile devices. Furthermore, certain functionality is not available on a mobile
device if it does not allow for it, e.g. the use of the visual editor.

All themes in core Mahara are responsive.

That’s what the default theme looks like on an Android smartphone 2.3 (screen size 320 x 480) with device
detection turned on.

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3 different screens of Mahara with the default theme on an Android phone with device detection turned
on

1. There is only one column. Everything is pushed to it, but as soon as the screen is big enough, the
content moves back to its original columns.
2. A mobile friendly menu that can be unfolded to reach all navigation items.
3. Since blocks cannot be dragged over the screen, radio buttons below them allow them to be
selected.
4. Once a block icon has been selected via its radio button, place it into the page by clicking the Add
new block here button.
5. Text and Note blocks are shown without the visual editor as that does not work on an Android
smartphone (2.3).

The following table captures features of Mahara and how they are represented on various mobile devices
when device detection (dd) is turned on or off. Users can decide in which mode they want to browse if the
site administrator allowed it in the user settings.

Android Android Android Android iPhone / iPhone /

smartphone smartphone 10” tablet 10” tablet iPad dd iPad dd
Feature dd on dd off dd on dd off on off
Place page
edit blocks via
radio buttons
instead of
   

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drag & drop

Regular drag
& drop  - but  - but
interface in cannot be cannot be
page editor used used

Visual editor  - but

(WYSIWYG
editor)
cannot be  - difficult 
used
Plain text
editor   
Print link    
Report
objectionable
content link
   
Add to
watchlist link    

15.2. Mahara Mobile

Mahara Mobile is available in the Android App Store for Android 5 or later and in the Apple Store for iOS
devices.

15.2.1. What is Mahara Mobile?

Mahara Mobile is an app that allows you to collect your learning evidence on your handheld device to
easily upload it into Mahara. You can use the app offline during the collection process and only need an
internet connection for uploading to your Mahara site.

That way, gathering evidence out in the field, in rural areas, at sea, in space, or even close to home if you
have a very weak signal. Once you have access to a good internet connection again, you can upload your
previously gathered content.

On Android devices, you can upload any file: images, video, audio, documents from Google Drive and so
on. On iOS devices, can upload any type of file, provided you have an app installed that implements it, e.g
Dropbox and Google Drive among others.

You can also draft journal entries and then continue writing them on Mahara or publish them.

You can use Mahara Mobile with as many Mahara sites as you wish, and you can connect multiple devices
running Mahara Mobile to one Mahara account.

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  You can manage your access tokens for your different devices on the “Apps” page.

15.2.2. Requirements
Mahara Mobile requires Mahara 16.10 or later as a number of changes in the Mahara API were made.

Your Mahara site needs to have an SSL certificate (putting the “s” into https://) as web services only work
over SSL. Your test or development site can be used without SSL if you disable production mode in the
config.php.

15.2.3. Connect Mahara Mobile to your account

Connecting Mahara Mobile to Mahara is very easy, and your settings are remembered until you log out or
change to a different device in the app.

  To use Mahara Mobile, the site administrator needs to have ensured that the Mobile API is
configured properly.

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Home screen of Mahara Mobile

1. Enter the URL of your Mahara site. If your site does not use https:// , enter the http:// protocol.
2. Tap the Next button. Mahara Mobile checks which authentication methods are available for you to
use. Tap the Skip button if you do not want to connect to a Mahara instance just yet.
3. On the next screen, select how you want to log in to your Mahara site. Depending on the
authentication methods that are available on your site, you may see one or more of the following
options:

Single sign-on: You are re-directed to the normal login form on your site where you can tap the
SSO button and enter your SSO details.
Local login: You are presented with a login form. Please enter your username and password.
This authentication method is for internal Mahara accounts as well as LDAP accounts.

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Paste in access token: Generate a token on Mahara in a browser and enter it in the text field.
4. When you authenticated successfully, you see your name and profile picture (if you uploaded one to
Mahara) on the “User” screen.

15.2.4. “User” screen

On the User screen, you see information about the Mahara site that you connected to as well as basic
profile information about yourself.

“User” screen of Mahara Mobile with profile information

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1. Tap the User tab at the top of the app.

2. The site name of your Mahara site that you are connecting to.
3. Your profile picture from Mahara.

  Gravatars or other external avatars cannot be displayed at the moment.

4. Your first and last name.

5. The URL of your Mahara site.
6. Tap the Change server link in order to log out and be presented with the screen to enter your
Mahara URL again.
7. Tap the Logout button to log out of your Mahara account on Mahara Mobile.

  If you are logged into Mahara on the same device, you will not be logged out from that
browser session automatically.

8. Swipe down to synchronize the information with your Mahara server. You can also use the
synchronization to retrieve tags.

15.2.5. “Add” screen

You can upload any file that your operating system allows you to upload, and you can create journal
entries.

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“Add” screen where you can upload files and add journal entries

1. Tap the Add tab at the top of the app.

2. Tap the Upload files button to select a file to upload. You can upload any file to which your operating
system gives you access.
3. Tap the Add journal entry button to write a journal entry.
4. Once you added your file or finished your journal entry, you are taken to the Pending screen
automatically. Depending on the size of your file or where they are located, it may take a couple of
seconds for the file to appear as pending.

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15.2.5.1. Upload a file

You can upload any files to which your operating system gives you access.

1. Tap the Upload files button to select a file to upload.

2. Browse to the file that you want to upload and select it.

  You cannot select multiple files at once.

3. You are taken to the Pending screen. It may take a little bit until you see your file there.

15.2.5.2. Add a journal entry

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Add a journal entry

1. Title: Enter a title.

2. Details: Write your journal entry.

  If you want to add images or use styles in your entry, you can edit it on Mahara.

3. Tags: Enter tags or select from the ones that you already have.

  If you cannot see any tags, but you know that you have tags, you can go to the User

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screen and swipe down on the screen. That will synchronize Mahara Mobile and retrieve
your tags.

4. Tap the Save button to keep your entry.

5. You are taken to the Pending screen.

15.2.6. “Pending” screen

You see all the uploads that are waiting to be transferred to Mahara on the Pending screen. You can edit
details or remove items before they are uploaded.

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“Pending” screen where you can review the items that you want to upload

1. Tap the Pending tab at the top of the app.

2. You see all pending uploads, no matter whether they are files or journal entries.
3. Each item ist listed individually, and you can tap it to see more information.
4. Tap the Edit button to change the title, description and tags.
5. Tap the Delete button to remove the item from the pending uploads. The item itself is still on your
phone and not deleted.
6. If you have an image, you see a preview of it.
7. Tap the Upload to your Mahara button when you are ready to upload your items.

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The upload may not succeed for a number of reasons. More detailed error messages are planned.

The file is larger than the maximum allowed file size.

The user quota has been reached.
There was an error connecting to the server.

15.2.7. Technical information

Mahara Mobile is built using Apache Cordova allowing us to take advantage of the features of this
framework.

If you’d like to contribute, you can download the code from git.mahara.org or Github.

15.3. Previous Mahara apps

Before Mahara Mobile, people could work with MaharaDroid and PortfolioUp on Android and iOS
respectively. Please use Mahara Mobile instead.

The Mahara manual is licensed under your choice of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 unported or GNU General Public License
version 3 or later 2011-2020 Catalyst IT and others.
Last updated on Apr 12, 2020.
Created using Sphinx 3.0.1.

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