The art of being lazy

So, it’s been a while since my last post. Since falling off the radar, I set about rebuilding Dashboard, and adding in features I think  it needs. I think I am on version 3 now, and I know this is not the last version.

As a developer I will look at a problem, or a task we need to perform in Moodle, and ask, “How can I make that easier?” This then is the start of some long nights, which sometimes even result in a solution. I read somewhere that being lazy is a good thing, if you are a developer. Or should that be  an ‘application architect’. By definition a developer develops, but an architect plans first. Anyway, it’s because we are lazy, that we find solutions to problems.

Case in point. We needed to know all the results of a particular user in Moodle. Oddly, or not, Moodle does not have the ability to do this. So I fiddled about and come up with a solution which will show all the scores of all the courses for a user in a nice little graph.

All scores

On the left are the Users details. A grid below show the Courses and Groups for that User. On the right is the fruit of my labour. All scores less than 80% are indicated in red. If you hover your mouse over the chart (no not this image) a tooltip will show the actual percentage.

And so there you have it. It’s all about being lazy.

Sean