"Presentations" link - Working as intended?

[petienne]

PKP Community -

I just had a question from a concerned client concerning the functionality of the OCS software. Initially the concern was that, although "Website Postings" options under the Conference Timeline menu were all deselected, all of our current content was showing up upon viewing the Presentations page. After a bit of testing, I've found that for a non-registered user, a user registered to the site, a user registered to the specific conference, as well as conference Readers, Authors, and Reviewers, the content on the Presentations page is not available. However, even while Website Postings options are deselected, all content (unassigned, in review, and accepted submissions) are all displayed for Track Director and Director roles. I hoping for confirmation or denial that this is intended behavior for the software. I'm working through the code, but am not the best yet at the organization of the PKP code. Any help would be appreciated

- Patrick

[jmacgreg]

Hi Patrick,

I'm a little confused as to the behaviour you are finding amiss -- the first part sounds fine to me (that if you deselect items to be shown on the website, they won't be displayed); and I'm not entirely sure whether or how the second issue is connected to the first. Directors and Track Directors should indeed have access to content such as items in review, in editing and so on. The only caveat is that TDs should only be able to see items explicitly assigned to them (whether automatically or manually). Can you elaborate on where you are seeing a problem, if any?

Cheers,
James

[petienne]

I'm not 100% sure there is an actual problem, but another department within the library here, with whom I work closely and who has much more familiarity with the software, seem to be fairly certain we have come across a bug. So my purpose at the moment is more to confirm the intended behavior of the application (Support and Discussion forum rather than Technical Support).

bare-bones background:
The initial observed problem was that a registrant of the website (who had the "author" role) navigated to the "Presentations" link and was able to see a listing of presentations and authors. All submissions for our conference are currently classified as "unassigned". The registrant thought that because he could see this, his submission had been accepted. I was unable to reproduce the error (logged in as that user, there were no listings under the presentations link), but it did raise the issue of when and how the presentations should be displayed, and for which roles, etc.

succinct description of the question:
Which presentations (what classification - unassigned, in-review, accepted, etc) should be viewable from the Presentations link by the various roles?

current setup:
Approximately 200 submissions, all classified as "unassigned".
submission materials (Conference Setup - Step 2.1 - Submission Process)
"Abstract follwed by presentation" - selected
"Post abstracts once the abstract review has been completed" - checked

current behavoir of presentations link:
Director and Track Director roles - lists all submissions (all 200 unassigned submissions)
Other roles - lists none

--------------------

James, from your reply, would I be correct in thinking there is a problem since, even though no submissions have been assigned, the track director can see all 200 unassigned submissions?

As a related note, if I uncheck "Post abtracts once the abstract review has been completed", no roles can see any presentations from the Presentations link. It seems to be functioning as a "show everything" or "show nothing" option, regardless of the classification (unassigned, etc) of the submissions.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

- Patrick

[sfuchs]

Just to clarify (as the person working with Patrick)...all unassigned submissions were showing up as finished presentations (from the Presentations link on the righthand navbar of the OCS site), available on the website and to the public, according to an email sent from an author, who stumbled into it. When I checked it out, it appeared that they were only showing up from that very same link if I was logged in as a Director. When I logged out, or logged in as other roles, I got "You do not yet have access to this conference's presentations," which was what I was expecting.
When the option "Post abtracts once the abstract review has been completed" was unchecked, then they no longer showed up. Because every submission in the system was unassigned, and no abstract review had been completed (nor was a Director assigned to any submission), it was a little strange!
Thanks!
Sara

[jmacgreg]

Hi Patrick and Sara,

Apologies, this one slipped past me earlier last month. We've replicated the behaviour, and I have posted a bug report: http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4165. Please feel free to Cc yourself to that report for further updates. I would recommend you do not yet publicly display your presentations (en/disabled in the Conference Timeline page) until you have finished reviewing your abstracts.

Cheers,
James