Adding an Administration Panel to Assessments

Overview

The administration panel is a dialog that allows proctors to change various settings for the current assessment session, which can be password protected. You can choose which options are visible to the proctors when instantiating Items API, or working with the Activity editor in Author API.

The options are:

  • Save & Quit
  • Exit & Discard
  • Extend session time (add extra time)

The following keyboard shortcut is available for desktop environments, both Windows and Mac.

  • control + shift + m (Windows)
  • control + shift + m (Mac)

The configuration panel is disabled by default, and you must opt in to use it.

The property in the Items API initialisation object is administration, which can be false or a JavaScript object.

For example to disable the configuration panel you could explicitly specify false, however this would be unnecessary as the default is false.

To enable the configuration panel you must pass a JavaScript object, for example:

{
    "name": "My activity title",
    "navigation": {...},
    // ... other properties ...
    "administration": {
        "options": {
            "show_save": true,
            "show_exit": true
        }
    }
}

The configuration panel is password protected, meaning that when the administration panel is launched the user is presented with a password text field in the configuration panel modal window.

Learnosity highly recommend customers set their own password, for administrators to use to access the administration panel. If a password is set, you will need to use the default password. To find out what the default is, please contact Learnosity support.

When using the panel, an administrator should enter a password which must validate to be able to continue.

The password entered by the user will be be hashed by the Assess API using SHA-256 and compared with a password hash that was passed into the configuration object. The SHA-256 hashed string is case insensitive, e.g. a665a45920422f9d417e4867efdc4fb8a04a1f3fff1fa07e998e86f7f7a27ae3is effectively identical to A665A45920422F9D417E4867EFDC4FB8A04A1F3FFF1FA07E998E86F7F7A27AE3.

{
    "name": "My activity title",
    "navigation": {...},
    // ... other properties ...
    "administration": {
        "pwd": "a665a45920422f9d417e4867efdc4fb8a04a1f3fff1fa07e998e86f7f7a27ae3",
        "options": {
            "show_save": true,
            "show_exit": true
        }
    }
}

The following options are enabled by default, and you need to opt out by declaring false in the configuration if you don’t want them to be visible or functional:

  • show_exit
  • show_save
  • show_extend
  • show_submit

Notepause is assumed as the activity timer halts on successful password entry. This is visible in the top right of the panel header.

There is no hard limit on the number of password attempts, instead a tarpit is used to slow down users with malicious intent.

It works by giving you an initial three password attempts, if fail on the third attempt the input box is disabled and a message is shown indicating that the configuration panel has been locked for one minute.

If you try again after one minute and still get it wrong, we lock out the password box for three minutes.

The lockout steps are as follows:

  • After the third unsuccessful password attempt, a message is shown indicating that the Configuration Panel logon function has been locked for one minute,
  • During this time the input field is disabled and the activity is not paused,
  • After one minute, the input field is enabled and the error message is removed,
  • If the user unsuccessfully tries to log in again (one time only), the input is disabled and this time the lockout will be three minutes,
  • This process repeats, the following incremental lockout times are used - 3, 5, 10, 20, 40 (minutes). 40 is the maximum lockout value, and
  • At all times, a user can simply “Cancel” out of the configuration panel logon modal window to return to the Activity.

The usual set of label bundle options is available for the configuration panel.

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