The document outlines a workshop led by Jonathan Moore, a Moodle expert, focusing on extending Moodle reporting capabilities. It covers the objectives of the workshop, includes discussions on built-in and configurable reports, and provides hands-on activities to create custom reports using SQL. Additionally, various reporting tools and techniques are discussed to enhance Moodle's reporting functionalities.

1. Extending Moodle Reporting
Jonathan Moore
Founder

2. Background and context
● Managed thousands of Moodle sites
● Managed millions of Moodle user accounts
● Over 10 years experience with Moodle
● Dozens of Moodle dev and reporting projects
● Tuning, scalability, and performance expert
● Author of Moodle Module Development

3. Things you need
●
Local Moodle Installer
– https://download.moodle.org/macosx/
– https://download.moodle.org/windows/
●
Thinking cap!

4. Why we have this workshop

5. Format / objectives
● Overview builtin reports
● Discuss pluses / minuses
● Brain storm report wishlist
● Play with some reporting tools
● Build a report
● Ask questions!
● Share your tips

6. Getting to know you
● How many new admins?
● How technical are you?
● Learn builtin reports or build reports?
● Does anyone know some SQL?

7. Getting to know you
● What are you hoping to learn today?
● What reports do you want?

8. Hands-on
● Multi-vote most popular report requests

9. Builtin Reports

10. Some of what's included
● Activity reports
● Config changes
● Course overview report
● Grades report
● Logs report

11. More reports
● Participation report
● User course completion
● Report user outline
● Report course access time log report
● Quiz report

12. Hands-on discussion
● What are strengths and weaknesses of builtin
reporting?

13. Strengths some thoughts
● Click level data
● Many built-in reports
● Self-service
● Contextual

14. Weaknesses some thoughts
● All things / one thing
– Dates
– Courses
– Users
● Not easily actionable
● No report builder

15. Hands-on
● Use the config changes report to find the latest
setting change on your Moodle site
● Look at the log report and select a filter to
narrow the results

16. Other sources for reports
● Module database
– Ad Hoc Reports
– Configurable Reports
– Other specialty reports
●
3rd
Party reporting tool
● Ad hoc report list – Link
● Write a SQL query
● Write in PHP (development)

17. Configurable reports
– Extra pre-built reports
– Basic report builder
– SQL reports

18. Hands-on
● Install Configurable Reports
● Add the block
● Add a report

19. Some database / reporting tools
● PHPMyAdmin
● Adminer
● Crystal reports
● Jaspersoft
● MS Access
● Excel
● MySQL Workbench / Sequel Pro

20. MyODBC
 Windows client software
 Connect MySQL to desktop applications
 Make ad hoc reports in MS Access, Excel,
Open Office, etc.

21. PHPMyAdmin
● PHP program
● Database access tool
● Quick-and-dirty one-off reporting
● Examine database structure

22. Hands-on
● Go into PHPMyAdmin
● Find the table that stores user information
● Find the field that stores first name
● Find table that stores courses
● Find field that stores course short name
● Use the search feature

23. Ad Hoc Reporting List
● URL http://bit.ly/1fHQmhU
● Wiki of contributed SQL reports for Moodle
● Great place to find reports
● Fairly easy to tweak to make your own
● Be sure to vet accuracy of reports used
● Anyone can edit the wiki

24. Hands-on
● Select an interesting Ad Hoc Report
● Go to Configurable Reports
● Create a custom SQL report
● Paste in report SQL
● View report

25. Misc Techniques

26. Steal a similar report!
● Edit my.cnf
– general_log = on
– general_log_file=/usr/log/general.logmysql
config for query logging
● Go to builtin report page
● Restart mysql
● Refresh report
● Disable setting

27. Build a report with SQL
● Structured Query Language
● Powerful
● Flexible
● Complex for novices
● Can be dangerous
● Use a testing server

28. Basic sequel query
● Select firstname, lastname from mdl_user;

29. Limiting results with where
● Select firstname, lastname from mdl_user
where lastname = 'Moore';

30. Managing time / date stamps
● FROM_UNIXTIME( date_field, 'format_string')

32. Join course and course category
● Select * from mdl_courses c
JOIN mdl_course_categories ccat ON
c.category = ccat.id;

33. Hands-on
● Make most popular report request(s
● Either whole group / small group if enough SQL
experts

34. What we do
● Expert advice and eLearning program review
● Evangelism and training
● Instructional design
● Custom development
● Reporting
● System tuning
● Performance assessment

35. Questions?
● http://elearningconsultancy.com
● jonathan@elearningconsultancy.com
● Twitter: @moorejon
● Skype: moorejon07