Registration confirmation could be simplified

[Richard Mansfield]

The registration process for institutions with confirmation enabled seems unnecessarily difficult. I think it could be streamlined a bit.

1. The 'Reason' field could be added to the initial registration form rather than on its own separate page. It could be hidden with javascript whenever an institution that doesn't require approval is selected in the drop-down. Reason could also be optional rather than required, because in many cases the admin will be able to approve registrations based on the email address.

2. The user might not need to go through two steps of clicking the link in an email. I think we could treat the second (post-approval) one as email verification as well as account creation. So after filling in the registration form, the user could go straight to something like "Your registration has been submitted for approval by Foo College. An email will be sent to <email address hidden> with further registration details soon." After approval, clicking on the link from the approval email would verify the email & create the account. The downside could be a few more registrations with bad email addresses going to the institution admin, but I think the admin could still be confident that she is only approving the real owner of the email.

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

What would happen when you don't have javascript turned on / use a screen reader?

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

Hi Richard,

Another question we should keep in mind when making changes to the registration process: What happens with registration when BrowserID is used? I haven't been able to test it yet as I get an error message (cf. bug #920183).

[Richard Mansfield (richard-mansfield)]

If at least one institution requires approval, users with js disabled would *always* see the optional reason box.

To make things clearer we could add "(Approval required)" after the appropriate institutions' names inside the drop-down, and add a note to the help file explaining what that means.

But I guess the worst that can happen is that people fill in the reason field when they don't need to.

BrowserID basically bypasses registration. So if an institution has the BrowserID plugin enabled *and* auto-create users turned on, anyone with an email address can create an account without filling in the registration form.

Francois added a note to the 'registration allowed' help file in institution settings to hopefully make that more obvious to institution admins, so you should have a look at it.

[Richard Mansfield (richard-mansfield)]

I made a start on this bug, but won't be able to continue for quite a while. If anyone wants to steal this bug, the stuff I've done so far is at git://github.com/richardmansfield/richardms-mahara.git, simplify-registration branch.

[Mahara Bot (dev-mahara)]

Reviewed: https://reviews.mahara.org/1174
Committed: http://gitorious.org/mahara/mahara/commit/eee26e5fcda1358ed45430a8b81bf4f3216608ce
Submitter: Hugh Davenport (<email address hidden>)
Branch: master

commit eee26e5fcda1358ed45430a8b81bf4f3216608ce
Author: Richard Mansfield <email address hidden>
Date: Fri Apr 27 12:18:53 2012 +1200

    Remove email verification in registration with approval (bug #918431)

    When an institution requires approval before registration, treat the
    approval email as address verification. After filling in the
    registration form with an institution that requires approval, the user
    is simply asked to wait, rather than clicking on an email link to
    verify their email address. After approval, clicking on the link from
    the approval email both verifies the email & creates the account.

    Change-Id: I43c28510665b6f2bf9302099b6bd294a3715a85d
    Signed-off-by: Richard Mansfield <email address hidden>

[Mahara Bot (dev-mahara)]

Reviewed: https://reviews.mahara.org/1173
Committed: http://gitorious.org/mahara/mahara/commit/a6ad97b159c1925cf5281232d7ddcaceea6c3c20
Submitter: Richard Mansfield (<email address hidden>)
Branch: master

commit a6ad97b159c1925cf5281232d7ddcaceea6c3c20
Author: Richard Mansfield <email address hidden>
Date: Fri Feb 24 16:45:25 2012 +1300

    Move registration reason field to register form (bug #918431)

    Also indicates which institutions require confirmation, and hides the
    reason field for those that don't.

    Change-Id: I81cfa60332c921e6818e0d9329ee8319d5ea8d6c
    Signed-off-by: Richard Mansfield <email address hidden>

[Hugh Davenport (hugh-davenport)]

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