Two new resources for installing, configuring and using CANS with Sakai are now available thanks to the team at the University of Missouri - Columbia.

CANS Installation Guide

This resource offers comprehensive instructions for System Administrators on installing the CANS Server and setting it up to work with your Sakai instance.

CANS Activity Monitor User Guide

This resource, written for Sakai Faculty and user Experience Researchers, explains how to use the CANS Activity Monitor in a Sakai course.

Enjoy!
-Chris

The CANS Activity Monitor Tool and Services is an all-in-one solution for Sakai 2.5.x. It contains all the code required to setup and run your Sakai instance with the CANS Server.

For more information about the CANS Activity Monitor, please visit the Sakai Tools and Services page.

-Chris

This version of CANS contains several important fixes and upgrades over the 2.0 version. Some of the changes include the resizing of various database fields, enhanced configuration capabilities and improved installation/setup instructions.

Current users of CANS, who wish to preserve existing database data and are not sure how to do this on their own, should contact me before upgrading. I currently don't have an upgrade script available but could provide one upon request.

Get CANS 2.0.1 now.

-Chris

CANS 2.0 is now available as a SVN download at https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/cans/cans_server/trunk/. In addition, you may checkout our progress on our latest Sakai front-end tool for CANS at https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/cans/cans_AM/trunk/. This tool, known as the Activity Monitor tool, allows Sakai's site owners to setup notification preferences for Sakai sites and view notifications using our new Flex-based activity notifiers.

Enjoy.
-Chris

2.0 is the third public release of the Context-aware Activity Notification System (CANS). This version offers several new administrative features and drastically improves the configuration requirements of CANS.

CANS 2.0 Server

In addition, a set of Sakai Tools and Services are also available. These tools and services include the CANS Administrator Tool and the CANS WatchDogService and the new CANS Reporter Tool.

The CANS Administrator Tool is a Sakai Tool for starting and monitoring the CANS WatchDogService.

The WatchDogService is a Sakai Service that uses a Java event listener to monitor Sakai events and send those events, with needed parameters, to the CANS Server.

The CANS Reporter tool is a brand new tool that allows site owners to configure the CANS notification preferences for their Sakai Site.

Sakai Tools and Services

Columbia, October 11 -- LANIT Consulting Inc. announced their intentions to integrate CANS into LANIT’s industry leading electronic portfolio product, Foliotek. The integration of CANS will provide Foliotek customers with awareness capabilities that have been shown to boost online collaboration.

“Portfolios are dynamic, so it makes sense to allow Foliotek students to promote awareness of their accomplishments among a chosen network of peers and collaborators. CANS enables students to push portfolio notifications to anyone, and also allows authorized faculty to pull portfolio notifications for students they review”, said Chris Miller, President of LANIT. “The integration of CANS with Foliotek promises to increase the sense of connection between a student and their portfolio. Since CANS is also integrated with popular course management systems, the option of obtaining a single notification for course activity and portfolio activity will be powerful – It brings the portfolio closer to the action”.

The latest CANS User Experience prototypes from the University of Missouri - Columbia are now available.

Please REVIEW and COMMENT on these design efforts. In each section there is a brief explanation, artifacts and ways to leave comments, suggestions and questions. Feel free to invite colleagues or students to review our work and offer their commentary. Thanks in advance for your interest and help with this project.

The next version of CANS (version 2.0) will be available to the public on September 1, 2007 soon.

This version will include:
- Oracle integration
- A working version of the Reporter Tool that offers Administrators and Instructors greater flexiblity for managing notification preferences
- Several bug fixes and minor feature upgrades

This update will not include a tool to migrate from CANS 1.5.x to CANS 2.0. I hope to make a migration script available sometime in the Fall. In the meantime, send me an email if you need help migrating your data and I'll do what I can to help.

Have you installed CANS 1.5.2 only to find this cryptic Java error?

[java] Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 1
[java] at cans.CANSDataStore.init(CANSDataStore.java:68)
[java] at cans.StartServer.main(StartServer.java:71)
[java] Java Result: 1

I updated the CANS 1.5.2 download to correct this error. It was so minor I didn't change the version number so just download the same file again. If you don't want to download CANS again, you can fix this problem by following these instructions:

1.5.2 is the second public release of the Context-aware Activity Notification System (CANS). This version offers several new administrative features and improves (hopefully) the configuration requirements of CANS.

Download CANS 1.5.2

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

In addition to 1.5.2, a new Tool and Service for Sakai 2.3 are now available.

sakai-cans.tar.gz is a Sakai-formatted package containing the CANS Administrator Tool and the CANS WatchDogService. The WatchDogService is a Sakai Service that uses a Java event listener to monitor Sakai events and send those events, with needed parameters, to the CANS Server.