LMS Mobile guide for admins

Your site needs to have mobile access enabled so users can use the mobile app.

For sites using https, mobile access is enabled by default.

For http sites, mobile access can be enabled by an administrator as follows:

1. In Site administration > Mobile app > Mobile settings tick the ‘Enable web services for mobile devices’ checkbox
2. Click the button to save changes.

If your site uses an SSL certificate, it must be a trusted certificate. For security reasons, the app doesn’t work with self-signed certificates.

If your site has the /login directory protected (frequently done when using the Shibboleth authentication method), you must enable access to the login/token.php script.

Frame embedding

If your sites uses reCaptcha, Vimeo videos or custom menu items (as described bellow) you must enable the admin setting “Allow frame embedding” (allowframembedding).

Mobile authentication

If your site uses a SSO authentication method (CAS, Shibboleth, LDAP SSO, OAuth…), then select via a browser window or via an embedded browser for ‘Type of login’ (typeoflogin) in ‘Mobile authentication’ in the Site administration.

The options ‘browser window’ and ’embedded browser’ are very similar; the only difference is when redirecting the user to enter their credentials in the site, the site will be opened in the device’s default browser (for browser window) or the site will be opened “embedded” in the mobile app (for embedded browser). The user experience is better in the embedded browser, but not all the authentication plugins will work in the embedded browser (for example, if JavaScript popups are required they must use the ‘browser window’). The admin should check whether both options work, and if so, choose ’embedded browser’.

If you are using Google OAuth you will have to use the ‘browser window’ method because Google recently blocked authentication via ’embedded browsers’.

If your organisation uses a custom branded app and ‘Type of login’ is set to ‘Via a browser window’ or ‘Via embedded browser’, then a URL scheme (forcedurlscheme) may be set. This will result in only the custom branded app working for the site: the official LMS Mobile app will not work.

LMS Mobile additional features plugin for old LMS sites

For old LMS sites, it is recommended to install the LMS Mobile additional features plugin.

Notifications

You might find them annoying but push notifications keeps you and your users informed and updated on everything about the app. LMS only send useful and important notifications such as new features or service disruptions.

Enabling push notifications is easy! An administrator can enable it by connecting their LMS site/s to our free Notifications server available (only) for registered LMS sites.

An access key can be obtained via Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Message outputs > Mobile Notifications.

The full guide on enabling push notifications can be found here: Mobile app notifications

App banners

App banners let your users know that there is a mobile app available for the site. App banners are only displayed when accessing the site using a mobile browser.

In LMS, app banners for Android are supported as well as for iOS.

App banners are disabled by default. They can be enabled in ‘Mobile appearance’ in the Site administration.

If you are using a custom mobile app, you need to provide the unique identifier for the iOS and Android app; if you are using the LMS Mobile app, the settings may be left as default.

‘Get the mobile app’ link

The link ‘Get the mobile app’ in the footer of each page on the site encourages users to make use of the mobile app.

The setting ‘App download page’ can be changed e.g. for sites using a branded mobile app.

If mobile services are not enabled for the site, then the ‘Get the mobile app’ link is not displayed.

To prevent the ‘Get the mobile app’ link being displayed, simply remove the URL from the ‘App download page’ setting and save changes.

Configuring the app from your site

In LMS settings in the Site administration enable admins to configure the app.

• Go to Site administration > Mobile features
• In sites with the LMS Mobile additional features plugin installed, go to Site administration > Plugins > Local plugins > Mobile additional features

Force log out

Replace the Change site option to “Log out” so that users must enter their credentials on their next access. This is useful for custom mobile apps, as there is no reason for users wanting to switch to a different site.

Disabled features

Disable app functionalities for your site. If there’s a feature you don’t want to make available via the app you can disable it here.

Custom menu items

Additional items can be added to the app main menu (the side menu), such as a link to a different grade book.

Each custom menu item should have the format: item text, link URL, link-opening method and language code (optional, for displaying the item to users of the specified language only), separated by pipe characters.

Possible link-opening methods are:

• app – for linking to an activity supported by the app.
• inappbrowser – for linking to external URLs or site functionalities not supported by the app. The link will open in a browser inside the app overlaying the complete screen.
• browser – as for inappbrowser except that the link will instead open in the device default browser outside the app.
• embedded – as for inappbrowser except that the link will instead open in an iframe in a new page in the app. (For this option you may need to enable the admin setting “Allow frame embedding” (allowframembedding)

Tip: If you add a custom menu item and save changes, then it doesn’t appear in the app main menu, double check that the item is correctly formatted.

Please, note that if the app is using a language not indicated in the previous list, the first language in the list will be used.

If you want options tied to a language, you can append _only to the language code, for example:
en_only
es_only

Will display the custom menu item only when the app language is English or Spanish.

Custom language strings

Words and phrases displayed in the app can be customised via the “Custom language strings” (customlangstrings) setting.

Enter each custom language string on a new line with the format: string identifier, custom language string and language code, separated by pipe characters. For example:

mm.user.student|Learner|en
mm.user.student|Aprendiz|es

Web services token duration

An admin can set how long a web services token created by a user (for example via the mobile app) is valid.