Batch-edit users / batch-add requirements

[orenyk]

We've been asked if there's a way to add a requirement to multiple users simultaneously. We might benefit from a batch-edit functionality where you can either change the role of multiple users or add a requirement, maybe taking a list of netids / usernames as an input? Something to be considered for the future.

[squidgetx]

Sounds like something hard to do in rails but easy to do while doing #1061. I feel like there are several issues that are like this one in that way; maybe we should have a milestone for things like that

[orenyk]

We can definitely hijack the user import functionality for updating roles (since it's a parameter of the User object). For requirements we need to create associations, but we don't really need a table, just a list. On a requirement show page we could allow for admins to upload a comma-separated list of usernames / e-mails and then just loop through it and assign those users that requirement. Might be good for v4.3.0, otherwise we can try a JS solution after #1061.

In terms of lumping JS-potential issues together, I'll create a label for that instead of a milestone.

[orenyk]

Just realized that this is very similar to the solution discussed in #557, so those two should be worked on together, however it's done.

[orenyk]

Ok, here's how I'm thinking we could solve this (in a way that also allows for the batch banning of users based on an affiliation query):

1. Have a batch processing view / controller that allows for custom searches of different resources (specifically Users here, but it could be generalized) by their various parameters to return sets of records from the database (basically an interface to ActiveRecord).
2. These query results would be added to a "batch", which is ultimately a larger collection of records.
3. Each resource type would have a set of actions that could be performed on that collection of records - for example, banning or role modification for users, archiving for reservations, deactivation or permanent deactivation for equipment, etc

This would be a pretty significant improvement in the administration of Reservations, so I'd like to bump it up in priority and move it into one of our upcoming sprints.

[orenyk]

It might be nice to build this on top of Administrate, Thoughtbot's admin engine that should easily allow us to set up custom actions for each resource.

[orenyk]

We've run into this again now that we have a new set of seniors to ban and it turns out that in v5.5.x, CSV export from Rails Admin is currently broken (see here). We can work around this by exporting an XML file with the relevant users and converting it to a CSV offline so it can be re-imported for banning, but this is a much needed feature moving forward.

EDIT The CSV export issue has since been fixed in a later version of Rails Admin and should be resolved in v6.1.x following #1553 (and possibly even #1329).