Unabling real time processing makes the workflow unactive - Moodle 4.0+

[TheCarsino]

When testing the plugin and deactivating the Real Time Processing option, the steps of the current workflow never executes.

I have configured a server that can receive some HTTP POST Actions, but this only works when the previous option is enabled. Even if this works correctly when it's enabled, I don't want the end user to see the error on their Moodle page, just in the logs that the plugin manages on each workflow history.

These are my current settings for the plugin

Moodle version: 4.0.1

[philipsiwinski]

Hello, I'm experiencing the same issue with Moodle 4, if Real time processing is unchecked / disabled then the workflow does not work. Is this a bug? Thanks

[brendanheywood]

hi all, eventually we are hoping to deprecate this plugin in favor of a way more flexible and power one called dataflows:

https://github.com/catalyst/moodle-tool_dataflows

Data flows is ready right now, but it cannot currently be triggered from an event, but this is on the road map:

catalyst/moodle-tool_dataflows#31

So please check out data flows and see what you think and if anyone is interested in sponsoring the event trigger please let us now

[FurloSK]

hi @brendanheywood,

does your answer mean that there will be no attempt from your side (meaning Catalyst) to fix this issue? Is event trigger abandoned project as of now?
I'm just asking, because this is now a stopper for us to update our Moodle installation to 4.x.

Thanks!

[brendanheywood]

hi @FurloSK

The event trigger step in tool_dataflows is now implemented and we are using in prod for a couple clients. If you are creating something new I'd definitely recommend you create it using dataflows instead of tool_trigger. If you have an existing tool_trigger setup then there should be no reason to stop using something is working, but I would also encourage you to take a look at dataflows you may find rebuilding it using that is not really that much work and gives you a lot of other side benefits. We still have clients using tool_trigger in prod, but we are not expecting any new clients to start using it. So I would characterize this plugin as deprecated rather than abandoned.

If you really want this issue fixed, we'd welcome a pull request, or if you want to sponsor it we could look at that as well, but I still think your best bet is to use dataflows instead.

[FurloSK]

hi @brendanheywood,
thank you for your (quick!) answer. The problem with tool_dataflows is threefold:

1. I am lacking a full and proper documentation for the plugin. There is only one readme which does not tell me anything. Am I missing something? Is there some more complex documentation than the readme here? I am a computer scientist with ~5 years of experience in Moodle, I have also customised a few plugins for our Moodle, but I literally do not know what to do after installing your plugin.
2. Is it possible to install the plugin by simply uploading a zipped plugin files to Moodle (as with all other plugins)? I did that, but the plugin probably did not work properly, since after the successful installation, it raised an exception: Class 'Symfony\Component\Yaml\Yaml' not found. And trying to add the new step to a workflow raised an exception Call to undefined function tool_dataflows\tool_dataflows_step_types(). I searched those issues on moodle-tool_dataflows git, but found nothing, so I am at loss.
3. The readme says that the plugin requires having graphviz installed – but there is no such plugin in Moodle directory. I do not have a console access to our installation (so I cannot simply do apt install graphviz). Is it really necessary for the tool_dataflows to work?

[brendanheywood]

hi @FurloSK

1. Yes I concede that the docs are very lacking and we'll aim to improve them shortly
2. yes it the same as any other plugin
3. graphviz is a php module not a moodle plugin, and yes it is a hard requirement dataflows. It is also used by xhprof / tideways which is used by Moodle core for its profiling function so in many setups it is not considered an extra thing.

https://graphviz.org/download/

[brendanheywood]

This is a very quick list of concepts to get started:
https://github.com/catalyst/moodle-tool_dataflows/tree/MOODLE_35_STABLE#configuration