Multi user login / Simulate a group of users

Hey there,

at the moment i'm searching for a solution for a really special problem. I'm working as a student developer and our work focuses on social media usage in households/families. Now we are looking for a special case when there is more than one user in a group which is build dynamically. So imagine a situation where some friends meet in front of a display (tv/screen/etc.) and they want to login all together into the elgg system. The system should handle them all as a group and not all users in a single way.

Here is what i thought how this could look like:

  1. one user of the group logs into the elgg system
  2. now he/she can add each user to his/her session who is attending him/her 
  3. each user must type in his/her password to confirm that he/she is really attending
  4. elgg creates a new session (no concept for that yet) which represents all of the users as dynamic and temporary group which only exists virtually
  5. each user can leave this temporary session at any time (maybe without typing the password)

That is what i need to develop. Can you give me any hints or warnings about problems i will definitely come across? Is my idea a bunch of crap or possibly not feasible?

Thanks for your answers. I know this is not an easy thing but perhaps there are some elgg pros how can help me with that.

greets
r. 

  • That sounds like a lot of trouble. :)

    Could you explain what you are trying to gain through this kind of implementation? What functionalities require the students to be logged in simultaneously? There might be some better approaches to get the same features that you are looking for without having to create a multi login functionality.

  • Yeah, much trouble.

    When they logged in they need to be represented as a group for all the other users. So when they update their status it should be clear for everyone else. So nearly every public action should be made as a group. But i don't know if that would not be too much work. I need a similiar function later for my bachelor project but i don't want to touch every plugin manually in the end. 

    What approaches did you see? Any concrete ideas? So basically i hope i could describe the problem well enough. Don't hesitate to ask further questions if you want to know something more or get deeper information.

  • You didn't really answer my question. Why do they need to be represented as a group? What is the reason why they can't be regular elgg users and post content to a regular group that they are members of?

    How about creating a single user account called "Group X" that they all can use with the same password? Is there something that prevents this?

    I'm just trying to see the bigger picture behind your idea.

  • Ah ok. Your question had something different in mind. The thing is that our project wants to increase the social experience when staying together (at one place) and using a social platform like elgg. It's kind of innovative work we are doing to seperate from so many other social networks like Facebook where there is no real social perspective as dynamic group which changes every time.

    It's not about a static group. You must create these groups/sessions instantly, dynamically and on demand depending on who is being together. Other people shall see that you are with your friends or your family at a certain time. So i'm sorry if i mixed up the term "group" which is used directly in elgg with my original intention.

    You asked why they do need to be represented as a group. I hope i could bring you the idea near. One of the project leader said that this is a really interesting thing to work at and he made a requirement for me. At first i should just do some concept work and then try to create a real solution (if possible in a short period of time).

    I think your idea with this created user account is not that bad. Thing is that it really needs to be created on demand and only temporary. It's definitely another approach i should consider.

  • Now I'm starting to understand. An interesting idea indeed.

    Well here's one approach that came into my mind:

    Each user has their own personal user account.

    After signing in the user would select the participating people. This information would be linked to an object. Lets call that object a "session". The session would have a relationship to all the selected users e.g "User A is a participant of Session B, User B is a participant of Session B, etc".

    When creating any content there would be a hook that would save a relationship between the content and the session object ("Blog A is a product of Session B"). Then it could be possible to later on fetch all contents that are product of the session. (The actual owner of the content would of course still be the person whose account was used at login.)

    The river could have items like "People A, B and C published a blog post 'Our new blog'".

    Also it would be possible to find out all the sessions that any particular user has participated. "User A has participated 15 sessions this year."

    I don't know how usable this approach would be but at least you have some more food for thought. :)