Introduction

Expertiza is a web application where students can submit and peer-review learning objects (articles, code, web sites, etc). It is used in select courses at NC State and by professors at several other colleges and universities. <ref>Expertiza on GitHub</ref>

Problem Statement

The objective of this project is to allow Expertiza users to directly send their issues to Expertiza support team via a support form. Currently there is no support feature and the problems are passed on to the support team via instructors. The aim of this feature is faster resolution of the problems which are faced by the users. This feature should be available to all registered users of Expertiza. The users will be able to use it even when they are not logged in. Moreover, it should allow users to send screenshots of their issues. Apart from the feedback form, a view for the support team is also required. This view would contain a collective list of all the problems and the support person would be able to change the status of the problems.

Design Specification

The following specifications are required in the feature :

Support feature for Users
- The link to "Support" should be present in the footer. This should help facilitate feedback from un-logged users.

- Clicking on "Contact Support" should open a new page rather than a pop-up or modal dialog box.
- The feedback form should consist of the following fields: Email, Name (optional), Title, Description (optional) and Attachments(optional).
- The feedback should go expertiza-support@lists.ncsu.edu.
- Users should should have the facility to upload only one file in their feedback.
- The uploaded file should be either in .pdf or .png/.jpg format. Moreover, the extension list should not be hard-coded. A white-list of the extensions supported should be present in the database.
- The size of the uploaded file should not exceed 2MB.
- To avoid attacks, the feedback form should contain a CAPTCHA.
- There should be a separate method that keeps a check on multiple requests. An algorithm should be implemented to add incremental delay between consecutive requests after three trials.

Support feature for support people
- The link to "Feedback" should be present in the title bar under the "Contact Us" heading.
- Only people who are assigned the role as support will be able to use view the link.
- The feedback page should contain a list of all the issues in a table format.
- Each feedback can be categorized into the following states:
  - Open - when a new feedback is generated by the user and not yet handled by any support person.
  - In Progress - when a support person has viewed the feedback and started working on it.
  - Closed - when a support person has solved the issue in the feedback.
  - Invalid - when the feedback is not relevant to Expertiza.
- The support person should be able to sort the list based on a state.
- When a state is changed, the user may get notified through email.

Proposed Implementation

The implementation of this feature is proposed in 4 milestones.

Create a new model which will help store, fetch and validate data in the database table containing information about the feedback.
Create a basic view and controller to help user send feedback. The view will contain fields like email, name, title and description. The controller will handle session id and automatically fill the email field if the user is logged in. Moreover, the controller will contain methods to create and save feedback.
Create a basic view and controller to help support view the list of feedbacks. The view will contain a table with columns email, title, status, description and link to attachment. It will also have a link to feedback settings where the support will be able to configure support email, file extension list, maximum attachment size, maximum number of attachments, other security related fields.
Lastly, add method to upload file in the controller. Also implement CAPTCHA in the view to avoid script based attacks. Add method to implement algorithm that limits multiple requests