MDash Update

Last update, I detailed some of the progress I made and changes to the project. I just wanted to provider another intermediate update on the progress I am making on getting things polished.

First, I have missed my July/August 2025 window of getting things pushed to GitHub. This was at first unintentional, but now I am rethinking the aggressive push. I haven't added much to MDash Core since August, which is good and means I am finding an end to what is needed to be incorporated from the Moodle API. I was in the process of getting things ready to get Core added to PyPi and to get a GitHub repo set up for it as well. There will probably be another name change for it since it really has nothing to do with MDash the web UI.

Second, MDash API gateway is officially sidelined. I do want to revisit this project as a Fast-API implementation of the Moodle API that leverages Core for any service to have standard REST-ful endpoints to call to for interacting with a Moodle instance.

Third, there have been some major changes to the roadmap for MDash. After getting more serious about what services the online Bible College needs, I spent some time further understanding the student/staff/faculty online learning ecosystem. I discovered that a School Information System (SIS) is needed to get a better view of enrolled students as well as providing services like transcript generation, degree/program/certification progress, requesting enrollments, processing student applications, etc. Moodle is great for learning, but I continuously find that it is not as great for managing the flow for students and teachers.

The Need

I trialed using two separate open-source SIS platforms, but they were more focused on K-12 education. They also do not integrate well with Moodle the way I would want them to. I have not set up trials for the paid-for services as of this writing.

So, as much as I hoped to keep MDash as a simple dashboard system for Moodle, it's time for the project to evolve. I am in the process of converting the existing code base into something even more robust for both managing and extracting data from Moodle.

The Evolution

Open source SIS Moodle-compatible platforms seem to operate in a weird space where the source of truth (authority/truthiness of the presented information) resides. SIS platforms, like Gibbon or RosarioSIS, like to own the process and become the source of truth that Moodle references. Gibbon even goes so far as to become the identity provider for Moodle. Moodle already does a lot on the backend to organize this data. I don't want a system that requires even more setup to manage duplicate sets of information.

MDash is being designed so that it does not store data from Moodle (well, the least amount of data as possible). Moodle is the first-class citizen and treated as the source of truth. With Core, the Moodle API wrapper, MDash can both read and write data to the Moodle DB which is something other SIS platforms don't really seem to do in the capacity that I want. While Moodle allows other databases, like Gibbon, to take over user management, I actually have slightly different needs. In the winter, the entire server will be migrating from one host to another and I plan on introducing Identity and Access Management (IAM) into the mix.

With the evolution from dashboard to fully-featured SIS, MDash continues to grow and mature into something I feel will really fill a niche hole in the Moodle ecosystem. SIS are expensive and helping to operate a 501(c)(3) entity that's just starting out means there just aren't thousands of dollars (per year) lying around to fund these expensive management systems.

I plan to change that.

More Changes

The backend isn't the only thing that's rapidly changing. Here are some other changes that I've decided on that help pull together a really comprehensive platform:

UI Polish

The UI should look a lot cleaner; this is in response to adding additional planned features and areas of the app.

A lot of what I changed so far is a fresh coat of paint over the already established UI and backend calls. I am still in the process of cleaning up some areas of the UI and changing the layout to better reflect the migration from sidebar navigation to top bar navigation in the screenshot above. Overall, I feel the UI is easier to navigate. I have done preliminary testing on mobile and I am trying to keep things as mobile-friendly as possible.

IAM

I have adopted Authentik as the IAM provider for the college and have already run tests with Moodle to test how it integrates. More importantly, MDash has been updated to use an OAuth2 provider as the login method. I check the response from Authentik to ensure the proper group/role assignment within MDash is present which will allow admins, faculty/staff, and students to access the SIS with appropriate permissions.

Below is a simple diagram of how everything looks in concert together.

Roadmap

The goal for the rest of the year is to get the API wrapper in a state that is ready to publish to GitHub which will involve getting the single python file broken up into smaller pieces and ready to go to both GitHub and PyPi.

MDash is not on the radar for public consumption this year. I do plan on releasing it in 2026 as an open source SIS platform. Right now, I am focused on making all the new features work, then I will go back and polish things up and add an onboarding process as well as fully document everything.