Plugins/Artefact/Europass

What is Europass?

Europass is an EU initiative to increase transparency of qualification and mobility of citizens in Europe. It aims to be a Life Long Learning Portfolio of documents containing the descriptions of all learning achievements, official qualifications, work results, skills and competencies, acquired over time, along with the related documentation. The five Europass documents are the Europass CV, Europass Language Passport, Europass Mobility, Europass Certificate Supplement and Europass Diploma Supplement, sharing a common brand name and logo and aim to make a person's skills and qualifications clearly understood throughout Europe.

Europass consists of five documents:

• two documents (Europass curriculum vitae (CV) and Europass Language Passport) you can fill in yourself; and
• three other documents (Europass Certificate Supplement, Europass Diploma Supplement and Europass Mobility) filled in and issued by competent organisations.

Europass is supported by a network of National Europass Centres.

Europass has been established by the Decision No 2241/2004/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 15 December 2004 on a single transparency framework for qualifications and competences.

More information about Europass can be found on official webpage.

How Europass plugin works?

The plugin creates XML file, which contains your data. Then it sends that XML file via SSL to Europass Web Service. The Europass Web Service than creates your Europass CV or Europass Language Passport in one of the following formats:

1. Adobe PDF + Europass XML (XML file is attached inside PDF file)
2. Microsoft Word document
3. OpenDocument (e.g. OpenOffice.org Writer document)
4. HTML file
5. Europass XML file

Europass plugin and Mahara

The plugin is tested and works with Mahara 1.2.0 and newer, but Richard Mansfield told me to warn you, to use it with Mahara 1.3.0 when it will be released. This is because changes to Mahara Core code, which will be available with version 1.3.0. The changes include added fields for Employer Address and Institution Address.

In Mahara 1.2 series the notice is displayed at the top of the page, that Mahara should be upgraded to version 1.3.0 or newer. This notice doesn't affect the usability of the plugin (it just means that there will not be Employer Address field in Employment History form and Institution Address in Education History form) and can be safely ignored.

Europass tab in Profile

The Europass tab contains all the data, that will be included in Europass CV or Europass Language Passport. The data, that user enters elsewhere in Mahara, such as Personal information, Education History, Employment History etc, will be just displayed.

Other data, such as Skills and competences, Driving licence(s), Additional information, Mother tongue(s) and Foreign language(s), can be entered via web forms, provided on Europass tab.

Export Europass tab in My Portfolio

Europass CV or Europass Language Passport can be sent to other people via email. In that case, on should export his/her Europass CV or Europass Language Passport. This can be achieved, using Export Europass tab in My Portfolio.

Blocktypes

The plugin contains four different blocktypes, that allow showing your Europass data inside Mahara Views.

• europasscv: is a blocktype to show your entire Europass CV as a view in Mahara.
  NB. Please, use one column view for this.
• europasslp: is a blocktype to show your entire Europass Language Portfolio as a view in Mahara.
  NB. Please, use one column view for this.
• europassfield: is a blocktype to show any of the Europass form fields (driving licence(s), skills and competences, additional info, annexes, mother tongue(s) or foreign language(s)).
• mylanguages: this is a blokctype to show your language knowledge. You can choose to show your mother tongue(s) or the foreign language(s), that you master.

Using Europass plugin

Requirements

You'll have to install and enable xml and xsl support on your webserver, for this plugin to work.

"As of PHP 5.0, libxml and libxslt libraries, and DOM extension are built in the PHP installation. The XSLT extension is also included by default, but may be disabled in your particular server configuration."

If your xsl support is disabled, you can enable it by following these steps at the webpage http://flex.sys-con.com/node/200299?page=0,3. There are instructions to enable the XSLT extension on Windows, Linux or Mac OS X.

A copy of that article is also available here, in this wiki.

Installing Europass plugin

Instructions for installing Eruopass plugin for Mahara:

1. Download appropriate version of Europass plugin.
2. Extract (unzip) the contents of that archive (zip) file to {mahara_root}/artefacts/ folder on your webserver - this will create folder {mahara_root}/artefacts/europass.
3. Log in to Mahara as an administrator (with admin rights).
4. Go to Site Administration.
5. Go to Administer Extensions.
6. Find Plugin type: artefact section, find europass and click Install link.
7. Refresh the page by pressing F5 key on your keyboard
8. Find Plugin type: blocktype section and install all four blocktypes
   • Find europass/europasscv and click Install link
   • Find europass/europassfield and click Install link
   • Find europass/europasslp and click Install link
   • Find europass/mylanguages and click Install link

Upgrading Europass plugin

Instructions for upgrading Eruopass plugin for Mahara:

1. Download appropriate version of Europass plugin.
2. Delete the folder {mahara_root}/artefacts/europass and it's contents.
3. Extract (unzip) the contents of that archive (zip) file to {mahara_root}/artefacts/ folder on your webserver - this will create folder {mahara_root}/artefacts/europass.
4. Log in to Mahara as an administrator (with admin rights).
5. Go to Site Administration.
6. Click the button Run upgrade to perform the upgrade of the plugin.

Showing your CV or Language Passport

For showing entire or only a part of Europass data, blocktypes can be used.

For showing entire Euroasss CV, the europasscv block can be used. Please, be aware, that the table, used for showing Europass CV is quite wide, so use one column view. For showing entire Euroasss Language Passport, the europasslp block can be used. Again, be aware, that the table, used for showing Europass Language Passport is quite wide, so use one column view.

For showing only a part of Europass data, the europassfield block can be used. The Europass Artefact, that will be shown, is chosen.

For showing only language knowledge (mother tongue(s) or foreign language(s)), the mylanguages block can be used.

Exporting your CV or Language Passport

When exporting Europass data, few things have to be set/chosen:

• Language: one of the official Europass languages for Europass CV or Europass Language Passport. Useful for exporting to language of the employer, eg.: I'm Slovenian and I wish to work in London, so I'll export my Europass CV to English language.
• Document: the type of the exported document - select Europass CV or Europass Language Passport.
• Photograph: which is only available with Europass CV and will be embeded only in Europass XML.
• File: the format of export file, generated by Europass Web Service. Available are the following options: PDF+Europass XML, Microsoft Word, OpenDocument, HTML and Europass XML.
• Date: select date format, used internally in Mahara and output date format, which will be used in exported file. All internal dates in Mahara should be written in the same manner.

Updating your CV or Language Passport

If you already have Europass CV or Europass Language Passport in XML or PDF+XML format, you can upload it to Europass Online Tools Webform and update your data. Your personal data will be automatically inserted in the system.

Below are the direct links, for uploading and updating your Europass CV or Europass Language Passport:

• Update Europass CV
• Update Europass Language Passport

Printing Europass folder

Europass cover page and folder are available at addresses below:

• Europass Cover Page (for printing)
• Europass Folder (for printing)

Translating Europass plugin

The official Europass webform labels and help files were used, so majority of language strings are already translated into following languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

All help files are already available in all those languages.

Most lines with untranslated strings or translated, but not checked string are marked with the characters /**/ at the beginning of that line. When translator translates and/or checks the string, he/she should remove /**/ from the beginning of the translated line.

Translators should double check language names (lines from 312 to 399). These languages were not "officially" translated by Europass. Actualy they were "left out" by Europass - beacuse Europass filtered ISO 639 list of languages. Most of there translations were found on wikipedia... so again: translators should double check these translations.

None of the four blocktypes is translated. So please copy entire en.utf folder within blocktype's lang folder and rename it to your language (e.g. de.utf8 for German, es.utf8 for Spanish ...) and translate all lines. There are about 5 lines for each blocktype.

Language	Translation complete	Translator*
Bulgarian (Български)	in progress	Georgi Yadkov
Catalan (català)	yes	Joan Queralt
Croatian (Hrvatski)	no
Czech (čeština)	no
Danish (Dansk)	no
Dutch (Nederlands)	in progress	Frans Hoeberechts
English	yes	Gregor Anželj
Estonian (eesti keel)	no
Finnish (suomi)	no
French (Français)	no
German (Deutsch)	yes	Heinz Krettek
Greek (Ελληνικά)	no
Hungarian (magyar)	no
Icelandic (Íslenska)	no
Italian (Italiano)	in progress	Fiorentino Sarro
Latvian (Latviešu)	no
Lithuanian (Lietuvių)	no
Maltese (Malti)	no
Norwegian (Norsk)	no
Polish (polski)	no
Portugese (Português)	no
Romanian (Română)	no
Slovak (slovenčina)	no
Slovenian (slovenščina)	yes	Gregor Anželj
Spanish (Español)	yes	Mari Cruz García
Swedish (Svenska)	no
Turkish (Türkçe)	no

Languages in bold are officially supported by Europass.

* Author of most of the contents of language files/translations:

© European Union, 2002-2010 (http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu)
Please see: http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/europass/home/botnav/LegalNotice.csp

Subpages

• Configuring and Testing PHP Servers for XSL Support