Best practice forum (Archived)

Report content constraints

Hi,

We have a several situations in our organisation where trainers are responsible for managing all staff training across multiple 'organisations', however they can only see training data for staff who belong in the same organisation as them. For example, Sue Smith is a Trainer that manages training for Facility A and Facility B, however because Sue belongs to Facility A she can only view Facility A data. Facility A and B are on the same organisational hierarchy level and Sue is not a manager of these staff.

Is there a solution in the pipeline that will solve the above issue? Perhaps the Dashboard coming in V 2.7? We're currently using 2.6.3.

Thanks

Michelle

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Hi Michelle,

Would using the Access tab in a user generated report do the trick?

cheers,

George.

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Thanks George.

The trainer can access and view the report. The issue is the limited data shown in the report. Can I just clarify though that you are referring to assigning the required role the permission to view the report in the report's Access tab? If so, then yes, this is setup and she can view the report.

I understand why she can only view staff data for one facility - the 'Content Controls' setup in the report is driven by the hierarchy of our organisation structure. To recap, our org structure looks similar to the below:

> Stream 1 (top level in hierarchy)
>> Facility A (2nd level in hierarchy)
   >> Facility B (2nd level in hierarchy)
>> Facility C (2nd level in hierarchy
    >> Facility D (2nd level in hierarchy)
    >> Facility E (2nd level in hierarchy)
    >> Etc .... for another 35+ facilities

(Then we have another 3 top level streams with their own hierarchy structure)

The trainer is aligned to Facility A in Totara, however she manages training for Facility A and Facility B and therefore wants to view report data for all staff in Facility A and Facility B. She can do this in individual courses, but needs to look at a combined staff and combined course view, via reports.

I haven't been able to find a way to share this data with her without manually generating and emailing the reports to her myself, being the Admin/Site Manager. The closest I've been able to get is to show data for staff in Facility A, by selecting the following report 'Content Controls' ~ 'Show records from all staff in the user's (current) organisation' and 'Staff at or below the user's organisation'.

In most cases the 'Content Controls' in the reporting module satisfy our reporting requirements, however there are some situations where we need the flexibility to select the exact criteria (data) needed in the report, i.e. Facility A and Facility B staff.

Thanks, Michelle

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Hi Michelle,

Thanks for the clarification. Looking at the structure of your hierarchy I agree its not possible, "The trainer is aligned to Facility A in Totara, however she manages training for Facility A and Facility B" is the issue here I think. So - the obvious solution would be to create another tier in the hierarchy for the trainer to sit in, or to merge A&B - but I understand this might not be the most practical solution. The only other option would be to let the trainers see all the data (by setting the Access tab) and let them use filtering to narrow it down, again this isnt an entirely satisfactory solution. Is there any way to use a positional hierarchy too?

regards,

George.

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Appreciate your reply George, thanks. I don't think restructuring our org hierarchy is an option unfortunately and the existing position hierarchy won't support what we need to do either (this comes from our HR system).

I have considered giving access to all data and I would do this if there was the ability within the report in Totara to select the 2 organisations you wish to filter (currently you can only select 1 at a time), without having to export to excel to filter. I find when there's too much data to Export, the export fails (this may be due to an issue on our end, not sure) requiring you to export one organisation at a time into Excel and then merging the multiple Excel documents into one.

Would it be worthwhile submitting a feature request or will the upcoming dashboard or other features planned for 2.7 provide a solution?

Thanks, Michelle

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Hi Michelle,

You could submit a feature request, and we could get a handle on how much demand there is for this. Have you considered using Organisation Types as a workaround in the meantime?

regards,

George.

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Hi George,

I'll keep Organisation Types in mind as a filtering workaround, however I'm concerned about sharing all training data with staff who really shouldn't have access to it. They should only be seeing data that's relevant to the learner's they manage, not the entire organisation.

I'll submit a feature request and if there's demand, that's great. In the meantime I'll be starting discussions with our Data Warehouse manager to build some reporting outside Totara.

Thanks for your help.

Michelle

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