Best practice forum (Archived)

About T-13071 in recent release

Hi there how are you doing?

Just few quick questions about the changeset T-13071 in the recent release (2/18/2015):

T-13071 Created separate report sources for certification completion/overview

The logic in program reports was not up to the task of displaying
certifications, so they have been moved into their own report sources. The
"Program Overview" report source is now mirrored by "Certification
Overview", and "Program Completion" by "Certification Completion". If you
are currently using program reports to display certifications then you will
need to create the certification versions of the reports, where you will
find all the same functionality plus some new certification specific fields
and functionality.

1. So what does it really mean by "the logic in program reports was not up to the task of displaying certifications?" Can someone please elaborate this a little bit?

2. It also mentioned that "they have been moved into their own report sources," does this mean major database table changes? If we are already heavily relying on the current "program completion report" (we like to see both program and certifications showing up in the same "program completion report," would this recent change have major impact on our existing reports?

3. When you said "you will find all the same functionality plus some new certification specific fields and functionality," what are those new functionality?

BTW, we are running 2.5.13.1 but will be upgrading to 2.5.23.1 soon.

Thanks!

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Hey Wen,

1) Certifications are basically Programs with some extra functionality added, so any report that displayed Programs and Certifications together mostly worked but was limited to what Programs could do and wouldn't show any Certification specific information. Specifically the Programs logic became an issue when applied to Ceritification coursesets and progress, Programs simply assumed every courseset was required and showed everything, calculating the users progress based off of coursesets completed / coursesets in the Program. A Certification however is considered complete if you completed all of the certification course sets even if you haven't yet completed the recertification coursesets (as long as your recertification window has not yet opened), so a Certifications progress was not displaying correctly until a user had both certified and recertified.

2) Database tables are unaffected, however programs and certifications will no longer display in the same report. This would be very easy to revert in a customisation, in /totara/program/rb_sources/rb_source_program_overview.php inside the define_sourcewhere() function there is a line like this:

63 // Exclude certifications (they have their own source).
64 $sourcewhere .= ' AND program.certifid IS NULL';

All you would have to do is comment out or remove line #64 and certifications would display in the programs overview report again (the same goes for the program completion report), however the problems from (#1) would still be evident and you would lack the improvements from (#3).

3) This refers mainly to certification specific columns that weren't available in the programs versions of the reports, for example: time of recertification window opening, time of expiry, the current certification path (certification vs recertification), renewal status.

Cheers,
David

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Thanks David! You the man!

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Hi David,

By the way, just to be sure, you mentioned that the database tables are unaffected in this case and it's very easy to revert in a customisation. You then mentioned that if we comment out line #64, certifications would display in the "program overview" report again. How about the "program completion" report? Is it the same case? Thanks!

The reason why I'm asking this is because we have some downstream local automated process that is heavily relying on the "program completion" report, and we actually like the way it is now (in 2.5.23.1) which the "program completion" report would include both "program completion" and "certification completion" (especially we are in the process to convert more and more "one-time" type of training "programs" into automated annual recurring training "certifications"). I would assume that if by commenting out line #64, the "program completion" report will then again include the "certification completion," then it would only include the "latest" certification completion record (if some users completed the same certification many times in the past few years, etc.). Is this assumption correct? Please let me know, thanks!

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Hey Wen,

Yep the program completion report works in the same way, you'll see the same line around the same place in the completions source which is excluding the certifications. The problem is that certification completion isn't really the same as program completion so I'm not sure about how well it would work, one of the reasons we split certifications off into their own report sources was because they weren't making the distinction between the paths of the certification (cert/recert) for the progress and courseset columns. It shouldn't be any worse than it was before we split them, but I would recommend checking all the columns/filters you are using are working correctly for the various states of certifications.

Cheers,
David

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