Best practice forum (Archived)

Approval Workflow for External Course

Hi all,

What is the best way to manage the workflow (i.e. managerial sign off) for the management of one of "my" staff members wanting to submit a request to do external training (i.e. outside of our Totara LMS).

It might mean that our staff member wants to suggest a course themselves (as well as provide cost and time requirements). Or we might have a selection of external courses already in the LMS that staff members want to put themselves forward for.

This way I, as a manager, will be able to see which of my staff wants to do training that needs approval.

How is this done in Totara?

Andrew

Permalink | Reply

Hi, Andrew

There is some functionality in Totara called "Course request" which you might find suitable use for the submission of course/training requests and capturing information. You could potentially create a category called "Training requests" or "Course requests" where these submissions could go to, but I'm not aware of a way to report or notify managers unless the "Approve course creation" capability is enabled for the Staff Manager role.

In 2.7 we also introduced the ability to declare interest in face-to-face sessions. Using this functionality, users could declare interest in training where session dates are not yet confirmed or no spaces are available. Combined with the "Face-to-face interest" report source (or embedded report), you could grant access to the Staff Manager role access to this report. See the Declare interest in session documentation on our help site for further information.

Another alternative is to submit some further detail regarding the above via our "Suggest features" forum and we'll review and prioritise your request accordingly. It also provides other subscribers and partners the opportunity to collaborate.

I hope that helps!

Thanks.

Tom

Permalink | Show parent | Reply

Hi Tom,

I searched online and only found this document describing the "course request" feature in Totara:

http://help.totaralms.com/Course_Request.htm

I assume there is no "template" associated with the "course request" feature, right?

If so, it would be nice if this become a feature request.

For Andrew, maybe you could try to use Google Forms as a work-around. Hope this helps!

Permalink | Show parent | Reply

Hi, Wen

You are correcting in saying that there is no template associated with the course request feature and it is not customisable via the user interface.

Thanks.

Tom

Permalink | Show parent | Reply

Thanks Tom!

Can we add that as a "feature request" in the Totara bug tracker? I think it would be a really nice feature to have (and allow site admins to customize the "training intake" form/template)... Thanks!

Permalink | Show parent | Reply