Best practice forum (Archived)

Potential changes to face-to-face direct enrolment / enhanced catalog

As part of some current work on improvements within the face-to-face module, I discovered an issue that will require some changes to current behaviour to resolve. I'm starting this discussion to gather any feedback on my proposed solution.

Background

In 2.7 we introduced the "Face-to-face direct enrolment" plugin, which provides a way to simplify face-to-face enrolment by combining course enrolment and session sign-up into a single step. As part of that work direct enrolment was integrated into the "enhanced" course catalog, allowing you to "expand" a course (by clicking the blue 'info' icon) and sign up to sessions directly from the enhanced catalog.

Another feature added in 2.7 was the ability to define custom fields for face-to-face sign-up. This allows the admin to define one or more fields that the attendee sees on the sign-up form.

The problem

The bug we discovered (TL-8284) is that the direct enrolment interface doesn't provide a way for the user to populate the custom sign-up fields when enrolling. In particular if the admin defines a "required" custom field that must be populated, the requirement is ignored when signing up via the direct enrolment plugin.

The main reason for this bug is that the "Face-to-face direct enrolment" plugin implements its own interface for signing up for sessions that is independent of the normal sign-up process. This means any change has to be implemented in multiple places which leads to bugs such as this one.

The proposed solution

From an interface consistency and code point of view it makes much more sense for there to be a single implementation of the sign-up form, which can be re-used by the normal sign-up process and the direct enrolment plugin. This could be implemented as follows:

Replace the custom direct enrolment form with the table displayed on the "view all sessions" page. This lists every available session with a link to sign-up. If the course contains multiple F2F activities, display the F2F name and sessions table for each one in turn.
Modify the sign-up form page to allow access without being enrolled in cases when the F2F enrolment plugin is enabled.
Once the user successfully completes the sign-up form, enrol them in the course at the same time and display a success message, and return them to the course page.

The main difference between this approach and the current method is that the user would only be able to sign up to a single session initially. Once enrolled in the course they could of course sign-up for additional sessions but there would be no way to select all sessions at once as a single action. This is a consequence of the need to gather sign-up custom field data for each individual session.

Any feedback on this solution or any other ideas greatly appreciated!

Simon

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Seems very sensible, and anything which makes code maintenance simpler for you guys has to be a plus.

Dan

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Not sure about how it would affect the code point of view, but we'd like to enhance the F2F custom sign up fields so that they could be individually selected/un-selected on individual F2F activities. E.g, on a site there might be several custom fields, where only some of those fields are wanted for a specific session (today it's either all fields or no fields).

On a related note, we've built an extended version of the current F2F direct enrolment plugin - but for groups. The purpose of this is to enable a simple direct sign-up process, but where the learner selects a series of sessions (one session per activity) - where the sessions are grouped by assigning them to (normal Totara) groups. The purpose of this is to combine simple signing up with the ability to "keep a group of people together during several sessions" (where the sessions might occur in various places/rooms).

In this solution, the admin can select their preferred F2F custom signup fields they want to use (or not) + that they can set if the field shall be on course level (where the learner only enters into one field - which is copied to all sessions in order to be displayed on participant lists) or at session level (individually per session). That makes sense to us since some personal data (e.g., diet) isn't session specific, while other is (e.g., hotel-booking).

Not sure if this group enrollment is of general interest or would match the current improvements being worked on, but we'd be willing to share it if so. I've attached a guide for the feature (at the end there's some print screens of the learner UI).

//Rickard

Guide - Face-to-face Group Enrolment Plugin.docx

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Hi Rickard,

The "Totara way" to achieve that would be to add support for custom field types to face-to-face. That would allow you to define different types of sessions which have different custom fields associated with them.

we've built an extended version of the current F2F direct enrolment plugin - but for groups. The purpose of this is to enable a simple direct sign-up process, but where the learner selects a series of sessions (one session per activity) - where the sessions are grouped by assigning them to (normal Totara) groups. The purpose of this is to combine simple signing up with the ability to "keep a group of people together during several sessions" (where the sessions might occur in various places/rooms).

I think we may have solved this for you in the Assets and room improvements spec. We are moving room assignment to the individual date level, which would allow you to sign up to a group of dates while also allowing them to be in different rooms.

Simon

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Hi Simon,

Thanks for the reply, custom field types for F2F would be very welcome! And yes, the improved asset management features look very promising.

//Rickard

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I would expect the user to be able to browse courses and sessions. Once they find the one they want when they click to enroll a form would appear with input fields (admin should be able to define what fields are required and optional). Once the form is submitted they are enrolled in the session(s) (if multi-day course it would enroll in the multi day sessions)

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