Best practice forum (Archived)

Amending or adding new f2f notifications.

 
Steph Wild
Amending or adding new f2f notifications.
by Steph Wild - Friday, 5 December 2014, 6:36 AM
Group Learn Site Administrator

Hi,

We are in a position whereby we want to edit some f2f notification templates however I understand that if I do this and re-apply them to existing activities then Totara will resend these notifications to anyone who has ever been booked on the course regardless of there current attendance status e.g. Cancelled, Fully Attended.

I'm struggling to understand why Totara would resend notifications for sessions which happened in the past or indeed to those staff who have cancelled from sessions in the future. 

In some instances we have thousands of learners who have been booked on the same activity over the last few years.  Is anyone else struggling with this?

Regards
Steph

Wen Hao Chuang
Re: Amending or adding new f2f notifications.
by Wen Hao Chuang - Friday, 5 December 2014, 10:21 AM
 

+1 on this, the notification and the message logic sometimes is driving us crazy too.

me
Re: Amending or adding new f2f notifications.
by George Angus - Sunday, 7 December 2014, 3:39 PM
Group Totara

Hi Steph,

Can you provide us with detailed steps to reproduce?

many thanks,

George.

Rob Bloor
Re: Amending or adding new f2f notifications.
by Rob Bloor - Monday, 8 December 2014, 8:42 AM
 

Hi, we are in the situation whereby we want to amend our F2F notifications.  Can you confirm it will re-send them to everyone? If this is the case then we wouldn't want this to happen.

Rob

Tom Ireland
Re: Amending or adding new f2f notifications.
by Tom Ireland - Tuesday, 9 December 2014, 7:30 AM
Group Totara

Hi, everyone

Just to reply collectively on this one. If you select the "Booked > All Booked" option when issuing a face-to-face notification, notifications do indeed go to past booked users as well as future booked users. This has been previously reported, so we are aware of this and we are currently treating this as a high priority feature suggestion.

The feature suggestion to add the ability to send notifications to users booked for future sessions only has been added to our features and enhancements tracker. For future reference the tracker ID is 12795.

A new topic has been created in the Suggest features forum here https://totara.community/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=18159 to provide visibility and allow for further discussion if necessary.

As per Scott's comment in the forum topic, this feature / enhancement request has been deemed high priority and is under consideration for development by Totara core.

This does not indicate a delivery commitment. Development of the functionality is subject to further prioritization and resource availability.

Development priorities are reviewed regularly. If you wish to add anything further to this request, please use the forum thread noted above. If you wish to escalate your market need for this functionality, please contact your Totara Solution Partner or Totara Channel Partner Manager.

Thanks.

Tom

? ?
Re: Amending or adding new f2f notifications.
by ? ? - Monday, 22 December 2014, 4:33 AM
 

Hi All

We, at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, have just had to have our system in maintenance mode for a whole week whilst we update our notifications because of this system quirk. 

It's not something I really want to have to do again.  We had to take out 'normal' email addresses and put in false ones, update all the notifications, wait until they'd all come through to our generic email address that we'd sent them to and then re instate the 'normal' email addresses. 

Now bear in mind we have 7,500 or so staff and this really isn't acceptable, so the sooner Totara do something about this the better; it's not really good customer service I don't think if every time you want to change something you have to either take the system down into maintenance mode and do as above or just let emails go out to everyone!!!

Come on Totara, do something about this quickly!!!

me
Re: Amending or adding new f2f notifications.
by George Angus - Monday, 22 December 2014, 1:07 PM
Group Totara

Hi Rita,

We are aware of this issue and have raised its priority, we hope to have some progress on it early in the new year.

regards,

George.

? ?
Re: Amending or adding new f2f notifications.
by ? ? - Thursday, 22 January 2015, 6:02 AM
 

Thanks George; much appreciated.

Rita

? ?
Re: Amending or adding new f2f notifications.
by ? ? - Tuesday, 30 December 2014, 3:58 PM
 

Hi all,

As previously noted 12795 in the Suggest Features forum is a high priority feature and a solution to provide more granular control of recipients based on status and session timing is currently being investigated.

Below is a summary of the current behavior for 'All booked' recipients.

System notifications (Type = Auto)

These are all triggered by events (e.g. enrolment, cancellation, etc.) and editing the notification content will not resend any of these notifications.  Recipient criteria is predefined and cannot be changed.

Send later notifications (Type = Scheduled)

Sending of these notification types is triggered by the cron as opposed to events and they can be scheduled for x time before start of session or x time after end of session.  Recipients can be selected based on status.

For x time before start of session scheduling, notifications will be sent for future sessions (based on when the cron runs) where the time until the start of the session is less than the scheduled timeframe.

For x time after end of session scheduling, notifications will be sent for past sessions where the time since the end of the session is greater than the scheduled timeframe.

Editing the notification content after the notification has been sent is allowed and will not trigger a resend of these notifications.  On the next cron run if recipients are 'All booked', the notification will be sent to any learners it has not already been sent to for a given session.

Send now notification (Type = Instant)

Sending of these notification types is triggered by the cron as opposed to events.  There is no timeframe reference and if recipients are 'All booked', the notification will be sent to all learners in all sessions past and future.  Providing more control over this behavior is what 12795 is about.

These types of notifications cannot be edited after creation - they must be duplicated (i.e. a new notification created) and any desired edits made in the new notification prior to saving.  On the next cron run if recipients are 'All booked' the new notification will be sent to all learners in all sessions past and future.

Note that all notification types can be made inactive using the eye icon in the list view or unticking the status checkbox in the edit view.  Inactive notifications will not be sent (for cron based notifications they must be inactive when the cron runs).

If you are experiencing an issue with the above described behavior that is not covered by the 12795 scenario please raise a support ticket and we will investigate further.

Regards,

Scott

Steph Wild
Re: Amending or adding new f2f notifications.
by Steph Wild - Wednesday, 7 January 2015, 1:35 AM
Group Learn Site Administrator

Hi Scott/George,

Thanks for this detailed information regarding how Totara deals with edited emails.  I'll have a test on our system now I understand how it is supposed to work and let you know how I get on.

Many thanks

Steph