Wen,

The general principle of exceptions is they are designed to kick in to warn the program administrator about problems with the program configuration.

Exceptions are created for a specific user, so if you assign an audience with 10 members it is entirely possible for 1 to have an exception and the others not to.

The impact of having an exception is:

1. A new record appears in the "Exception Report" tab for the administrator to deal with.

2. The user is NOT assigned to the program while the exception is active. This includes NOT sending any messages etc.

Unless the exception is dealt with the user should be treated as if they aren't assigned.

There are several different types of exceptions that occur in different circumstances:

1. Time allowance exceptions

On the "Content" tab, coursesets have a "Minimum time required" field which states the shortest time that someone would need to complete that courseset. These values are then used to calculate a total minimum time required for the program by combining the individual minimum times for each courseset (how it is calculated depends on if coursesets have THEN or OR logic between them). In more recent versions we print the "Total minimum time required" at the top of the content tab.

On the "Assignments" tab an admin can specify a completion date, which can either be a specific date, or a date relative to some other criteria.

A time allowance exception occurs when the difference between the completion date and the time the assignment is made is less than the total minimum time required.

An example of this would be:

• Program consists of 1 courseset with a minimum time of 5 days
• Admin assigns user A and sets the completion date to be "Within 10 days of first login"
• Today is 14th October 2014. User A first logged in 1st September 2014.
• Therefore "within 10 days of first login" is equal to 1st Sept + 10 days = 11th Sept for that user
• Since the user's due date is already in the past, they didn't have the minimum time to complete so an exception is thrown for that user.

Now imagine user B was also assigned with the same criteria, but they first logged in on 13th October:

• "Within 10 days of first login" is 13th October + 10 days = 23rd October.
• Today is 14th October so that gives them 9 days to complete
• Minimum time is 5 days so therefore no exception is thrown for user B.
•  

2. Already assigned exceptions

This exception type is thrown if:

1. A user has this program assigned to them via one of their learning plans. The program must have been approved and the learning plan must be active for it to count.
2. They are then assigned to the program via the assignments tab.

The reason for this exception is to let the admin know that they made have already completed the program (so it might not be necessary to assign it to them. Note also that assigned programs will appear under "Required Learning" for the user, whereas programs added via a learning plan do not.

3. Completion time unknown exceptions

This exception can occur if the completion date uses a relative date, but the relative date can't be calculated for that user for some reason. For example, if you used the completion date of "10 days after a specific profile date field", but a particular user did not have any value set for that profile date field then you would get an exception.

4. Duplicate course in certification exceptions

This exception is raised if the user is being assigned to a certification, and the certification contains a course that is also included in another certification that the same user is assigned to. That would be bad because certifications will reset courses when they expire and you shouldn't have the same course being reset for the same user from two different sources.

When an administrator handles exceptions they have several options:

1. Override and add to program. This means "ignore the exception and add them to the program anyway". The user is now treated as a real user like any other user who was assigned without getting an exception. They should receive any program messages that other users would have got at the time when the exception is resolved. In the background the exception still exists it is just marked as "handled". Otherwise it might be recreated again.

2. Dismiss and take no action. This means "remove the exception from the list, and DON'T add them to the program". The user is treated as if they were never assigned. No messages should go out to them. Like 1 the exception needs to be kept to avoid it coming back.

3. In the case of time allowance exceptions, there is one more option: Set realistic time allowance.

If this is selected then the user will be assigned, but their due date will be set to be "date of assignment" PLUS "total minimum time required" PLUS 1 week. This ensures that the user has at least the minimum time that the program should take.

hope this is useful,

cheers,

George.