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Best practice forum (Archived)
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Re: Questions regarding Exceptions reports and Program assignment
Hi Amir
The first issue is normal behaviour - you should be able to resolve the completion unknown and time allowance messages by going into the Exceptions Report Tab (this tab should be highlighted and the number of exceptions displayed)
Select the issues you are trying to resolve - in this case All completion time unknown issues
Set the action as set realistic time allowance and click the Proceed with this action button.
This should resolve all of the exceptions and mean there are no messages sent to you and mean that everyone will be assigned to the program as required (this means issue 2 will be resolved)
Why are there completion time unknown messages? I think this is because you are basing the assignment on a date that is unknown eg first login is not known if the user hasn't logged in. The same could happen if you base on a set number of days after a course completion if the person hasn't completed the course.
Craig
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Re: Questions regarding Exceptions reports and Program assignment
Hi Amir
Thanks for the questions - the triggers and terminology area bit unclear and it would be good to clarify this.
The completion unknown alert happens when someone hasn't logged in and is more about the start date not being known rather than the completion date not known (although one leads to the other)
The set realistic time allowance is more about setting the start date for completion to the current date rather than setting a realistic time allowance. Do you think this would be better terminology.
Why is a realistic time allowance required to be set again? You don't need to set this as no action is taken until this is triggered . You would only do this if you didn't want to be alerted everytime a new exception is added to the programs exception report - do you think an option to turn this off would be a good idea.
The final issue of the user not being assigned to the program is probably because they are one of the exceptions for the program assignments.
The manual option to run the program cron job sounds a good idea but this may have been made like this way for some other reason.
Hope this helps.
Craig
Re: Questions regarding Exceptions reports and Program assignment
Hi Amir,
Regarding the 'completion unknown' exception if completion is relative to first login and someone hasn't logged in yet - the current behaviour is to generate an exception but I think it would make more sense to wait until the user has logged in, then set the completion date at that point. We have an open bug to fix that and will get to it as soon as we can.
Regarding the 'realistic time allowance' exceptions - if you look on the 'Content' tab you'll see that each course set has a time allowance associated with it. When a completion date is assigned, it is compared against these time allowances for that program and if the user has less than the overall time allowance then an exception is generated. The idea here is that you can specify a minimum amount of time that's needed, and you'll be informed via an exception if anyone has been allowed less time than that. If you don't want this sort of exception to show up, just set the time allowance to 0 days.
Finally, Craig is correct regarding exceptions - when a user has an active exception for a particular program then the program won't show up for them until the exception has been resolved. The solution here is to resolve any exceptions as soon as they arise.
Simon
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Re: Questions regarding Exceptions reports and Program assignment
Hi Chris,
Yes, I agree, that's why I said "I think it would make more sense to wait until the user has logged in, then set the completion date at that point. We have an open bug to fix that and will get to it as soon as we can."
That should give you the behaviour you describe.
Simon
Re: Questions regarding Exceptions reports and Program assignment
Hi Chris,
Just to let you know we fixed this issue in 1.1.9 (which was released 26th January).
So now, if you set "complete within X days of first login", then add a new user, then they login, their completion date will get set to the correct date.
Simon
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Re: Questions regarding Exceptions reports and Program assignment
Hi Luke
I have tried this on the demo site which has the latest version of Totara and set up a program with one year to complete a set of courses and assigned an individual with 1 years to complete from login.
I logged in as the individual and enrolled in the course and didn't get an exception reports.
Can you check under notifications in the site admin what version of Totara you have.
Craig
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Re: Questions regarding Exceptions reports and Program assignment
Hi Luke,
I think I understand what's happening here.
The way that the "time allowance" exception works is it looks at how long the user has to complete the course (based on the completion field set on the assignments tab). In this case you've set it to "1 year of first login".
It then compares that to how long a user should be allowed to complete the program, which is taken from the "time allowance" field on the "content" tab. *
The idea is that you say how long the material should take on the content tab, then specific how long users have on the assignment tab, and you'll get exceptions in cases where the user doesn't seem to have enough time.
So in this case, you should change the time allowance on the content tab to reflect the minimum time you think someone would need to complete the course, which should avoid the exception being raised.
Hope that makes sense!
Simon
* actually it's more complicated than that - it adds up the maximum time allowance from each courseset to get a total maximum time, then adds one week to that.
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Re: Questions regarding Exceptions reports and Program assignment
It's not checking if they are beyond the required date (i.e. overdue). The system is identifying if users were given sufficient time to complete the program, and generating an exception if they aren't given enough time. The reason this is necessary is that completion dates can be different for different users, because some of the criteria are dynamic.
For example:
Program with total time allowance of 3 months to complete.
3 users assigned using the completion date "within 4 months of first login":
User 1 - first logged in yesterday
User 2 - first logged in three months ago
User 3 - never logged in
User 1 would get their completion date set to 4 months from yesterday, which would give them more than 3 months to complete, so no problems
User 2 would get their completion date set to 4 months from three months ago - so in one months time. This doesn't give them 3 months to complete the program, so an exception would be raised to warn the administrator they didn't have enough time.
User 3 wouldn't have a completion date set yet. When they first login their completion date will be set to 4 months from that day (which is fine, so no exception will be generated).
I also agree that we should give a better explanation of how these settings work. If my explanation here clarifies things I can try and put something similar in the help file - otherwise let me know and I'll try again!
I also agree the way the total program time is calculated from the individual course time allowances is a bit weird and could definitely be improved.
Simon
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Re: Questions regarding Exceptions reports and Program assignment
Hi Amir,
If a user first logged in 2 months ago then it would trigger an exception, if you had set the time allowance to 3 months. If you thought that 1 month was enough time to complete the course, then you should set the time allowance to 1 month or less, in which case he would not have got an exception.
I don't think the purpose of exceptions is to tell the admin that someone is late with their assignment - that should be handled using program messages as it is more relevant to the user and their manager. The reason for the exceptions is so the admin knows that a program assignment they have made is not realistic for some or all of the users.
Does that make sense?
Simon
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Re: Questions regarding Exceptions reports and Program assignment
Hi Amir,
The time allowance on the content tab is intended to refer to the first one: the MINIMUM required time to actually do the program.
The "allowed time to complete the program since a user completion time tracking was triggered" is what the "period" section of the completion criteria on the assignments tab is for.
I'll talk to Bob about how we can clarify the language to explain that better on the site.
Simon
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Re: Questions regarding Exceptions reports and Program assignment
I'm not completely sure I understand what you're saying, but it seems to me that what you are talking about is a warning to the user that they are running out of time, which seems much more suited to the "program messages" functionality.
If you look at the messages tab, you can already add a "program due" or "program overdue" message, and include a custom time when that message should go out relative to the user's completion date. That goes to the learner (and optionally the manager) which makes sense in that context.
The exceptions functionality is only designed for the administrator (person setting up the program), so they can tell if the actions they performed while setting it up were incorrect. Since they may add several thousand users at a time, I don't believe it would be possible for them to track individuals and if they are on target even if they wanted to.
Simon
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