Best practice forum (Archived)

A few questions regarding 2.4

 
Amir Elion
A few questions regarding 2.4
by Amir Elion - Tuesday, 30 April 2013, 4:53 AM
 

I know 2.4 has just been released today - congrats to the dev team!

I have a few initial question regarding some of the new features.

  1. Face to face timezones - is it possible to turn this off if an orgranization is in a single timezone and does not need to set a timezone for each training / does not wish to display this on the sessions?
  2. Learning plans improvements and user-supplied evidence in Learning Plans - is it possible for other users (Admins, New roles) to add an external evidence on an employee's record of learning or is it possible only for the learner/their direct manager?
    • I was able to use "Login as" this user and then go to My Learning > Record of learning and add an evidence item, but is there a way qithout Login As?
    • Is it possible to update external evidence items for mutliple users at once using the new Ability to bulk create learning plans for all users within an audience?

That's it for starters....

:-)

Daniel Bond
Re: A few questions regarding 2.4
by Daniel Bond - Tuesday, 30 April 2013, 6:32 AM
Group Most helpful contributor 2023

Good questions, would definitely be interested in the answers.

Also, if we're asking questions about 2.4, is there a rough estimate as to when sandpit.totaralms.com will be upgraded so that those of us who don't have a testing environment ourselves and are holding off on upgrading for the moment might try out the new features? Suspect that might lead to one or two more questions as people start to use it...

David Curry (Core Developer)
Re: A few questions regarding 2.4
by David Curry (Core Developer) - Tuesday, 30 April 2013, 2:23 PM
Group Totara

Hey Guys,

Timezones: I don't think there is a way to turn off or hide timezones, I'll have a chat to the person who developed it and see what he has to say.

Learning Plans: The way I would recomend doing this is going through My Team > User - Records > Other Evidence, but that would only work for the direct manager. If you are a site admin or someone with or someone with high enough permissions to do this but not the users manager, then loginas is probably the only way to go. Though that is more of a work around as really only the users manager or the user themselves should be adding evidence for the user.

Sandpit: That's a good idea, I've passed it along and sandpit should be upgraded in the near future.

Amir Elion
Re: A few questions regarding 2.4
by Amir Elion - Thursday, 2 May 2013, 11:58 AM
 

No need to actually Login as the user it seems.

I was able as admin to build an evidence repopt. Then when I set up on evidence as a user I was able to see it on the report then also edit as admin. Intereastingly, when I finished adding it, I was able to add another evidence item for that user. The link was: totara/plan/record/evidence/index.php?userid=4 - so basically, if one knows the user id, you could see their record of learning evidence tab and then add and evidence item.

I think it would be more useful if a link to users evidence items tab could be added to some admin block or report to search user then add evidence items to them.

Amir

Ciaran Irvine (Core Developer)
Re: A few questions regarding 2.4
by Ciaran Irvine (Core Developer) - Tuesday, 30 April 2013, 2:41 PM
 

Timezones were added to Facetoface sessions in 2.2.14, so it isn't a 2.4-specific feature.

 

It was a much-requested feature and was necessary to resolve quite a few long-standing bugs with times. Even if you are only ever in one timezone the old Facetoface still had issues when it came to calculating times across Daylight Savings boundaries. It does default to whatever timezone your server is in, and you can override that by setting a specific timezone in Site Administration -> Location -> Location settings.

Amir Elion
Re: A few questions regarding 2.4
by Amir Elion - Tuesday, 30 April 2013, 11:24 PM
 

Hi Ciaran,

Thanks for the reply. You're right I did see it before 2.4

At least for us, many of the clients using Totara are in a single timezone. Even if it does default to server timezone it seems redundant to even show it on all face to face session screen, though as you mentioned it is probably required to handel the issues.

I suggest having a global setting allowing to set all f2f timezone to a default value and allowing to hide this field on session screens.

Thanks,

Amir

Jonathan Newman
Re: A few questions regarding 2.4
by Jonathan Newman - Tuesday, 21 May 2013, 4:51 PM
 

+1 for adding a global F2F plugin setting to determine if timezone options appear on the add/edit sessions page which defaults to unselected. Also the "start time" and "finish time" fields should have a help file that explains that if an Trainer wishes to set the timezone for their sessions, they should contact the Site Administrator and request the timezone setting enabled.

Alternatively, how about a text link labelled "Timezones" to the right of the "start time" and "finish time" time drop-down menus that gets dynamically replaced by the timezone drop-down (similar to the Outlook Calendar's "Timezone" button)? This approach removes the additional timezone field altogether and more closely connects the timezone setting to time settings.

Amir Elion
Re: A few questions regarding 2.4
by Amir Elion - Thursday, 2 May 2013, 3:41 AM
 

More questions:

Part of Chagelog says:

Major improvements to Face-to-face including:
* Ability to create and assign rooms to sessions
* Room, trainer and user conflict management
* Activity and session wide notifications
* Notification templates

I was able to see and try rooms management. 

Would apprerciate explantion about: How are trainers assigned to session? How are there conflicts managed?

Amir Elion
Re: A few questions regarding 2.4
by Amir Elion - Thursday, 2 May 2013, 7:56 AM
 

I am trying out some of the new features on face to face. Additional features seem great with some a number of desired improvements included.

Included below are some questions and possible future feature suggestions.

I've set up sessions, some without a date, some with.

  1. For sessions without date, users can sign up and then appear in the Waitlisted tab. Is it possible to move those users to a different session that already has a date?
  2. For a session with a date, I set a capacity number (of 1 person for testing purpuses), signed up a users, and ticked "allow overbooking" to yes. However, this session is not displayed on the course page. It does allow sign up from the sessions list table if you click "Sign up", though status message says "Booking full" - I would suggest changing the message to "Booking full, overbooking allowed" or something of that sorts.
  3. Again - when people overbook you see them on the waitlisted tab but cannot assign them to a different session. Is this planned?
  4. In take attendance - would be great to be able to bulk mark all "Fully attended" or other state for that matter. Alternatively bulk update attendance like you have bulk upload participants added.

Thanks a lot,

Amir

Amir Elion
Re: A few questions regarding 2.4
by Amir Elion - Monday, 20 May 2013, 12:55 AM
 

Any update on these features and issues?

Russell  Jackson
Re: A few questions regarding 2.4
by Russell Jackson - Thursday, 19 September 2013, 3:49 AM
 

Hi Amir,

Totally agree with the bulk marking of attendance, a select all and actions drop down would really help, some of our courses such as corporate induction can have 200 people on them!

Regards,

Russell

Andy Kirk (Totara)
Re: A few questions regarding 2.4
by Andy Kirk (Totara) - Thursday, 2 May 2013, 9:04 AM
 

Hi Amir,

You can go to Site Admin > plugins > activity modules > face to face

Select Session roles that you want to apply for your face to face sessions e.g. trainer, editing trainer.

Go to your course where the f2f activities and sessions will be.

Settings > Users > enroled users. Then enrol user(s), assigning that given role.

When you create your face session at the bottom of the page is Session roles. check the box next to the name of the trainer.

Then if you go and try to create a session elsewhere at the same time you will get a message to the effect:

This user is already assigned as a 'Trainer' for company induction at 3 May 2013, 11:00 PM to 4 May 2013, 2:00 AM.
Andy Kirk

Once we get the demo site upgraded to 2.4 we will be running some familiarisation sessions for 'What's new in 2.4;

Also later this month, we are running two webinars devoted to face to face functionality. Jonathan Newman, who was involved in the development of some of the new features, will be leading them.

You can view all of our webinar schedule and recordings of previous sessions at https://totara.community/course/view.php?id=114

Thanks,

Andy

Amir Elion
Re: A few questions regarding 2.4
by Amir Elion - Thursday, 2 May 2013, 11:53 AM
 

Thanks Andy

I was able to set the trainers in a session.