Best practice forum (Archived)

F2F Sessions and Certifications

We're slowly getting our heads around Certifications when used with F2F sessions - can someone at Totara tell me whether this is expected behaviour?

1) 1 F2F activity with 2 sessions. Rules set as "course completed when any session is marked fully attended". Learner signs up to one session, cancel from it, then signs up to the other and attendance is marked as fully attended. Should completion date be set as the date of the session they've attended (we think it should), or does it default to "course expected completion date" or "today" (as it seemed to in our test)

2) We have a certification based on a course with F2F sessions.Certification completion seems to be based on date on which we manually marked session completion whereas it should be based on latest F2F session date in the course. I wonder whether this is a hangover from the previous problem with F2F session dates? For example, a Certificate contains 1 course, which has 1 F2F activity with 1 session on 1st March 2013. The certificate needs to be refreshed 12 months from completion. Learner is marked on 1st November 2013 as fully attending the session. In our test, the Certification appears to be due on 1st November 2014, NOT 1st March 2014. (it should be 1st March - or possibly 28th Feb).

Thank you!

Tim

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Just wanted to add that I am currently trying to figure out this as well... with the added item of also retroactively indicating completion/certification using the prior learning feature. I'm having a number of issues, so I look forward to seeing the response here.

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Hi folks,

Theres a bit of discussion here: https://totara.community/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=17782#p13582

"If you use the new activity criteria then activity completion for the f2f will use the session end date instead of the date the session was marked as attended."

hope this helps,

George.

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Hi Tim,

Could you provide the exact steps to reproduce issue 1 including your site version and server details? I tried the same thing based on your instructions and it worked as expected for me (displayed the completion date as the date of the session they've attended).

Item 2 sounds like it would be related so we'll look at that one once we've got to the bottom of the first issue. Certainly I would expect it to behave the way you want it to.

Simon

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Hi Simon,

still struggling with this. I've attached some screenshots of the set-up. It's a clean 2.5.1 site - i.e. not upgraded from anything else, no customisations. LAMP server, Totara server environment checks all pass OK.

Quick feedback appreciated.

Thanks,

Tim

Set-up.ppt

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Thank you Tim, I've managed to reproduce this now (edit: I've reproduced part 2 of your problem).

Sorry I originally thought you were talking about the course completion date but now I see you were referring to the certification completion date.

We will get someone to look at this straight away with the aim of getting a patch in for the next 2.5 release (due 10th December).

Simon

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One quick follow up - it appears that we do record the correct date in the database, which is why the "Window opens" and "Expiration date" are both correct, we are just displaying the wrong date in the report.

Simon

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Excellent, thanks very much Simon.

I think part 1 is actually the same issue (that will be solved with your patch) and due to a confusion about dates - enrolling/cancelling/re-enrolling was what we first tried, to get the certificate completion date problem. On re-looking at this, the course completion date behaves correctly, so I think no further investigation needed.

Tim

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As mentioned in my other post I've reproduced part 2, but I still can't reproduce part 1, are you able to provide step-by-step instructions for the first issue?

Simon

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