Best practice forum (Archived) - Program email notifications

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Program email notifications

Hello there,

I've set-up an recurring program that repeats evey 365 days.

Time required to complete the program is 4 weeks. We want to send reminder every week after they register/enroll into the course. It's for a group of dynamic audience.

I've used 'Program Due Message' notifications to set-up the email notifications every week. I wanted to get your confirmation if this is the correct email notification to set-up?

Program Due Message is sent to the learner a set number of days, weeks or months before the learner is due to complete the program. Use ‘Trigger’ to set when the message is sent.

For the testing purposes, I set the email notification to be sent 1 day, however, I didn't receive any notification.

Could you please let me know if this is the correct pocess?

I would greatly appreciate your assistance in this regard.

Thank you,

Madhu M.

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Hello Guys,

Do you see anything missing in the settings in order for the emails not being sent?

I would greatly appreciate your help at the earliest.

Look forward to your email.

Thank you,

Madhu M

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Hi Madhu,

According to your settings the email will be sent out one day before the Program due date, can you check that date? If you want weekly reminders sent out you must make a message for each week - based on say 1 week beofre duedate, two weeks, three weeks etc.

Hope this helps,

regards,

George.

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Dear George:

As per your email request, I would like to know the solution timeline to fix this bug what you discovered.

Could you please let me know if you've any timeline set at this point of time?

Problem with the position start date is the positions are currently flat synched with Oracle ERP database and also it's the combination of both new and the existing users.

If you would have any other options then do let me know. I look forward to your prompt response.

Also, I'm putting the email convesation in this message for our reference.

****************************

Hi Madhu,

My manager has told me to stop providing support via email - it is by the forums only.

https://totara.community/mod/forum/view.php?id=7018

regards,

George.

On 12/11/2013 9:23 p.m., Madhu Moole wrote:

Dear George:

Thank you for your response.

Actually, it's the combination of both existing employees and new employees.

Could you please let me know by when the issue related to the first login will be addressed?

I look forward to your email message.

As always, please let me know if you've any questions or need additional information.

Thank you again,

Madhu M.

From: George Angus [george.angus@totaralms.com]

Sent: Monday, November 11, 2013 5:25 PM
To: Madhu Moole
Subject: Re: Program Completion Criteria

Hi Madhu,

If the training is for new employees then I would suggest that using the Position start date maybe the way forward. I think if you used the forums you may get input from another Totara user who has faced similar circumstances.

regards,

George.

On 11/11/2013 3:45 p.m., Madhu Moole wrote:

Dear George:

Thank you for investigating on this regard.

The users will be added to this dynamic group based on the custom field (Institution).

Rule is:

Audience of all Department ‘Information Technology’ and ‘Grade’ (Institution) where right most digit is > 1. Eg. M2+, T2+, P2+ but none of M1, T1, or P1.

Also, please let me know how quickly this issue can be addressed.

We're already delayed in conducting this training for the new employees. I would appreciate your prompt resolution to this request.

As always, please let me know if you've any questions or need additional information.

Thank you again,

Madhu M.

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Hi Madhu,

This issue will be resolved over the next few months, we have a fair number of other commitments so I couldnt give a precise date Im afraid. If there was some kind of prior course/program the users undertook in order to fulfill the Audience critera (Instition, grade) then that could certainly be used to set a relative time for the Program.

Hope this helps,

George.

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Dear George:

Thank you for your response.

I would like to understand what's the actual issue with this set-up? Are the emails not going to come on time?

Is the issue related to the dynamic audience only or else is it same for the individual users as well?

I've enrolled a user into a course as an individual and I received the test email reminder notification. Could you please elaborate on the issue so that I'm on the same page?

I'm also going to check with the dynamic audience today.

I look forward to your prompt response.

Thank you,

Madhu M.

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Hi Madhu,

The important thing to realise is that your email reminders are sent relative to the completion date of the program for that group of users. The completion date is determined by the choice you make when you press the "Set Completion" link on the Assignments tab. Note that the "time required" which is set on the Content tab is not used to calculate the due date - it represents the minimum time a user would need, as described in the help:

This value indicates a minimum amount of time that a user might realistically be able to complete the course set. It is used to determine if the completion period set on the "assignments" tab is realistic for a particular group of users. If the assignment is not realistic, a "time allowance" exception will be generated and the user will not be assigned to the program until the exception has been resolved.

My understanding is that you want people to have 4 weeks to complete the program, from the time when they are signed up to it. Unfortunately at the moment that option doesn't exist - you can either choose a fixed completion date or a date relative to some other dates (position start date, first login date, date custom field, etc) but not relative to the assignment date.

What George is saying is that until the new feature can be developed, perhaps you can use another date to get the same effect.

Finally the "program due" messages you set up are also sent relative to the completion date, so if you want messages to go out after 1 week you would need to set the due date to be 4 weeks away then create a message to be sent "3 weeks before program is due".

We are hoping to develop the "relative to assignment" option fairly soon so we'll keep you posted with our progress. Be aware though that as a new feature it is possible it will only be included in the current release (2.5). It is possible we might also backport it to 2.4 but this is dependent on the complexity of the feature as described in our policy on backporting features.

Hope that helps!

Simon

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Dear Simon:

I appreciate your detailed information. Thank you.

Yes, I set-up the program with 4 weeks completion with the user 'First Login...' option. The program emails are sent weekly as I created three email notificaitons.

I got the reminder notification as an individual user enrollment. However, I wanted to double check about the audience (for the group of users, the notifications functionality is working fine).

Could you please confirm if the functionality works for the audience (dynamic audience) also same?

Look forward to your email message.

Thank you again,

Madhu M.

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Yes it should work the same for an assigned audience as it would for individuals.

Simon

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Dear Simon:

I wanted to double check with you about the recurring course behavior.

Let's say if we've set-up the recurring program, as per the functioanlity it creates another version of the course and archives the old course. At the same time, the new course is re-assigned to all the users.

Could you please confirm if the reminder notifications that we set-up for the program would still work in the same way?

I believe the answer is 'YES', just wanted to confirm.

I look forward to your response.

Thanks,

Madhu M.

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Guys:

I need to know what's happening with recurring course with individual user assignment and dynamic audience assignement behavior.

According to your earlier communications, both should work in the same behavior, I don't see it in the same way.

Enclosed three images:

1) Prog-Assign-Settings.PNG: Here, I've set-up the course to be compelted within 6 days of their first login for both 'Dynamic Audience' and 'Individual User'

2) Assigned to Audience: Here the 'Due Date' shows for '10 Days' not 6 days as I mention. I beleive it's taking '10 days' from the recurring course that I set-up to (10 days to re-create the course).

3) Assigned to Individual User: Here, it displays the due date as correct '6 days' only.

I'm confused and concerned about the functionality. As per your earlier confirmation, both should work with the same functionality. I'm afraid this may not be the case.

Could you please review and get back to me if there is any issue with the functionality? Shall we go ahead with the manuall enrollment? or Dynamic audience is still the best way? At this point of time, I'm lost.

Looking forward to your prompt response.

Thank you,

Madhu M.

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Hi Madhu,

Can you send me two more screenshots:

The standard user profile page of "Madhu Moole" (e.g. the url [SITEURL]/user/profile.php?id=X where X is the userid)
The stadnard user profile page of the user from screenshot 2

Simon

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Dear Simon:

Please find enclosed screenshot for your reference.

Look forward to your email message.

Thank you,

Madhu M.

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In the enclosed screenshots, the first screen is for the admin account and the second one is for the end-user account. However, both names are with the same name (madhu.moole).

Also, could you please get back to me ASAP on this as I need to know if there's an issue so that we can have a workaround to schedule this training.

Appreciate your support.

Madhu M.

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Hi Madhu,

Were there any exceptions thown, in particular for the user who logged in 5th Nov?

thanks,

George.

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Nope George, no exceptions raised.

I would need to understand what the problem is. It's has been a while to understand and work on this functionality.

I've given all the required details..please investigate on your side and let me know if it's an issue or am I doing something wrong?

I can't wait to start on this training as this has been delayed more than a month for the dynamic audience.

I hope you guys can support me and let me know the timeline if there is any flaw in the workflow.

Look forward to your prompt response.

Thanks,

Madhu M.

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Dear George, Simon:

I didn't hear back anything from you guys yet.

Would you be kind enough to revert back on my query ASAP?

I look forward to your response.

Thank you,

Madhu M.

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Hi Madhu,

Please accept my apologies for the delay in getting back to you. In mitigation can I say I last responded last to you on Friday, 29 November 2013, 4:28 PM, we finished for the weekend at 5pm - New Zealand is a day ahead!

We are having difficulties reproducing this on 2.4.13/2.4.14/2.5.2.

Would it be possible for you to reproduce the steps you have taken on the Sandpit site?

https://sandpit.totaralms.com/

Also I think it would be good if we could get access to your site - would this be possible - you can respond to george.angus@totaralams.com, also could you forward me a copy of your database?

many thanks,

George.

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Dear George:

Thank you for getting back to me. I understand and sorry about pushing things.

I need to check with the client about providing access to you with respect to our site.

However, as per the latest interaction with the client, they're looking for the following:

There are two types of training needs to be scheduled.

Type 1: Yearly recurring courses. There are set of courses employees would need to take, these course are scheduled at different times throughout the year. Employees need to complete the courses with certain time. normally employees need to complete within 2 ~ 6 weeks from the time it is scheduled., How would we automatically schedule these courses, setup audience, schedule start date, schedule completion date.

<<Madhu>>: Create recurring course (with Program) and have the start date of the program on the specific period.. would this meet the requirement? Since I don't see the pre-requisite to complete one course to access other (if we would use the set courses within the program).

Type 2: New employee training. There are set of training courses employees need to complete when employee join NeoPhotonics. How would we schedule these types of courses.

<<Madhu>>: We've two options here, one is to use with the dynamic audience assigned to the program and the other one is with the program start date. Could you please let me know if you see any other option for the new tranings?

I would appreciate your support in this regard.

Thank you for what you do.

Best Regards,

Madhu M.

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Hi Madhu,

No worries.

Type 1: You could schedule the courses in programs which had the appropriate Availablity or Available from settings ie if you wanted the course to repeat from a set date. The Audiences could be set up an all sorts of ways, by position, custom field etc. There are complete by dates within the program settings.

Type 2: New employee could be done with an audience based on position start date or first login used in conjunction with the availability dates. or you could have a new employee position or custom field for example.

regards,

George.

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Thank you for your prompt reply George.

I'm sending the specifications to the client and wanted to check on the Type 1 set-up related quesitons, please review the following notes and my questions at the end.

If you could review my questions and get back to me that would bereally great.

1.Proposed Solution:

1.Create a recurring program with single course (Recurring Course Type)

2.Have the program ‘Start’ and ‘Completion’ date (Program Availability)

For Example: If the course has to be assigned on Dec 03, 2013 to the users, then the start date will be Dec 03, 2013 and the completion date would be Jan 14, 2014 (6 Weeks). Program would be available to the users only in that period.

3.Create an audience (Dynamic/Set Audience)

Based on the requirement, dynamic audiences could be set up in different ways by institution, by position, custom field etc.

Questions or Clarifications Required:

1.Email notifications are sent on the same day when the program is assigned. We need to make sure that the course enrollment notifications has the specific instructions to the users.

<<Madhu's Question:>> The email notifications are sent on the same day. Don't you think the email should be sent only when it's available to the user or based on the start date?

2.About scheduling the course, for the recurring course you may need to assign the dates when the course is re-created. Currently, we’re looking at this functionality behavior and we will keep you posted.

<<Madhu's Question>>: This is a recurring course, will the program availabilty automatically defined by the system when it's recreated? Do let me know.

I look forward to your prompt response.

Thanks,

Madhu M.

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Hi Madhu,

Id use the Availability date to start the program and use the completion date when assigning users to stipulate when it needs to be completed by. The new course will become available when it reoccurs.

There are trigger dates which can be used ie Program due messaging.

The program will always be available after it starts, but the recurring courses will only be available when they recur, and its possible to set completion dates for the learner, so its not relevant the courses are available after the completion date.

hope this is useful,

cheers,

George.

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Hi folks,

A patch to add support for "program completion x days from now" was included in today's (24th December 2013) release of Totara 2.5.4

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