Best practice forum (Archived)

Audience based visibility - Categories

 
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Audience based visibility - Categories
by ? ? - Tuesday, 3 October 2017, 2:03 PM
 

Am I missing something or is there no way to have categories' visible by audience? We use audience based visibility on courses extensively but this means some people see empty categories.



Thanks

Anthony

Craig Eves
Re: Audience based visibility - Categories
by Craig Eves (Totara Support) - Tuesday, 3 October 2017, 4:52 PM
Group Totara

Hi Anthony

This sounds similar to a bug TL-4521 that was fixed in 2.5  that made categories not shown if the user can't see any course inside the category. Discussion on this is on https://totara.community/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=19003#p16043

The exception to this is for users with the capability to manage courses within a category or manage categories. Does the user have these capabilities?

regards

? ?
Re: Audience based visibility - Categories
by ? ? - Friday, 6 October 2017, 1:20 AM
 

HI Craig

I think it's slightly different. We have audience based visibility on courses so let's say I have a category called Manager courses. In there are 10 courses all set to be visible only to Audience "Manager".


If a user is not in audience "Manager" they will see the category, but it will be empty.

I'd like to set the visibility on the category to either "Manager" audience, or better still have a rule in the system that says display only categories with courses I can see.

Craig Eves
Re: Audience based visibility - Categories
by Craig Eves (Totara Support) - Monday, 9 October 2017, 7:55 PM
Group Totara

Hi Anthony

From the bug notes the behaviour for what happens with visibility depends on the role of the user. Is this what you are expecting?

1. Enable audience visibility (Go to Site administration > Advanced features)
2. Create a new category.
3. Create a course inse that category and go the "Audience-based visibility" section.
4. select visibility: visible to members of the selected audience.
5. select an audience with at least one member and save the course.
6. create a user to be the course creator for the previous category.
7. go to the category and assign the course creator to the user created above. (See left panel of the menu when selecting the category - assign roles)
8. create a user who won't play any role within the course or category.

  • Enter as the member of the audience and go to find courses.
    Expected : you can see the category and the course inside it. You should see something like NEWCATEGORY(1)
  • Enter as the course creator and go to find courses.
    Expected: You should see something like NEWCATEGORY(0). You shouldn't see the course but you should see the category.
  • Enter as the site admin and go to find courses.
    Expected : you can see the category and the course inside it. You should see something like NEWCATEGORY(1)
  • Enter as the user created in step #8 and go to find courses.
    Expected : You shouldn't see the category at all because there is just one course in that category and you are not allowed to see that course.

In case you have more courses in that category and you are allowed to see them. you should see the category and the courses except for those which are restricted.


? ?
Re: Audience based visibility - Categories
by ? ? - Sunday, 15 October 2017, 2:46 PM
 

Hi Craig

In my case a non manager is fulfilling the role described in step 8. A user with no role in any course in the category. They can still see the category but it appears empty

David
Re: Audience based visibility - Categories
by David Shaw - Monday, 16 October 2017, 2:25 AM
 

Hi Anthony,

Assuming you are looking at a URL ending with /totara/local/category/course you are looking at a custom page.  Raise a ticket with us and we can look at it for you.

David