Totara Learn Open Discussions

HTML formating of messages available in Totara 11?

Welcome to this forum!

Dear all,

is it true that sending messages in Totara 11 can't be HTML formatted?

To be more precise, we need to send a bulk messaging to our participants and need to format text in different colors and also add hyperlinks to our courses in LMS. It appears that the messaging function does not allow such editing, unless we use HTML tags directly in the content of the message.

Do you have the same situation or there are ways to edit the message before sending? I remember that this kind of editing was present in the earlier versions of Totara.

Thank you!

Stjepan

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Stjepan, are you limited to using messages? Would an announcements forum be an option for sending comms out?

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We are not limited, but there is one requirement... participants need to get an email message in their inbox.

Any ideas?

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Announcements are a special type of forum with forced subscription. All user inboxes get hit by an email with every post. The post remains at the announcements board, so you can link to it too.

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This sounds interesting for our purpose.

Can you give me some pointers on how to implement it? Or link where I can find out more and see some examples?

Thank you!!!

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Hi Stjepan,

Any forum can be set to Forced Subscription. Once that setting is active, every post to that forum triggers email to all users enrolled in the course where that forum sits. Obviously you want to limit this forum so that only staff have permissions to post.

Every new course, when created, comes by default with an Announcements forum, which does the job - it is set to Forced Subscription and role-limited for Learners.

Please see https://help.totaralearning.com/display/TL110/Forum for more info.

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Hi,

thank you so much for the pointers.

Would you be able to show me how this work on some example?

I'm open to connect with you over Skype or some other platform.

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Hi Stjepan,

Every new course comes with an Announcements board by default. There isn't much you need to do other than create a new course and ensure you don't delete Announcements.

Head over to the sandbox and see an example - It is a brand new course, empty, with nothing added or changed, and with the Announcements board already in place at the top of the course page, with forced subscriptions.

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Hi Antonio,

is it possible to add Announcement Forum in the course already populated with modules/content?

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It depends on your setup, but I believe so, you would have to create a forum with forced subscription and with the Learner role removed from any permissions that allow creating posts.

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Yes you can, but you don't add it as an activity in the normal way. It's built into the course format so if you are not seeing an 'Announcement' forum on the course page you need to go to 'edit course settings' and set the 'number of announcements' setting under the 'appearance' section to something more than 0.

It should then appear on your course page.

Regards

David

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Thank you guys, I'll do test it and give my feedback back here.

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Thank you, I managed to activate the forum.

If I make it invisible to Learners, the messages will still be dispatched?

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Thanks guys, all is working nicely.

One thing to share: the announcement forum must be visible, in order for audience sync to work.

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