Totara Learn Open Discussions

How to control the certification or program assignment

 
Matt Barets
How to control the certification or program assignment
par Matt Barets, Friday 15 May 2020, 04:57
 

Hi

I wonder if anyone encountered this issue before.


We have a course that can be done at a different frequency depending on your role e.g. if you are a clinical staff you are doing the course every year, if you are not a clinical staff, you are doing the course every 3 years (I make it simple, in reality, it is more complex).

We set up 2 audiences and 2 certifications for that.

The first audience has all the job roles that need to do the course every 3 years.

The second audience has all other users that are not in the first audience.

The first audience is assigned to the first certification.

The second audience is assigned to the second certification.

Both certifications have the same content, but no user should be on both certifications at the same time, as the audiences are exclusive.


The issue we have with this setup is that the audience membership scheduled task has to run twice to remove a user from the second audience. 

The first run of the task will find that the user has to be on the first audience, but because this is only going to happen, the user matches the second audience criteria.

The second run will rectify the membership as expected.

However the certification assignment will not wait the second run and the user will be briefly assigned to both certifications, generating a duplicate course exception.

Of course. after the second run of the task is complete, the user will be assigned to only one certification, however, the exception will remain, confusing our administrator.


We tried to find a way to delay the certification/program assignment, that it would allow the audience membership task to run a couple of time between but this has been found unsuccessful.


Perhaps we have the wrong approach altogether.


Any ideas, workaround, etc.?



Many thanks

Regards

Matt


Craig Eves
Re: How to control the certification or program assignment
par Craig Eves (Totara Support), Sunday 17 May 2020, 18:55
Groupe Totara

Hi Matt

Could you make one of the audience rules for an audience that they are not a member of the other audience so an individual could not be a member of both audiences?

regards 

Matt Barets
Re: How to control the certification or program assignment
par Matt Barets, Tuesday 19 May 2020, 01:35
 

Hi Craig

Thank you for your reply.

The audiences are already excluding each other. They're set as follow (again simplified):

Audience one:

  • Active user AND
  • Admin Staff OR
  • Domestics OR
  • Estate Staff OR
  • Lab Technician OR
  • Pharmacist OR
  • Dietitian OR
  • Phlebotomist

Audience two:

  • Active user AND
  • Not a member of audience one


However, a user can be assigned to both audiences for a short period of time.

When a user is created, audience two sees that he's not yet on audience one, so he becomes a member of audience two. At the same time, the audience one rules are check and the same user becomes a member of audience 1. At the next audience membership scheduled task, the audience two is checked again and the user loses his membership. As such, I would say it is the expected behaviour because the scheduled task needs to run twice to give the correct audience. My thought was perhaps there is a way to defer the program/certification assignment.

Regards

Matt

Craig Eves
Re: How to control the certification or program assignment
par Craig Eves (Totara Support), Tuesday 19 May 2020, 14:40
Groupe Totara

Hi Matt

Thanks for explaining this scenario - can you confirm that you are using version 12 as there was a bug fix that should mean that the audience dependencies are processed in the correct order.

TL-18686

With this patch, the scheduled task (Dynamic Audiences update) is now sorting audiences in order of
their dependencies on other audiences. Audiences that depend on other audiences will be updated
after their dependencies updates.

regards

Matt Barets
Re: How to control the certification or program assignment
par Matt Barets, Thursday 21 May 2020, 02:40
 

Hi Craig

Yes, we on version 12.12.

Regards

Matt

Craig Eves
Re: How to control the certification or program assignment
par Craig Eves (Totara Support), Thursday 21 May 2020, 14:13
Groupe Totara

Hi Matt

OK thanks from my reading of the bug fix this shouldn't happen - I will check with the development team.

regards


Craig Eves
Re: How to control the certification or program assignment
par Craig Eves (Totara Support), Tuesday 26 May 2020, 14:51
Groupe Totara

Hi Matt

The feedback from the development team is audiences should now be processed in a specific order depending on their dependencies. 

Having an exception in certification doesn't mean there is a problem with the audience enrolment - is this causing a problem for you?

regards