Totara Learn Open Discussions

Question about event visibility

 
Carla Bradley
Question about event visibility
بواسطة Wednesday, 5 July 2023, 7:58 AM - Carla Bradley
 

Hi all. We are running Totara 12 getting ready to upgrade to 13, and pretty soon after will upgrade to 17.

There has been one thing that bugs me about events, and  I wonder if it gets resolved in a future version.

Our system is based almost exclusively on Seminar Direct enrollment. Meaning that users don't enroll themselves into courses. Instead, we prefer they find the event they want to attend, and sign up for the event, then of course the seminar direct enrollment feature enrolls them into the course once they're in the event.

It's been a constant source of frustration, though, that even though Seminar Direct enrollment is an option, users in the system cannot see the event offerings unless they are enrolled (circular logic at its worst). 

To get past this, we have always given the permission to "View Course Without Participation." This is not without it's negative side effects. What happens is, users can see the course without being enrolled, and will try to click around and think that they are "progressing" through the course, but since they aren't enrollled, they aren't. They typically don't realize this until they get to a quiz, when the sytem will then alert them to the fact they are not enrolled. Then they contact our help desk, and they're pretty mad.

So my question is do current versions of Totara still require to "view without participation" If we want (currently) unernolled users to see and select events to signup for? Or has there been improvements to this process.

Or, third option, was there always a better way that I was unaware of, lol?

Paul Sweeney
Re: Question about event visibility
بواسطة Wednesday, 5 July 2023, 9:48 AM - Paul Sweeney
 

Hi Carla and all

we struggled with this. Found it difficult to believe that the system forces the user to be enrolled on the page / course prior to booking just to view the event. Definitely one for the roadmap I hope.

We framed the problem as

- how to allow users to browse a course page which *may* contain an event they want to book on, without previously enrolling them on the course page 

Our solution 

  • Guest mode is disabled as a login mechanism
  • set the course page in guest mode so the user can browse to the page
  • the user needs to override guest mode by having a self enrol button on the page but on the assumption that users will get confused over 'enrol' vs 'book' , we used the language pack to change wording so self enrol button text says ‘Proceed’ and users are instructed to only click on ‘proceed’ if they wish to book.
  • without clicking 'proceed' i.e. being enrolled in the page, users can't book
  • Note 1 from memory there was an additional permission we had to tweak to allow the learner role or perhaps authenticated user to do this
  • Note 2 we allow manual enrolment as course managers need to be able to add additional people

I'm attaching a screenshot of the course settings. Hope this helps


Natalia Kurikova
Re: Question about event visibility
بواسطة Wednesday, 5 July 2023, 6:16 PM - Natalia Kurikova
مجموعة Helpful contributor 2024مجموعة Most helpful contributor 2023

Hi Carla

We struggled with exactly the same thing you described and our approach is somewhat similar to that of Paul's. We're on v15.

We have the guest enrolment method enabled for seminar courses. This allows the users to open the course and see the time of the sessions (when they browse the catalogue, they see "You can enrol in this course" and "Go to course" button).  We also have a seminar direct enrolment method enabled in the courses: this allows the users to select a time/date and sign up, which then enrols them on the course.

When the users access the course as a guest, they are not able to attempt activities that should record completion/progress. You could limit this even further by restricting the guest role from viewing activities/resources - that's provided you don't use the guest role for anything else.

Another option is if you have a seminar direct enrolment method enabled for a course and no guest access in it. The users see "You can enrol in the course" and "go to course" button in the catalogue. When they click it, they are taken to a page that lists the times of the sessions - but not the actual course. We found that this option was inferior to the previous one as we wanted the users to see more of the course content before enrolling.

Carla Bradley
Re: Question about event visibility
بواسطة Thursday, 6 July 2023, 5:33 AM - Carla Bradley
 

Thank you both, I'm disappointed that it doesn't get taken care of in future versions, but I'll keep working around it!

Paul Sweeney
Re: Question about event visibility
بواسطة Thursday, 6 July 2023, 7:50 AM - Paul Sweeney
 

Good luck! I forgot to mention we're also on V15