Course reminders
  • 26 Aug 2022
  • 3 minutes to read

Course reminders


Article Summary

A course reminder can be set on any course which has a feedback activity (which is designed to allow a learner to record their learning experience).

When a feedback activity has been added to a course the option to add a Course reminder will be unlocked. The course reminder is essentially an invitation to a learner to complete the feedback activity. 

The initial course reminder invitation will be triggered by the user meeting the requirements in the Course completion settings.

There is also the option to set up reminders based on the completion of individual activities within a course. For example, you can set the reminder to track the completion of a quiz or SCORM activity within a course and once a learner has completed the activity a reminder invitation will be sent requesting them to complete feedback based on their experience of this activity.

You can also define when the invitation is sent (i.e. the same day the course or activity is completed or up to 30 days after this event). 

The system only counts weekdays (not weekends), so the reminder will be sent the specified number of weekdays after the event.

It is possible to have multiple feedback activities within a course and therefore have multiple reminders based on the completion of different activity elements within a course.

The cron checks the time between the reminder time and the user's completed time. If you are using reminders for a seminar event, the user's completed time is set to the seminar event end time. So, any user with Fully attended gets a completed time as the seminar event end time. This results in the reminder not being triggered if the reminder was created after the seminar event end time.

Accessing and managing reminders

You can access course reminders via Course administration > Reminders (look for the Reminders link next to an envelope icon).

To add a new reminder click on the Add new tab. Once you have set up a reminder it will appear as a tab, you can click the tab of the reminder you wish to edit, or you can delete that reminder by clicking the Delete reminder '[ name of reminder]' button in the top-right corner. 

Course reminders will be sent from an email address associated with your site. If a role has been set as the coursecontact for courses (via Quick-access menu > Courses and categories > Course settings), then the email address for a user with that role (Editing Trainer by default) in the course will be used. If there is no course contact then Totara will use a name and email address based on the support contact information (Quick-access menu > System information > Support contact). If there isn't a Support name, the name 'Do not reply to this email' will be used with the no-reply address. If there isn't a Support name or Support email then the admin email and name (the support contact details) will be used.

Setting up course reminders.

Reminders and escalations

It is also possible to set up an additional reminder to be sent when a user has failed to complete the feedback activity within a defined period (this additional reminder can be sent between 1-60 days after the initial invitation).

You can also send another reminder, called an escalation message, where a learner is still yet to complete the feedback activity. The option to trigger an escalation message to a Learner's assigned manager/team leader to inform them of which learners have not completed the feedback activity (again this can be set be sent between 1-90 days after the activity end date).

If the site-wide reminder setting for feedback maximum days since completion (under the quick-access menu within Plugins > Activity modules > Feedback) is less than the number of days for the course feedback reminder then a warning message will appear informing the user that reminders won't be sent out. For example, If you set a reminder to go out 21 days after completion and then set this new site-wide setting to 14 days, that reminder will never go out. Since once it gets to 21 days later, the completion was more than 14 days ago.

© Copyright 2024 Totara Learning Solutions. All rights reserved. Some content originally obtained via GPLv3 license and continues to be available under GPLv3. All other content is the sole copyright of Totara Learning Solutions. 


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