What are centralised notifications?

Development of Totara notifications

In Totara 14 we introduced a centralised management console for notifications, along with a standardised notification format. In our documentation we refer to this feature as centralised notifications. Notification content is edited using the Weka editor. Historically, Totara notifications were configured in various places across the platform. Initially, notifications for programs and certifications were migrated to the new console, and in subsequent releases more features' notifications continue to be added to centralised notifications, while others are still managed outside of the centralised notifications system. As Totara advances we will continue to migrate and add new feature notifications to the central console, when it makes good sense to do so. For example, Totara 16 saw the introduction of course notifications which are managed via centralised notifications.

How centralised notifications work

For each section within the centralised notifications console (e.g. Course) you can see a list of triggers. Triggers are events that cause a notification to be sent, e.g. Learner completed course. You can expand a trigger to see all notifications related to that trigger, or you can create a new notification for that trigger event. For each notification you can also configure the delivery channels. The delivery channel is the way that the user will receive the notification.

The centralised notifications system allows lower context level notifications to be inherited from higher (or site) context level notifications. Therefore it is sensible to start by configuring your notifications at the site level. You can do this by going to Quick-access menu > Notifications. Here you can set restrictions for how notifications can be used anywhere on your site. For example, if you never want notifications to be sent when learners unenrol from a course then you can disable this at the site level. This means Course Creators or Editing Trainers won't be able to enable the notification at the course level. Alternatively, you may want to create a new notification for a specific trigger (e.g. when a user is added to a workspace) so that it will be available for all workspaces on your site.

This also means you can configure the notifications in greater detail in specific content instances. For example, you might want to create a new notification for a specific certification, or disable notifications and delivery channels where they're not required for the certification.

See Using centralised notifications for more information.

When are notifications sent?

In the centralised notifications system, notifications are only sent when they are due to be sent. Notifications are not queued, and the system does not check for notifications that were missed or should have been sent previously. The system relies on timing to determine what needs to be sent at any given time. 

An example will help to explain this. Say you created a notification to welcome new users when they are enrolled on a course. If the notification is scheduled to send On event (i.e. as soon as the user is enrolled), then it will only be sent to users who enrol after you created the notification. The notification will not be sent retroactively for users who enrolled prior to you creating the notification. If you set the same notification to send 1 month after enrolment, then each day the system will check for users with an enrolment date of one month ago, and will send to those users, even if the notification did not exist at the time they enrolled.

This behaviour is the opposite of some legacy notifications, where the system would keep track of sent notifications and check which notifications should have been sent but hadn’t yet. When a new notification was created in this system, the system would check for existing eligible recipients and send to all users enrolled on the course prior to the notification being created.

Benefits of centralised notifications

The centralised notifications system enables standard formatting and common functionality in the following areas:

• Adding placeholders to notifications
• Adding multi-language content
• Auditing notifications with notification logs

Here is a list of Totara features and notifications that are not supported by the centralised notification system:

• Course enrolment welcome message
• Course completion reminder (tied to the feedback activity)
• Forum messages and digest
• Other course activities
• Badges
• Learning plans
• Job assignments
• User data management
• Authentication
• HR import
• Report builder
• Audiences
• Other Totara Engage notifications