Mobile offline support

Available from Totara 19.1

Totara Mobile offers offline support in the Totara Mobile app, allowing users to download entire courses or individual activities for offline access. It ensures users can continue learning without internet and supports shared devices by retaining downloaded content across login sessions.

With Totara Mobile offline support:

• Users can download an entire course or select specific activities for offline access.

• Downloaded courses and activities are stored on the device and are accessible when the user is offline.

• Users can view and manage their downloaded content from the Downloads page within the app.

• When a user logs out of the app, the downloaded content remains on the device and is accessible when they log back in.

• Users are alerted when there is not enough storage available to download content.

• Users can remove the downloaded contents.

• The progress and completion data synchronises when the user gets back online and they trigger the sync process.

Activities and resources supported offline

Totara Mobile currently offers offline support for the following activities and resources:

• SCORM

• Label

• Page

• Certificate

  • Note: Users can download certificates only if they have already received them. The app will not generate the certificate while offline, even if all criteria has been met.

• File

  • To ensure compatibility and a consistent user experience across the platform, the following file types are currently supported for mobile app:

    Format	Type
    Documents	PDF (.pdf) Word Documents (.doc, .docx) PowerPoint Presentations (.ppt, .pptx) Text Files (.txt) CSV Files (.csv) Excel Files (.xls, .xlsx)
    Media	Video Files (.mp4) Image Files (.jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif)
    Compressed	ZIP Archives (.zip) - Note: ZIP files can be uploaded and downloaded, but cannot be opened directly within the app.

Courses containing offline supported activities

Courses with activities which can be downloaded and completed offline are identified with a Download icon (). This icon can be found within the course tile on the mobile app’s home page or the Find Learning page.

The course tile will also identify how many activities within the course are downloadable.

Downloading course content

1. Tap the Download icon ( ) on the course details page

2. The Download summary page appears indicating:

   • The number of downloadable activities.

   • Total file size of the download.

   • List of the activities to download. Note: the summary will only show the first three activities which can be downloaded, if there are more than three activities you can tap on more activities to view the remaining downloadable activities within that course.

3. To download the activities, tap the Download activities button on the course summary to begin the download of the activities. If you select Cancel this will return you to the previous screen and no downloads will take place.

When is device storage checked?

Storage availability is checked on your device by Totara mobile at two stages:

• Before the download starts:

  • When a user taps Download activities, the app checks whether there is enough space available to download the content.

  • If not enough space is available, the user will see an error message like:

    “You’re running low on storage, and your course downloads have been paused. Please free up space to continue downloading.”

• During the download process:

  • If device storage fills up mid-download (e.g. due to other app activity), the app pauses downloads and displays the same message.

Accessing downloaded content

To access downloaded activities when offline through the Totara mobile app:

Syncing offline progress

Learners can manually sync all their offline completions across multiple courses and activities when they are online, so that they can ensure all their completions are updated:

• All offline completions, including multiple courses and activities are updated when syncing.

• A success message confirms when syncing is complete.

• If syncing fails, users receive an error message with retry options.

• When there is a sync conflict, the system should use the last recorded user progress timestamp to update the completion status.

To sync your offline completions with downloaded content:

1. Ensure your mobile device is online.

2. The app will detect your online connection and within a course with downloaded content a message will appear 'Sync pending' and option to Sync now or choose Later.

   

3. Tap Sync now to begin syncing your offline progress, a 'Syncing offline progress' message will appear, you can dismiss the message by tapping the X icon within the message.

4. An animated sync status icon ( ) will display in the tab bar next to the Downloads tab ( ).

5. Once the syncing is completed the sync status icon will disappear and a Sync completed message appears, your offline progress with activities will now be updated.

You can view the progress of your syncing activities by tapping on the Downloads tab, you can then view the activities either currently syncing or waiting.

You can choose to cancel any syncing in progress by tapping the Downloads tab and selecting Cancel sync.

Offline Course Content Updates

When users download a course (either fully, or partially by selecting individual offline-supported activities), the app does not sync or update previously downloaded content automatically if changes are later made to the course on the Totara site.

Users must manually remove and re-download offline content to reflect any updates or changes to courses and supported activities.

Examples of Course Changes Not Reflected Automatically

• Updates to the content of an existing activity

• Adding new activities to the course

• Removing existing activities or resources

What User’s Need to Do

To ensure a user has the latest version of the course, user’s must:

1. Sync any current offline progress or completions.

2. Remove the downloaded course or the impacted activities from their offline content.

3. Re-download the course or specific activities to retrieve the updated version.

Alternatively, if new downloadable activities are added after a user has already downloaded the course, users can:

1. Go to the Activities tab to see the new activities.

2. Download the new activities individually for offline access.

Removing downloaded content from device

Learners are able to remove any downloaded courses from their device to free up storage when they no longer need access to that course or courses offline.

To remove downloaded courses from a device:

1. From the downloaded course, the user selects the Downloaded icon, this then prompts the delete downloaded course pop-up.

   1. If there is still some activities to be downloaded, the Download course option is enabled; otherwise greyed out.

   2. If there is no downloaded content to be removed, the Remove download option will be greyed out.

2. Tap Remove download and select to confirm the removal.

3. If any progress from the course content has not been synced, the user will receive a warning when attempting to remove the course. This reminder will inform the user that their progress is not yet synced, and by removing the download, any offline progress will be lost. The user can then Confirm to proceed with the removal, or Cancel the removal of the download.

A user can also long press on a course from the Downloads page, which then gives the user the option to select one or more courses to delete.