Dynamic audience settings

When creating or editing a dynamic audience, the following options are available.

Overview tab

This tab shows a summary of the audience details including audience Type, Description, Start/End date, Members and Membership criteria if it is a dynamic audience.

You cannot edit the information here, but you will find buttons to Clone this audience or Delete this audience.

Edit details tab

This tab allows you to edit the details of the audience, such as the Name, Context and Description.

Rules

Under the Rules tab you can create or edit rules and rule sets to automate the management of members to a dynamic audience. See Add an audience rule set for more information.

Members tab

View and search for the current members of the audience.

Enrolled learning tab

The Enrolled learning tab allows you to enrol or unenrol the members of this audience onto any number of courses, programs, and certifications.

Select Add courses, Add programs or Add certifications and choose the required learning items from the list to enrol the audience members, then save changes.

Use the corresponding cross icon () to remove a learning item from the Enrolled learning list and unenrol audience members.

Learning will be made available immediately to new users once they've registered. Audience membership, as well as audience-based enrolled learning (i.e. course enrolment and certification/program assignment), will occur before new users first log in to the platform.

For existing users, enrolments will be processed in the background when adding courses to the enrolled learning tab in audiences.

Course deletion may take minutes to process, depending on audience size. Once completed, the course association will be removed from this audience.

Visible learning tab

Under the Visible learning tab, you can limit the visibility of specific courses, programs and certifications to audience members.

Select Add courses, Add programs or Add certifications and choose the required learning items from the list, then save changes.

Choose from the following Visibility settings:

No users
All users
Enrolled users only: Only users enrolled in this learning item will be able to see it within the course catalogue
Enrolled users and members of selected audience: Users enrolled in this learning and members of the current audience will be able to see it within the course catalogue

Use the corresponding cross icon () to remove a learning item from the Visible learning list and remove the audience-based visibility settings.

Audience-based visibility must be enabled before this tab will appear. This can be done by going to Quick-access menu > Configure features > Shared service settings and ticking the Enable audience-based visibility setting, then clicking Save changes.

Audience visibility will affect which learning items are displayed to users within the catalogue.

If you need to enable the Visible learning tab:

Go to: Quick-access menu > System information > Configure features > Shared service settings.
Select the check box for Enable audience-based visibility.
Click Save changes.

Learning plan tab

The Learning plans tab allows you to assign learning plan templates and automatically create learning plans for all audience members.

Setting	Description	Notes
Plan template	Choose the template from the dropdown menu.	-
Exclude users who	Choose which types of audience members (if any) should not have a learning plan automatically generated for them using the checkboxes: Who have an existing manually created plan based on this template: If a user has a plan based on this template that was manually created by them or their manager then they will not have a new plan created. Have an existing automatically created plan based on this template: If a user has an automatically created plan based on this template then they will not have a new plan created. Have a completed plan based on this template: If this option is selected then users who have a completed plan based on this template will not have a new template created.	-
Create new plan as	Decide whether to create the new plan as Draft or Approved.	-
Dynamic creation	Choose to Automatically create a new learning plan for every new user who becomes a member of this audience if new users who are dynamically added to the audience should also have a learning plan created automatically.	-

Legacy goals tab

Legacy goals are the original goals framework available in earlier versions of Totara. They provide a straightforward way of creating and tracking goals for users and remain available for sites that continue to use them.

Legacy goals are supported for backwards compatibility, so organisations with existing goals can continue to manage them without needing to migrate immediately.

They can be included in audience rules to group learners according to their association with legacy goals.

To enable the Legacy goals tab

Go to: Quick-access menu > System information > Configure features > Perform settings.
Under the Enable goals setting, from the dropdown, select Legacy goals.
Click Save changes.

Example use case:

If your organisation set up performance-related goals in Totara before upgrading to the newer goals framework, you may still want to create audiences based on those legacy goals (e.g. an audience of users assigned to a legacy goal of Complete compliance training).

Assign roles tab

This tab allows you to assign roles with permissions (access rights) to all the members of that audience.

Tick the box alongside the role(s) you wish to assign to members of the audience, then click Assign selected role(s) to this audience.

If you assign a role to an audience, members of that audience will hold the role only within the selected context and its sub-contexts which can be set in the Edit details tab. Choosing the right context ensures audience members receive the appropriate permissions without extending them further than intended.

Examples:

Context	What it means	Example use case
System	The entire Totara site. Roles assigned at this level apply everywhere.	Assigning the Course Creator role at the System context allows audience members to create courses in any category across the site.
Category (e.g. Miscellaneous, Health and Safety, Onboarding, etc.)	A specific course category and all subcategories within it. Roles apply only in that category.	Assigning the Course Creator role in the Health and Safety category means audience members can only create or manage courses within Health and Safety.
Subcategory (e.g. Fire prevention, Company policies and procedures)	A narrower context inside a parent category. Roles apply only in that subcategory and its children.	Assigning the Trainer role at the Fire prevention level means audience members can manage courses only within that subcategory.

Next steps

Create learning plans for an audience

Edit an audience

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