There are a number of improvements and new features for Totara 20.
Totara Learn
Recommended for you block
We have updated our Recommended for you block to include all content types for selection.
Multi-year recertification sequences
Totara 20 introduces a major upgrade to certifications, including multi-year recertification sequences with flexible return points and support for multiple paths within a single certification. These improvements simplify compliance management, reduce duplication, and provide learners with a clearer, more streamlined certification journey
Program and certification self-enrolment
As a Site Administrator you can now setup a new Group assignment type. This allows configuration for learners to self enrol into a program/certification, as well as the option to withdraw from that program/certification.
Warning on assignment changes in programs/certifications
Admins will now see clearer warnings when adding or removing assignments from programs or certifications, including the number of learners affected. This helps ensure informed decisions and reduces the risk of unintentional enrolments or withdrawals — with confirmation prompts for all assignment types.
Skills type rules for dynamic audiences
When using this Perform based rule, a list of skills appear. This allows you to select the skill or skills from the list the user must be proficient in.
Background exports for reports
The Background export setting changes the way exporting reports are processed. Instead of generating the export immediately—blocking you from using the site until it’s ready—the export is queued to run in the background.
Team skill proficiency block
The Team Skills Proficiency block provides line managers and second line managers with a clear view of their team’s current skill levels. It allows managers to identify gaps, recognise strengths, and adjust focus where needed.
Certifications - current compliance block
The new Certifications – current compliance block gives managers and compliance teams an immediate, visual overview of certification status across their organisation, without the need for custom reporting. This block provides clear drill-down insights by team or individual, reducing setup effort and supporting faster, more confident compliance monitoring.
Dynamic audience improved UI and UX
The Audience interface has been updated to make managing rule sets clearer and more efficient. Rule set titles can now be edited directly, and membership logic is controlled through dropdowns and popover options for setting AND/OR relationships and update behaviour. In addition you can now preview what changes will be made when you edit a dynamic audience i.e. how member members will be removed or added.
Multi-factor authentication for all users with rules
Totara now supports multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all user’s, adding an extra layer of security to user logins. MFA requires users to verify their identity using an authenticator app alongside their password, making it significantly harder for unauthorised access even if a password is compromised. This enhancement helps protect both user accounts and site data.
Course and category pagination
To improve performance, enabling course and category pagination limits the number of items loaded at once on the Courses and categories management page - making it faster and more efficient to use.
Digital seminar self-attendance
Digital Self-attendance for seminars allows learners to check-in and confirm their attendance for seminar events using either an event-specific URL or a QR code. Attendance is then automatically recorded in the system, reducing administration for Site Administrators.
Improved featured links and learning block visuals
The Featured links block sees UI improvements with rounded corners on Featured links, and improved padding and alignment of text on Featured Links to look modern and intentional.
Reorder dashboards
You can now easily control the order in which dashboards appear in the list by setting a display position. This makes it simpler to manage large numbers of dashboards, especially for organisations with complex configurations or multi-tenancy enabled.
Exclude items from the catalogue
Site Administrators can exclude courses from the catalogue by enabling the Exclude from catalogue setting directly within the Edit course settings page. This enables courses to be hidden from catalogue browsing and searches, while still allowing access via enrolment paths such as through programs and certifications, or direct links.
Improved catalogue search capabilities
Several enhancements have been introduced to improve the catalogue’s search capabilities, accuracy of results, and personalised recommendations.
Improvements to the Recommendations block
Recommendations are personalised content suggestions designed to help you discover learning materials that are most relevant, useful, or interesting to you. Recommendations are grouped into AI-powered suggestions and smart, curated learning, which can be displayed using various content blocks.
Ability to compress files
There is a new scheduled report setting which allows Site Administrators to choose to compress the file which is sent within the scheduled report email.
Set file size limit for scheduled reports
This new setting allows Site Administrators to adjust the maximum file size for email attachments in scheduled reports.
Totara Perform
Change in terminology
From Totara 20 we have replaced “competency” with “skill” and “competencies” with “skills” across the platform, aligning terminology with the current language of learning, HR, and talent technology. These changes better matches the expectations and needs of modern L&D, talent, and workforce planning teams, who increasingly centre strategy and analytics around skills.
While “competencies” often suggest behavioural assessment frameworks or compliance-based training, “skills” resonate with a wider range of initiatives—career development, internal mobility, skills-based hiring, and workforce planning making Totara more versatile.
Assigning audiences (assessors) as raters
Site Administrators can assign one or more audiences as raters within a manual rating achievement path for a skill. This allows broader participation in assessing learner skills, beyond traditional roles like managers or appraisers.
Skill reporting
The Skill status report source has been enhanced to include fields that make it easier to chart and compare proficiency status. As part of this, an additional report templates Manager skill proficiency by user
has been added.
Managing access to performance activity instances
The managing access to performance activity instances feature enables Site Administrators and Performance activity managers to manually remove or restore access to participant instances within performance activities. This enhancement highlights the critical responsibility of Site Administrators and Performance activity managers to actively manage access and ensure users retain visibility only over activities relevant to their current roles or job assignments.
Totara Mobile
Mobile offline syncing improvements
The Totara Mobile App now offers improved offline progress syncing, which automatically updates learner progress once an internet connection is available. Previously a manual process, syncing now happens automatically and can be customised.
Totara Platform
Webhooks
Webhooks allow your Totara site to automatically send information to another system when something happens. Think of them as a way to “push” updates out in real time, rather than waiting for another system to check Totara for changes.
New debugging tool, Excimer
The Excimer profiler is included as a core component to help diagnose and troubleshoot performance issues in production environments. This profiler runs efficiently and safely, capturing performance data for slow requests without impacting system stability.
External API IP whitelisting
Site Administrators can restrict which IP addresses are allowed to make requests using a specific API client. This provides greater security and control over how external systems interact with your Totara site via the external API.
Rotating external API client secret
When a Totara instance with external API is enabled, and you add an API client, there is the option when viewing API clients to select Rotate client secret. The Rotate client secret action gives the ability for the client_secret to be regenerated. This not only re-generates the client_secret but also removes any API tokens that were previously generated using it.
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