Notification predictions

Users responsible for administering notifications in Totara's centralised notifications system can review the notifications that will be sent out on a given date. You will need the totara/notification:auditnotifications capability in the system context to review notification predictions.

Predicted notification dates

You can start reviewing notification predictions by selecting dates for which they wish to view notification predictions. When a date is added to the Predicted notification dates list, this asks Totara to generate all of the notifications that are scheduled to be sent relating to the selected Notification trigger for the 24-hour period starting on the selected Target date. When a new date is added, it will have the status Pending. An automated task running in the background will generate notification predictions for pending dates. Predictions can be refreshed in order to regenerate the notification predictions using the latest notification configuration and event data.

The Target date can be in the future or the past. If a past date is selected, then the preview will show what notifications would have been sent given the information that is available now.

Predicted notifications

On the Predicted notifications page you can see a list of notification predictions that have been generated. Each prediction represents an event which will result in a notification being sent to zero or more recipients at the given time. 

Notification predictions only show the notifications that will be sent given the information available at the time they are generated:

• It cannot predict events that have not yet occurred, such as notifications based on the completion of a course which has not yet been completed.
• If the data used to generate the notification predictions changes before the notifications are due to be sent, then the notifications that are sent may differ from the predictions. For example, the predictions for a notification that should be sent one month after a user completes a course might not match the notifications sent if a change is manually made to a user's completion date after the prediction is generated.
• The predictions are based on the notifications that are configured at the time the prediction is generated. If notification settings are changed after the predictions are generated, such as being disabled or the schedule being changed, then the prediction will not reflect the changes.
• If a prediction for a past date is generated, then the prediction may not match what actually occurred, if the information available differs from what was available at the time.

If a user makes changes to the data or notification settings, then the prediction target date can be refreshed to see the effects the changes will have on the notifications.

Users with the relevant capabilities also have the ability to send the predicted notifications. An automated background task will send the notifications after a short time (the task runs once every minute by default).

• If the send date is in the future, then sending the predicted notification will not prevent the actual notification from being sent when the send date is reached.
• If the send date is in the past, the notification will be sent regardless of whether it was already sent in the past.

Next steps

• Check predicted notifications