Course Alert

Features Description

This plugin introduces a new notification feature to automatically send custom reminders for courses:

1. Login Reminder: user has not begun the course X days after enrolling
2. Completion Reminder: user has not completed the course X days after the first access
3. Course Closing reminder: user has not completed the course X days before the course end date (if set)
4. Course Completed: When a user completes the course, they automatically receive a notification confirming their course completion
5. Certification validation reminder: this reminder is added by the "Retraining"Retraining" plugin

Each reminder can be activated separately for each course.
For each reminder, it will be possible to set a standard text or a custom notification text and scheduling.

Cron Job

To allow the system to properly work you need to set up a cron job on your server calling periodically (i.e every 10 minutes) the following URL: 

[platform_url]/plugins/CourseAlert/Cron/cron.coursealert.php

Reminders activation and settings

The course alert function is available for every course. From the course management page, just click on the new envelope icon to access the configuration panel:

This will open a configuration panel where you’ll be able to:

1. Select one or more reminder for each course
2. Define to send them by e-mail and/or popup the message upon user login
3. Time Settings:
   • Define how many days after or before the “trigger” your reminder should be sent. 
   • Interval: how many days to wait before resending the notification
   • Repeat: how many times the alert will be sent/shown to the user
   • Reset: flag to rest upon saving the settings. All the notifications for this alert will be sent again.
4. Set a custom notification text
5. Notification Log: see a log of all the notifications sent to users in this course

Notification text customization

Writing a custom message

The message field for each notification displays a default text: just click on the text area and start writing to enter a custom text.
Conventional HTML tags can be used for text formatting.

DynamicTags

The following dynamic tags are available to customize your Course Alert notification text:

• [user]: will print the name of the user receiving the notification
• [course]: displays the course title
• [days]: displays the number of days as set in the notification settings

Edit the default message

The default text message can be edited through the standard Forma language management features

Time Settings

Interval days

The Interval days parameter controls the minimum gap between two consecutive displays of the same pop-up to the same user. For example, with Interval days = 3, after clicking "Remind me later" the user will not see that pop-up again for at least 3 days. Setting Interval days = 1 means the pop-up can reappear on the following day's first login

Repeat days

Indicates how many times the alert should be re-proposed.

Note: By entering a value of 0, the system will continue to show the pop-up or send the email indefinitely until the required action is completed.

Reset Notifications

The Reset Notifications checkbox is available for each alert type in the configuration panel.
When this checkbox is selected and the configuration is saved, the system deletes the notification history (send log) for that alert type on the selected course. This means:
All users who had previously received this alert — including those who had reached the maximum number of repetitions — will be eligible to receive it again.
The repetition counter (sent_times) is cleared for all users associated with this course and alert type.
The alert cycle restarts from scratch as if no notification had ever been sent.
This is useful, for example, after updating the course content or extending the course deadline, when it makes sense to re-notify users who had already been informed.

Note: Reset Notifications only affects the selected alert type for the selected course. Other alert types and other courses are not affected.

Pop-Up Alert

When the Pop-up delivery method is enabled for an alert, the system checks at each user login whether any active alerts apply to that user. If so, the pop-up will appear at the next login.

The pop-up presents two action buttons:

• "Enter": Redirects the user directly to the course. The alert is recorded as sent and the repetition counter is incremented.
• "Remind me later": The alert is recorded as sent and the repetition counter is incremented. The pop-up will appear again at the user's next login, provided that the number of days configured in Interval days has elapsed since the last display.

Closing the pop-up (×): Dismisses the pop-up for the current session only, without incrementing the repetition counter or updating the last-send date. The pop-up will reappear at the next login unless an action is taken by clicking one of the buttons

If user is enrolled to multiple courses requiring notifications, multiple popups might be displayed at the same time:

Notification Log

A log of all the notification sent to users can be accessed:

• Whithin a specific course alert settings, showing all the notifications sent for that specific course
• Whithin the plugin global  settings, showing all the notifications sent for all the courses