Laundry list of features

Laundry list of features

by Scott Karren -
Number of replies: 6
All

We have recently gone live with our Moodle using the FacetoFace module to handle instructor led in-person training classes. We currently have 120 courses with over 350 sessions (this number grows daily as we are required to keep at least 3 months of sessions in place). As my instructors are using the tool they have made suggestions about features they would like to see. I would like to petition the group and 1. See is anyone is currently doing these things, 2. see if you would share your code, and 3. find out how difficult some of these things would be to do. I will do the best I can to explain each of the features.

  1. Change cancellations per cancellation policy - We have a cancellation policy that states "if you cancel your attendance within 24 hours of class you will be charged our standard no-show rate." Instructors would like to restrict a users ability to cancel their attendance within 24 hours of the class start time. I see this being done in a couple of different ways: 1. deny cancellations within 24 hours and show a message telling the user to contact our administrative offices. 2. allow the cancellations to proceed but send a message to the user, manager, and admin staff informing them of the cancellation and no-show fee. Thoughts?
  2. Being able to track no shows - This is already logged as Contrib-1108
  3. No show emails - Related to the above function, if a person is marked as a no-show send message to user and manager informing them of the no-show.
  4. Waitlist - Already logged as Contrib-408
  5. html editor for facetoface emails - Some instructors would like to have the ability to send HTML formatted confirmation, reminder, and cancellation messages.
  6. capability to allow a person to add participants but not remove participants - We have some people that will register/book attendees for their department and we want them to be able to add the attendees but not remove the existing ones.
  7. Daily view of sessions - we currently have an HTML page that is manually maintained that show all sessions that are happening today. Session information includes, location, venue, room, start and finish times, and if the session has been cancelled.
  8. Adding default locations, venues, and rooms - already logged as Contrib-251
  9. Searching for users in sessions - Occasionally we have a user or manager that calls up and does not remember what session they have signed up for. We would like to build a way to search through the sessions to find a specific user and the session they are signed up for.
  10. Sign up for multiple sessions - already logged as Contrib-1271
  11. Store deleted sessions in the database for reporting - Already logged as Contrib-1107.
I welcome any and all suggestions or thoughts concerning these features. If no one is doing anything like this then I will log tracker issues for each of the ones not already logged.

Francois, Thank you for a most excellent tool. It has improved the teaching at my organization immensly.

Scott Karren
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In reply to Scott Karren

Re: Laundry list of features

by Jeff Burge -
Hi Scott,
We've been live with F2F in a similar setting to your own, healthcare at least, since January 2008 and it has been extremely well received by our organisation, impacting upon course uptake and attendance as well as streamlining our admin significantly.

I would certainly echo your view and recognise these suggestions as improvement to an already excellent add-on.

For information we use a Face to Face block to review daily sessions I have this link to it if it helps with item 7?

My only other suggestion would be a 'print attendance list' button to provide to facilitators prior to the session. Currently we copy and paste into a document for printing or emailing but it would be useful to be able to draw in additonal information beyond firstname, surname.

Will complete a quick poll of users here and add if they have any creative suggestions.

Ditto your comment to Francois, a brilliant tool.

Jeff Burge
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In reply to Jeff Burge

Re: Laundry list of features

by Scott Karren -
Jeff

They say birds of a feather.... Our organization is also in healthcare. Our department is responsible for all training that happens in the hospital and surrounding areas.

Thanks for the link, I have been looking at the Face to Face block as a possible resolution to #7.

With regards to the "print attendance list" I will need to clean the code a bit, but I already have that implemented for us. Instructors have the ability to print a roster of attendees that lists employeeid, name, phone, job title, email address, department, managers name, and managers phone.

I will see if I can get a patch to Francois to review in the next few weeks.

Scott Karren
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In reply to Scott Karren

Re: Laundry list of features

by François Marier -
A page to print attendance is an excellent idea.

In the meantime, it's also possible to export the attendance data to a spreadsheet by clicking on "All sessions" and then using the "Export attendance" form at the bottom of the page.

Cheers,
Francois
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In reply to Scott Karren

Re: Laundry list of features(printable attendance)

by Scott Karren -
Francois

I have posted a patch file for printing attendance to the tracker as contrib-1314. Can you take a look at it and see if I screwed anything up? Anyone else that wants to try it out is welcome to, but test it first on a non-production server.

Scott Karren
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In reply to Scott Karren

Re: Laundry list of features

by François Marier -
Hi Scott,

Here are a few thoughts:

Change cancellations per cancellation policy

We already keep track of the information in the cancellation log can be useful if you want to do this manually. Perhaps we could have this:

  1. Add a system-wide setting for "late cancellations" (defaulting to 24 hours).
  2. If a user cancels within that time, then a message is shown saying that a no-show fee may apply.
  3. In the cancellation log, highlight the people who cancelled late

HTML editor for facetoface emails

Yes, other people have asked for this as well. Please feel free to create a tracker issue for it.

Ability to allow a person to add participants but not remove participants

Good idea, not hard to do. Please add it to the tracker.

Daily view of sessions

Ideally that should go in the calendar. That's the second part of CONTRIB-238

Searching for users in sessions

You might want to have a play with the Face-to-face block as it does some of this already. I haven't gotten around to cleaning it up and releasing it properly though sad



Cheers,
Francois
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In reply to François Marier

Re: Laundry list of features

by Scott Karren -
Francois

Thanks for the suggestions. I like them. I have logged some of these as improvements in the tracker as the following;

CONTRIB-1319 - Cancellation policy
CONTRIB-1320 - HTML editor for confirmation, reminder, cancellation, and waitlist messages.
CONTRIB-1321 - Separate capabilities to add and remove attendees.

I have been looking at the face-to-face block and I think with some tweaking it will do what I want it to do. Haven't quite figured out how to add a search field to it yet but I will.

Scott Karren
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