User tours - can't get Dashboard User tours to work, using path '/my/%'

User tours - can't get Dashboard User tours to work, using path '/my/%'

by Devon R -
Number of replies: 8

Hi all,

I am setting up User tours and the course's paths (eg "/course/view.php?id=11%") work fine, but the Dashboard refuses to display any User tour for staff or students. Neither "/my/%" nor "/my%" work and I have tested on admin and user accounts. (All were enrolled in the category's courses, via cohort sync. I suspect this lack of category enrolment might be the culprit, but given the user base I'd like to set up an automatic solution if so.)

There are quite a few steps, so could it be a memory issue? The only other User tour related to "/my/%" has been disabled and retargeted. (Although a different User tour for a specific course works fine anyway, having just disabled a User tour aimed at the same path.) There is no "Restart user tour on this page" link at the bottom either.

The documentation https://docs.moodle.org/36/en/User_tours doesn't go into much troubleshooting, as far as I could tell. As this is the first page new users will see upon logging in, we need this feature to be reliable.

Any suggestions? I will be happy if it is as simple as ticking the 'make this work' box or something but it probably isn't. I would like to keep the separate category User tours if possible. (Have just tested this: setting category to "All" does not cause the User tour to appear. It must not be the whole problem, if it is contributing to it at all.)

Thanks very much,

Devon

Attachment Dashboard User tour settings my%, enabled, category selected.PNG
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Devon R

Re: User tours - can't get Dashboard User tours to work, using path '/my/%'

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

If you are wanting this to display on the dashboard, then I would think that you HAVE to select all categories - why would you even think about limiting it?  I think you are trying to add a limit to a page that by design is not limited as it is designed to give an overview of all categories and courses.

The category selection is not limiting the users who see the tour, it is limiting where the tour will be shown.  If you select that the tour will only be seen in a category, then it will not show on the dashboard as the dashboard is not a category page.

In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: User tours - can't get Dashboard User tours to work, using path '/my/%'

by Devon R -

Thank you for your reply.

I tried this and there was no improvement. I intended to limit it to provide a specific experience for some of our users, but I suppose I could end on a generic "Open your first course" with a CSS selector instead.

Good to know that the User tour's category selection only affects its display location. I'll try to add that to its documentation later. But even with every option set to "All", my Dashboard tour still doesn't show up, unfortunately.

I'm happy to keep testing, though!

In reply to Devon R

Re: User tours - can't get Dashboard User tours to work, using path '/my/%'

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

Do you see the restart user tour link at the bottom of the page?

Do you have /my/% as the location?

In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: User tours - can't get Dashboard User tours to work, using path '/my/%'

by Devon R -

Nope, no restart link at the bottom, and yes, that is the location.

In reply to Devon R

Re: User tours - can't get Dashboard User tours to work, using path '/my/%'

by Davo Smith -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

You haven't mentioned which version of Moodle you are using, so this may or not be relevant.

In older versions of Moodle (before 3.3), the user tours feature relied on the navigation block being shown on the page. If you are using Moodle 3.2 (or below) and the dashboard page is configured to not include the navigation block, then there is nothing to trigger the user tours to start.

If you're using a more recent version of Moodle, or the navigation block is showing, then this isn't the problem.

One extra thought - even with Moodle 3.3 (or above) a custom theme that overrides the page footer output, without calling the 'before_footer' functions in plugins, would also fail to show user tours correctly.

Average of ratings: Useful (3)
In reply to Davo Smith

Re: User tours - can't get Dashboard User tours to work, using path '/my/%'

by Devon R -

Ah right, sorry. I'm on Moodle 3.5.3 (Build: 20181112).

The theme is Boost, with preset default.scss. We also have slightly larger fonts in 'Raw initial SCSS' for .breadcrumb-item, #page-content, .instancename and .sectionname. I've been asked to keep working on appearance, so can change themes as long as the main text stays editable / large.

Hmm. Your last point sounds good to investigate. Thank you very much for your help so far! I don't know what else might be non-standard that would affect only the Dashboard (so far) however. Still, I'll keep checking in case I find something.

In reply to Devon R

Re: User tours - can't get Dashboard User tours to work, using path '/my/%'

by Devon R -

18 Jan 2019 Update:

The path was actually ' /my/%' not '/my/%': there was a space at the start.

It's still not working at all, but at least now that's one factor removed.

In reply to Devon R

Re: User tours - can't get Dashboard User tours to work, using path '/my/%'

by Devon R -

Got it working! The problems were:

  1. The path had a space at the start.
  2. I had kept all 'Courses' listed from a previous attempt to fix it.

Solutions:

  1. Check path for typos, and especially for extra spaces.
  2. Remove all entries in 'Courses' part of Tour filters.

Average of ratings: Useful (1)