Creating a lesson as a Mail Merge

Creating a lesson as a Mail Merge

by Mary Richardson -
Number of replies: 2

I am new to Moodle.  I apologize if I posted this question in the wrong topic.   I am using Moodle 3.8.  Currently it is installed on a stand-alone Win 10 computer using MySQL database.  I am tasked with developing a corporate training program.   Up to now, I have been creating lessons and quizzes to learn how Moodle works.  

What I am trying to accomplish -   I want to create lessons that are tailored to  users' roles and specific buildings they are associated with.  In the past, I have used MS Word to create a Mail Merge Templates.  At run time, macros would fill in the specific fields that came from  SQL Server tables.  The resulting documents that were generated were for specific users with info in the fields that pertained to them.

My question -  Is it possible to create  lessons as a Mail Merge using fields from a SQL server table to be filled in after the user logs into the Moodle course site?  Can I perform a SQL query after the user logs on to Moodle and then populate the lesson with the user's data?  Also, is it possible to pull this information from SQL Server tables?  I have read that Moodle did not work well with SQL Server in the past.  Is this still the case?

Thank you for your time.  I hope that this was written in a clear manner.

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In reply to Mary Richardson

Re: Creating a lesson as a Mail Merge

by Richard Oelmann -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Mail Merge - no
However there are ways to achieve what I think you are trying to do.
Moodle has conditional access tools which enable you to make different resources available to different groups of users based on a range of data, including user profile fields, previous grades, time/date and others
Further, a plugin called Generico does allow a vairety of fields to be used in a similar way to a mail merge, by using variables within content - I am not an expert on using Generico, but there are others on the forums who can certainly help you with that. I do think you will need to get that data into your Moodle user table as (custom) profile fields in order to use it - I don't think Generico can grab data from an external database.
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In reply to Richard Oelmann

Re: Creating a lesson as a Mail Merge

by Mary Richardson -

Thank you so much for your speedy reply.  This has been something I have been struggling with to try to get to work.  Moodle seems like a great product.  I was hoping that it would have been better able to interface with the SQL Server side that I need.  

I will look at the plugin you suggested and see if that can get me further in my task.

Have a great day and stay well.

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