New activity: Pulse

New activity: Pulse

by Stefan Scholz -
Number of replies: 27
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Hi Moodle Community!

We recently published the first public release of a new plug-in called Pulse (mod_pulse).

It enables teachers to improve student engagement and compliance. Example uses for this plugin could include:

  • Notifying students about new content that is available to them (drip feed)
  • Reminding students about activities that are due
  • Sending personalized welcome messages for groups
  • Implementing approval workflows for teachers and parents, respectively line managers and employees
  • Building complex course workflows with alternatives, e.g. for multilingual contents (those who struggled with course completion for multilingual contents, where users can choose, will know what I'm talking about)
  • Giving teachers a simple way to decide when a student can proceed with the course
  • Creating disclaimers in a course
  • ... and many more

You can get the plugin at: https://moodle.org/plugins/mod_pulse. If you just want to try it out, head over to our test site: https://labs.bdecent.de/. Our plugin roadmap can be found here: https://bdecent.de/pulse/roadmap/. 

If you would like to get a live demo, comment below!

There's a paid pro version, which adds powerful features:

  • Reminders (First, second, recurring)
  • Reactions (in-email reactions, secured via tokens)
  • Reports

Feel free to post questions and suggestions below, or — as usual — to the bug tracker.

Best regards,
Stefan Scholz

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In reply to Stefan Scholz

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Stefan Scholz -
Picture of Plugin developers

Some screenshots smile

Attachment PULSE free by bdecent — Activity Completion.png
Attachment PULSE free by bdecent — Invitation.png
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In reply to Stefan Scholz

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Ian McNaught -

Hi Stefan

Really like the plugin, brings a lot of very useful features to Moodle. Just one issue, I wonder if you'd consider removing the ad for the pro version from the teacher's view? Teacher's are typically not in a position to decide on a plugin upgrade/purchase and having the ad in every edit page is quite obtrusive. I have no issue with the pro and free versions, it's just for me it makes it a no-go for client sites with the adverts so prominent but I'd need to see the free version in production for a while before considering paid. Maybe make it an admin setting, on by default?

Just a thought.

Ian

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In reply to Ian McNaught

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Stefan Scholz -
Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Ian,

Thanks for checking out pulse - glad you like it!

We try to be rather subtle with our ads and with marketing/sales in general.

When we designed the pulse preset feature, we thought the grey bar with just text and a button is ok - It is only visible while creating a pulse activity (it is not visible when editing the pulse).

Depending on the type of organisation, teachers might not be the ones to decide about a plug-in, but they are surely among those that use it and potentially request it to be installed.

We’ll discuss it internally — I do like the idea about some form of admin configuration option.

Until then: feel free to hide it, we’ve added a class to it called „pulse-preset-promotional“, so a simple display: none in css and it’s gone immediately, that’s totally fine for us.

Hope this helps!
Stefan
Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Stefan Scholz

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Andriy Semenets -
Hello Stefan
We have started to use pulse (latest 1.11 version) with our Moodle (3.9 version)
It is interesting and promising experience.
However we faced a problem:
Every day since course started a HUGE amount of logs has been generated. And mot of those logs initiated by pulse module:

4k PAGES of logs per day! about 15Gb of NEW logs for 3 weeks. 
Almost all those logs speaks about the same - "updating completion state". We have 700 students in course... And number of activities with completion (which has to be manually checked by students) not very large (3/4 on pictures below):



As I can see - logs recoded every time each minute. No matter if student change something. 
I checked scheduled task under admin in Moodle and found than pulse tasks has been executed each minute. I was forced to set pulse task to only 1 per 30 min to reduce amount of new logs. But logs still grown...
Let me know - is it normal behavior? It seems like something not fully correct...

 

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In reply to Andriy Semenets

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Stefan Scholz -
Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Andriy,

Thanks for the feedback. The amount (and resulting size) seems indeed far too high. The developer in charge of the plugin is reviewing it and we’ll come up with a solution. Current plan is to allow the admin to enable/disable detailed logs.

I’ll keep you posted!

Best
Stefan
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In reply to Stefan Scholz

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Andriy Semenets -

Hello Stefan

Thank you for your answer.
I can only confirm - after disabling of completion tracing for all "pulse" module instances, immediately CPU load and I/O activities halt down almost half on server (!)
I had searched DB and started to cleaning-up. Below shown the amount of log record for a single (!) pulse instance
in a single course per single day (!) (again - over 700 students, completion setting "students can check completion manually"). 
 We have 4 pulse in that course (and 1 in other with few students only) And we spotted problem after 2 weeks...
 Below - my attempt to delete the completion logs caused by pulse for 1 day:
 


And there is our exact completion settings for all pulse modules (already disabled):


Finally I want to sign - huge number of logs had been recorded by cron (every minute) and stated like "nothing changed". It looks very wrong for me. I guess logs must be written ONLY if something just changed.

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In reply to Andriy Semenets

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Stefan Scholz -
Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Andriy,

just a quick update: we're looking into this and will provide an update shortly.
Thanks for your patience!

Best
Stefan
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In reply to Stefan Scholz

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Stefan Scholz -
Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Andriy,

sorry for the delay – covid kept us busy here....
We've added a global setting to disable detailled logs. And we've improved the method to fetch which users are affected to decrease the load on the server significantly. We're currently testing it and will make it available for the general public as soon as we're satisfied with the results. If someone wants to *test* it, you can get it from the github repository, use the dev branch.

Thanks for your patience!

Best
Stefan
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In reply to Stefan Scholz

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Lynn Daley -
Any news on an update. I have recently added pulse to my site and two pulses in a course of 300 students have ballooned the database to such an extent that it crashed the whole server.
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Stefan Scholz

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Carolina Blackman -
Hi Stefan

Already installed Pulse Pro but I'm testing it and I can't get any notification, the documentation is not very specific about the type of notifications an user can get (in moodle, email notifications or others).

I configured invitations and reminders and it oen't work with me. Do you have more specific documentation for this?
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Stefan Scholz

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Sandra King -
Hello,
I am just starting to use Pulse Pro in 3.11 and was wondering when it marks completion?
Is the Pulse complete as soon as the invitation becomes available or after the last scheduled reminder?
Based on the help in the '?' I am guessing that it is marked complete when the invitation becomes available, and then continues to work in the background - but I wanted to use completion after the reminder to trigger the availability of the next activity. (30 days after a student fails their first attempt at an exam a second version becomes available.)
We have used reengagement to handle this in the past, but we like the looks of Pulse and would rather simplify and use Pulse for all internal course communications rather than having some things in reengagement and others in Pulse.

Thank you,
Sandra King
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In reply to Sandra King

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Sandra King -
Stefan if you could help?
I created a test course and in the test course I set up a test pulse so that I could track what is happening...
I used these basic settings...

  • Invitation > Send notification & Use notification content instead of general content
    • Send to > Students, Managers
  • 1st Reminder > Send a notification  after 5 minutes
    • Send to > Students, Managers
  • 2nd Reminder > Send a notification after 5 minutes
    • Send to > Students, Managers
  • Restrict Access to
    • set to check for > specific activity > must be completed (requires to click to complete as easier to to trigger)
  • Activity Completion turned on set for > Completion when available
With this setup:
The student account received 1 email for the invitation, and the first reminder and for some reason 2 emails for the 2nd reminder.
The teacher(s) received 3 emails for the invitation and 1 email for the first reminder and for some reason 2 emails for the 2nd reminder. (they were also listed as students)
As the manager (also a site admin) I received a total of 29 emails - That said I went into the database to track down what is happening/recoreded for this Pulse.

SELECT * FROM `mdl_pulse` WHERE id = 8
showed the programming info /settings for this pulse.
id  course  name  intro  introformat  pulse_subject  pulse_content  pulse_contentformat  pulse  diff_pulse  displaymode  boxtype  boxicon  cssclass  completionavailable  completionself  completionapproval  completionapprovalroles  timemodified
8 67 Pulse, Test Completion status -  <p dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;"><strong>Set...  1 Pulse Invitation - Test Completion status -  <p dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">Student: {U...  1 1 1 0 NULL 

1 1 0 []  1649440243





















SELECT * FROM `mdl_pulse_users` WHERE pulseid = 8
showed 5 users assigned to this pulse.
That corresponds to 1 student and 4 teachers. 
- Why are the teachers being automatically assigned to a pulse?   Can I disable this?
SELECT * FROM `mdl_pulse_completion` WHERE pulseid = 8
Shows 0 completions for this pulse (all 10 currently listed are for a pulse that considers completion based on clicking 'Mark as Done'

I checked in the regular module completion and see:
SELECT * FROM `mdl_course_modules_completion` WHERE `coursemoduleid` = 1188 ORDER BY `mdl_course_modules_completion`.`timemodified` ASC
coursemoduleid userid completionstate viewed overrideby timemodified
363463 1188 23325 0 NULL  NULL  1649440867
363465 1188 25042 0 NULL  NULL  1649440867
363466 1188 24389 0 NULL  NULL  1649440867
363467 1188 25043 0 NULL  NULL  1649440867
363464 1188 5059 0 NULL  NULL  1649442318

The student is user 5059, which means that the module completion time is recorded 10 minutes (cron?) after the last reminder email was sent
which means I can probably use it for sending a notification when a student fails an exam, and once their restudy period has passed give them access to the exam after sending a second notification...

How do I disable emails to the Teachers - our teachers don't want to be sent an email every time a student gets notified by the pulse - especially since their emails all have their names instead of the students' names.
And why did I as a manager in addition to the expected 'student' notification get so many copies of useless teacher notifications (useless because they contained the teachers' info rather than a student.)
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Stefan Scholz

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Waldemar Schaechtel -
Hello Stefan,

I can't find the settings where the invitation can also be sent to the teacher and not only to the student. Can you please help me how to do this. Thanks in advance!


Average of ratings: -
In reply to Waldemar Schaechtel

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Stefan Scholz -
Picture of Plugin developers

Hi Waldemar,

selecting a recipient is only available in the pro version. It would be located exactly where you took the screenshot.
You can try it out on labs.bdecent.de.

Best
Stefan

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In reply to Stefan Scholz

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Alex B -
Hi Stefan,
I tried to install the Pulse plugin package mod_pulse_moodle40_2021110501 on my Moodle 3.11.2 build 20210805.
But then when I go into a course and try to add a new resource/activity and choose Pulse, this message comes up:
Coding error detected, it must be fixed by a programmer: Invalid icon system requested '\core\output\icon_system_standard'
More information about this error click here link https://docs.moodle.org/311/en/error/debug/codingerror

Could you please tell me - Is it not compatible with Moodle 3.11 or is there another package for Moodle 3.11?

Thanks,
Alex
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In reply to Alex B

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Stefan Scholz -
Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Alex,

Pulse is compatible with Moodle 3.9, 3.10, 3.11, 4.0. (see https://moodle.org/plugins/mod_pulse/versions)
There's more than 150 sites using it on 3.11 (see https://moodle.org/plugins/mod_pulse/stats)

This means that it must be another reason why you get that error, maybe because of the course format you're using or maybe the theme?

Please try to use Pulse with the boost theme and the standard course format (topics). If the error remains, it is probably another reason. In this case, please create an issue in the bug tracker (https://github.com/bdecentgmbh/moodle-mod_pulse/issues) and provide information about the plugins you use, some screenshots and any other specific information about your platform that could be related.

If you don't want to share that information publicly, feel free to send the information to support@bdecent.de

Hope this helps!
Stefan
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In reply to Stefan Scholz

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Alex B -
Thank you Stefan. Much appreciated! We will try a few things to identify where the issue is and come back to you on the support email.
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In reply to Stefan Scholz

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Tony Walton -
Hi, 
we have started to use Pulse as our standard coms tool. 

I cant seem to get the message to send an attachment? 

I take it it would do this? 

Thanks

Tony
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Stefan Scholz

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Tony Walton -
Hi, 
we have started to use Pulse as our standard coms tool. 

I cant seem to get the message to send an attachment? 

I take it it would do this? 

Thanks

Tony
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Stefan Scholz

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Tay Moss -
Stefan, I'm sorry if this is anwsered elsewhere, my initial review of the documentation didn't reveal the answer. In the case of multiple Teachers for a course, how is the "from" of the Pulse email determined? Is it the latest teacher added to the course? maybe future versions could add a feature to allow specifying what the "from" email address should be?
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In reply to Tay Moss

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Stefan Scholz -
Picture of Plugin developers
Morning Tay,


You can find the answer here: https://github.com/bdecentgmbh/moodle-mod_pulse/wiki#invitation There it says:

Once the students to notify are identified, Pulse finds the correct sender user, who is the user with the "mod/pulse:sender" capability. When an instance has more than one sender, Pulse will use the first user as the sender. If the course is in group mode, Pulse will use the sender from the group.

Hope this helps!

Stefan 

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In reply to Stefan Scholz

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Raymond Barrett -
I have encountered a critical issue. We have 100 students in a course. We sent out a reminder and the emails showed a student's name as the sender but with the teacher's email address. It somehow used two different user's information (student's name but teacher's email address) for the 'from' field in the email. This means that the student's name was shared with the other students.
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Stefan Scholz

Re: New activity: Pulse

by Raymond Barrett -
If we add a new PULSE activity into a current course, we do not want students who have previously met the restrictions to get the emails.  Only those who meet the requirements in the future.  Is there a way to do this?
Example: If today we create a PULSE reminder to be sent out one day after someone completes a post-test (restriction set to the post-test), someone who completed the post-test two years ago will get the email. We do not want this student, who completed the post-test two years ago, to get the email.
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