Moodle 4 Report Builder capabilities

Moodle 4 Report Builder capabilities

by Alan Yeodal -
Number of replies: 8

Hi,

I have been playing with the new Report Builder / Custom Reports function in Moodle 4 to see if it can fulfill a need we have when we finally get around to upgrading.

I can't seem to be able to produce a simple report listing which users have completed which course. When first creating a report you have to choose between Cohorts, Courses and Users. None of these seem to include a course completion field. 

The Audience and Schedules features in Report Builder would be brilliant for forwarding course completion reports to the right people in our organsiation.

Am I missing something?

Alan.

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In reply to Alan Yeodal

Re: Moodle 4 Report Builder capabilities

by Randy Thornton -
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Alan,

No, you are not missing something. It's the report builder that is missing something: useful data.

Currently all you can see is a list of users, list of course, list of cohorts and their members. There are no options for grades, course completions, activity completions, enrolments, etc., etc. or the adding of other data sources and tables. Filters, permissions, scheduling, and many other features are there but the number of data sources renders them moot.

It's like an amazing restaurant with comfortable decor, professional staff, and quality ingredients, but only one dish on the menu.
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In reply to Randy Thornton

Re: Moodle 4 Report Builder capabilities

by Alan Yeodal -
Thanks for your reply Randy,

That's really disappointing.

Do you think there will be updates to Report Builder in 4.1. The 'Roadmap' page doesn't give much detail on this. It does seem bizarre to have included such a potentially useful tool with such limited practical use. The Configurable Reports plugin for version 3 seems to provide more functionality in this respect.

Any signposts to help get these questions answered appreciated.

Thanks once again.

Alan.
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In reply to Alan Yeodal

Re: Moodle 4 Report Builder capabilities

by Randy Thornton -
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I have been told by those who know that the answer is yes, there will be regular updates of its ability. It is a port from the code for the Report Builder that exists in the Moodle Workplace product and reports it has will be regularly brought over to Moodle from now on.

However, I do not know if there is any exact schedule for this or how it will be handled. Given the long history of how Moodle adds features to new tools, I would advise anyone not to depend or wait for new reports: if you need reports now, find another way to make them such as using the Ad-hoc reports or Configurable Reports plugins or look at some of the third-party paid reporting options.
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In reply to Randy Thornton

Re: Moodle 4 Report Builder capabilities

by Dan Marsden -
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writing new report sources for Moodle's reportbuilder is pretty straight forward - we have a bunch of them in various stages across various plugins that should be incoming in the next 6 months or so - some of them are already in pull request form and sitting on my very long list of things to review at some point....
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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Moodle 4 Report Builder capabilities

by Alan Yeodal -
Thanks Dan,
I'ts great to know it will get better over the coming months/years. We are not ready to upgrade to 4.0 just yet, but will be in autumn this year or next spring. Hopefully by then the functionality will be there. I can see the Report Builder feature saving our organisation many hours of tedious downloading and reformatting of Excel spreadsheets, not to mention the manual distribution to key managers thereafter.
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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Moodle 4 Report Builder capabilities

by Randy Thornton -
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Thanks Dan, that is good to know. We will be looking forward to them.
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In reply to Randy Thornton

Re: Moodle 4 Report Builder capabilities

by Alan Yeodal -
Thanks once again Randy,

I thought that may be the case. I have looked at Adhoc reports, but I am hoping by the time we upgrade Report Builder will have the functionality we need.
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In reply to Randy Thornton

Re: Moodle 4 Report Builder capabilities

by Paul Holden -
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Hi all,

Further to Randy & Dan's comments, please see MDL-73987 epic which contains some additional report sources for Moodle 4.1. Please feel free to create more tracker issues describing reports you'd like to see and they will be triaged accordingly. Perhaps some of the more popular reports from here would be a good source of inspiration: https://docs.moodle.org/400/en/ad-hoc_contributed_reports

We've been working on two fronts for 4.1: both improving the Report builder API/UI for developers and users alike, and on adding and converting additional report sources. Any help is appreciated.

Cheers

Paul
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