Please explain me, a non-App person, the limitations of the Moodle App!

Please explain me, a non-App person, the limitations of the Moodle App!

Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Highly reluctant smartphone user here.

People told me in a meeting all sorts of stories about the limitations of the Moodle App. I'm (easily) confused, because I don't even know the jargon. Could somebody with patience answer me the questions below and confirm my understanding otherwise or correct me?

I read these three pages:
1. Moodle App limitations



2. Prising, Choose your plan


3. What's Included in The Free Plan


My questions:
Q1. What is a "push notification"? In the Web version Moodle sends forum notifications and also Moodlle messages are mailed to off-line users. Are they "push notifications" or is it something else?

Let's say an *educational* institution puts up a Moodle LMS.
a) Assume not a single one of its users have Moodle App on their mobile so far.

Q2. Can all of them, independent of the number, connect to that Moodle via the App? Specifically, can they use the off-line features like writing forum posts, submitting assignments, answer properly configured quizzes? They get mail notifications from the forum and messaging in Moodle?

b) Now assume some of those users need to access other Moodle sites using the Mobile App.

Q3. I believe they can store a number of sites (logins) stored in the App and hop between them. What is the limit of that number?

Q4. How far does the branding go?

Notice that this is an educational institution. Not interested in branding, other than no third party products or links on the App. Mentioning Moodle and links to moodle.org are OK.

Q5. If the institution goes for a paid plan, say Pro or Premium, the amounts are EUR 199.- resp. EUR 499.- p.a. per institution or per Moodle instance? Is it independent of the number of users?
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Atsakymas į Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Please explain me, a non-App person, the limitations of the Moodle App!

Marcus Green -
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I'd like to add a question... , what does the 1 disabled feature refer to.
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Re: Please explain me, a non-App person, the limitations of the Moodle App!

Mary Cooch -
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Re the 1 disabled feature, Marcus, it means that from Site administration > General > Mobile app > Mobile features, you can disable one (or more depending on your plan) of the list "Disabled features", such as not displaying the Site home on the app.
(I'm currently finishing off an intermediate admin course for Moodle Academy on configuring the Moodle app - hope to release it soon)
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Atsakymas į Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Please explain me, a non-App person, the limitations of the Moodle App!

Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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On Q1. What is a "push notification"? found this: https://www.howtogeek.com/751954/what-are-push-notifications/.

I think, I got it. So these are the messages at the device level. The gongs and bells you hear in the metro. They are not phone calls, not e-mail, not text (SMS), not WhatsApp, but the device owner can configure those Apps to trigger push notifications.
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Atsakymas į Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Please explain me, a non-App person, the limitations of the Moodle App!

Mary Cooch -
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Visvanath - I'll leave the official apps team to respond to your questions, but they're useful to me helping improve this course I'm writing before it goes live, so thanks besišypsantis
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Re: Please explain me, a non-App person, the limitations of the Moodle App!

Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Mary

"Official", it is always good, provided that a noob's questions have the right to shake the officers.

And this course you're writing, is a smartphone a condition to attend it? Otherwise you already have a participant.
mirkt
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Atsakymas į Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Please explain me, a non-App person, the limitations of the Moodle App!

Juan Leyva -
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Hi,
my replies bellow your questions:

Q1. What is a "push notification"? In the Web version Moodle sends forum notifications and also Moodlle messages are mailed to off-line users. Are they "push notifications" or is it something else?

Push notifications are alerts/messages received by your phone even when the targeted app for the notification is not open, when you click on it, it will open the app and redirect you to the proper message. For example, if you use private messaging (whatsapp, telegram, etc..) is when you receive a notification with a new message that someone sent you.

Let's say an *educational* institution puts up a Moodle LMS.
a) Assume not a single one of its users have Moodle App on their mobile so far.
Q2. Can all of them, independent of the number, connect to that Moodle via the App? Specifically, can they use the off-line features like writing forum posts, submitting assignments, answer properly configured quizzes? They get mail notifications from the forum and messaging in Moodle?

Yes, they can use the offline features. There are no restrictions for the number of users that can use the app, the only restriction applies to the number of users that can receive Push notifications (alerts from the site).
The only restrictions offline will be downloading complete courses at once with a single click.

b) Now assume some of those users need to access other Moodle sites using the Mobile App.
Q3. I believe they can store a number of sites (logins) stored in the App and hop between them. What is the limit of that number?

There are no limits to the number of logins you can have in the app

Q4. How far does the branding go?
Notice that this is an educational institution. Not interested in branding, other than no third party products or links on the App. Mentioning Moodle and links to moodle.org are OK.

You can sign up for free at apps.moodle.com to see the branding tool. You can use it for free to see how it would look but it won't apply to your app until you purchase a Premium subscription

Hope it clarifies your questions
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Atsakymas į Juan Leyva

Re: Please explain me, a non-App person, the limitations of the Moodle App!

Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Particularly helpful Moodlers paveikslėlis Translators paveikslėlis
Hi Juan

Many thanks for the complete answer. It cleared the "doubts" I had after a meeting. It also saddened me by the FUD people spread.

Moodle Mobile App is perfectly suitable for the institution I was asking the question for. In fact, the EUR 199.- p.a. resp. EUR 499.- are perfectly OK for them, if they have to. A concern in the back of my mind was, that there are various communities who depend on the Moodle app offline features to take learning to remote places without Internet, or can not afford the rates. Putting caps on them would have hampered them. (You know that, this is for the casual visitor. Here's a recent example: Designing for mobile and offline environments.)

You've found a more than fair dividing line between the broad (free) education and the (money driven) "enterprise".
mirkt


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Atsakymas į Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Please explain me, a non-App person, the limitations of the Moodle App!

Juan Leyva -
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Thanks for the feedback Visvanath,

we also offer the Premium plan for free to non-profit organisations, we have several of them with a Premium plan already doing what you said, offering learning in remote places with unreliable internet

Regards, Juan
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Re: Please explain me, a non-App person, the limitations of the Moodle App!

Ana Maria Espinoza -
Hello Juan
I´ve been following this thread trying to understand better the mobile app plans. As Mr. Visvanath, I had the same questions and was very useful to read all the responses from you and the other experts.  Thanks for that.

I´m still, however, a bit confuse with this note in the Moodle plan webpage.  
The Organization where I´m working with in the eLearning project is actually and NGO and Moodle is being implemented in their own infrastructure.  No cloud no partners hosting the site, so then, the question is whether the Premium Plan conditions still apply in this particular case?  

Thanks in advance for your advises and support.

Ana María 


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Atsakymas į Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Please explain me, a non-App person, the limitations of the Moodle App!

Marcus Green -
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When I think of the concept of Moodle App limitations think of the limitation that a student can do anything a student would expect to do, but teachers generally cannot create stuff. On the other hand creating complex learning content is probably not suited to an app.
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