Moodle Plugins directory: Event Reminders | Moodle.org
Event Reminders
Local plugins ::: local_reminders
Maintained by 
Isuru Madushanka Weerarathna
This plugin will automate sending reminders for calendar events.
Latest release:
2902 sites
638 downloads
160 fans
Current versions available: 10
This plugin will automatically send email reminders for Moodle calendar events in a timely manner.
Reminders are very useful for both students as well as teachers to recall their scheduled events and activities before the actual moment.
Latest Feature (with plugin v2.5)
- The plugin provides a way to customize the email header/footer with desired HTML content! This means now you can add your site branding to those email reminders too. (See updated screenshots)
New Features: (in v2+ which works in Moodle 3.5 or above)
- Ability to send reminders after event completed for overdue students
- Ability to enable/disable and schedule reminders per activity
- Explicitly reminder enables: By default no reminders will be sent unless teachers enable them in course level.
- Reminder email messages when calendar event created/changed/removed
- Prevent sending more email reminders once a student has completed the activity
- Added timezone/location to the email due dates
- Support for course category events
- Ability to customize email header/footer with the branding of the site
- Additional cron task to clean old reminder data
- Send reminders only to students who can submit the assignment
- Supports site, course, activity, user, and group calendar events
- Ability to customize the reminder schedule globally
- Ability to customize enable/disable reminders per course
- Ability to select reminders eligible user roles per calendar event type
Prerequisite for plugin v1.5.1 or prior:
- Your moodle site must enable logging to make the plugin work properly.
- The Cron job should be enabled
- Cron job should not be lagged to send reminders for custom schedules which has tight schedules.
Note: Please report any issue or feature request at https://github.com/isuru89/moodle-reminders-for-calendar-events by specifying reproducible steps, cron logs (scheduled task logs), and affected moodle + plugin versions.
Screenshots
Contributors
Isuru Madushanka Weerarathna (Lead maintainer)
Rossiani Wijaya: Mentor
Please login to view contributors details and/or to contact them
I will look into this.
Apparently, the author of the above mentioned PR has included another changes related to custom time reminders as well (It is not only about enabling zoom). So, at that time, I did not merge it without a proper testing for those custom time changes.
Anyway, my expectation is to find a way to provide a more convenient way that users can specify which event types they can enable reminders for instead me (plugin) hard-coding them inside the plugin code. I wanted to do a small poc on top of it, but I did not have the time because of my mainstream work. But I will look into it. Keep in touch.
We have a problem with the plugin. For some reason it only sends emails on the day of the assignment deadline at around 4-5 pm. And it still won't send reminders for all the activities scheduled. Here is what I found in the log:
Error: lib/moodlelib.php email_to_user(): SMTP connect() failed. https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/wiki/TroubleshootingSMTP server error: QUIT command failed
Scheduled task failed: Local Reminders (local_reminders\task\send_reminders),Object of class stdClass could not be converted to string
Could you please help us solve it?
On issue I haven't figured out yet is that even though I select a reminder schedule of 7, 3, 1 days in the site settings, when I come down onto the course level, it shows the schedule as only having '3' checked, and I can't add other options. What is the relationship between these settings? Thanks so much
S
Would you be able to report an issue in the github repository https://github.com/isuru89/moodle-local_reminders, so that if that is indeed an issue, I will fix it. Course level events should be as same as others and should have displayed all 1,3,7 days reminders to be chosen.
Could you please share the reminder cron job logs that happened 15 minutes before the event which the reminder should have sent. First, the cron must have triggered before within 15minutes of the event to send the reminder. If that happens, the cron logs must have something in the logs about why that particular user was not able to receive the notification. There are several exclusion rules in the plugin, but it can be better said after investigating the logs.
I advice you to create an issue in the plugin Github repository with the cron job logs (also with reproducible steps) so, I can investigate and provide a resolution quickly. Github: https://github.com/isuru89/moodle-local_reminders
To address this, we must ensure that the system sends a single, consolidated email to the student instead of multiple individual notifications. This will enhance the user experience and maintain a professional communication standard.
I am contacting you regarding an issue we encountered after upgrading our Moodle installation from version 4.1 to 4.5.
While the Reminders plugin still sends notifications correctly, the email subject line includes unresolved template placeholders instead of the actual subject text. Here is an example of what recipients currently see:
[Moodle-Reminder] Assignment This behavior did not occur in version 4.1. It seems that the plugin might not be fully compatible with the email templating system introduced in recent Moodle versions.
Could you please confirm if there is a planned update for the plugin to fully support Moodle 4.5+? Additionally, is there any temporary workaround you would recommend?
Thank you very much for your support and for maintaining this useful plugin.
Best regards,
Thank you for sharing me about this detail and feedback.
Still this plugin does not officially support Moodle v4.5, but there is a plan.
However, could you kindly share the release document where the 'email templating system' is introduced or released in Moodle? As a developer, it appears that the messaging API used in this plugin does not include this feature.
Ref: https://moodledev.io/docs/4.3/apis/core/message
Thank you for your response.
The link you provided is correct, and it refers to the Moodle 4.3 Messaging API documentation, which outlines the changes and features related to the email templating system. However, the issue we are experiencing concerns the Moodle 4.5 version, where the email subject in reminders includes the placeholder " ", which does not render correctly.
Regarding your request, the introduction of the email templating system in Moodle is part of the updates in Moodle 4.5, specifically outlined in the release notes and the documentation related to the new messaging system. This could be the reason why the plugin is not fully compatible with the new email templating system.
Could you let me know if there are any planned updates for this plugin to support Moodle 4.5?
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this.
Thank you for the response. However, I still don't see any developer doc even in version 4.5 https://moodledev.io/docs/4.5/apis/core/message
Anyway, I am planning to release a Moodle v4.5 before the end of this month, but I cannot guarantee that the templating will be fixed, if it is not documented in the official docs.
But, if I encounter any issues related to rendering subject, I will definitely fix it with the release.
Thank you again.