Blocks: Coupon
Rogier van DongenSEBSOFT COUPON PLUGIN
The Sebsoft Coupon Plugin offers you the possibility to create coupons for various levels
of course access. Using a coupon code, users will be enrolled into courses that are attached to the coupon. That way, you can use the coupon system as voucher or vouchering system for your course(s).
There are a few different ways of generating coupons:
- Course level: this means one or more course(s) need to be selected for which the coupon is valid.
Once the coupon code is entered by a user, he or she will be enroled in every course the coupon
is attached to.
A nice extra feature is, when groups are configured for a certain course, you can configure which
course group the coupon is for. When a user claims the coupon, he or she will be added to that specific
group in the course. This makes it possible to separate coupon users from regular users.
You could also make specific course groups every time you generate a batch of new coupons, so there's
some way of matching a batch of coupons to a group of users. The possibilities are numerous.
- Cohort level: this means one or more cohort(s) need to be selected for which the coupon is valid.
Once the coupon code is entered by a user, he or she will be added as a cohort member for every
cohort the coupon is attached to.
NOTE: When generating cohort level coupons, there is a possibility to "connect" extra courses to
a given cohort. One MUST know that upon doing this, the courses will at that point be added to
the cohort enrolment sync. Without knowing this little fact, it could be "unexpected" behavior,
even though it's a logical step.
Furthermore, coupons can be generated on two "access" levels:
- Personalized. The base of this, is either a CSV is uploaded, or a CSV is given directly in a textbox.
The needed user information for every coupon to be generated will be the user's name, email address
and gender.
These coupons will then be generated and sent off to the appropriate users using a background task.
- Bulk: The base of this is simple: you generate a certain amount of access coupons, which will then
be emailed to the pre-configured recipient or (if allowed) to an emailaddress that can be freely entered.
- WARNING:
Wherever possible, please use PNG images.
Also, whenever possible, do NOT use images that have an alpha channel.
This will MASSIVELY slow down processing time, due to internal conversion of images by TCPDF.
On our tests, for a 300 DPI image on A4 format (2480 x 3508 pixels) with an alpha channel,
rendering a single PDF took around 25 seconds. Taking the alpha channel out of the image,
rendering a single PDF was reduced to around 3 seconds.
Furthermore, whenever possible, have the coupon generator create a single PDF with all
coupons (this is only applicable when generating coupons in "bulk" mode). The process of
generating coupons has been optimized to only "use" the image 1 time when creating any amount
of coupons in a single PDF. If you choose the option to create a seperate PDF for every coupon,
the image will have to be rendered for each and every PDF.
This has 2 major downfalls:
1. Every PDF will roughly have a slightly bigger size than the image size (in our tests, 350 - 400 kB per PDF)
2. Every PDF takes the full amount of time to render.
Effectively, this means the following (using fictitious sizes):
10 coupons, single PDF -> result is around 400 kB, rendering takes around 3-4 seconds.
10 coupons, seperate PDFs -> result is around 4 MB, rendering takes around 35-40 seconds.
INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS
- Copy the coupon folder to your blocks directory.
- Go to the moodle admin pages (you will probably be confronted with it anyway) and install the plugin
- Configure the main settings for the plugin.
- We're set up for usage!
PLACEMENT OF THE PLUGIN
There are only two pages you can add the coupon block on. This is the site's frontpage
or the user dashboard (my) page. The main reason for this is because the block is the
"frontend" for users to enter their coupon or voucher code.
Administrators and users with the correct capabilities will also see the links to
the coupon administration pages and the coupon generator page.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
There's two main configurations to consider when generating coupons.
For course type coupons, this plugin attempts to enrol a user through use of Moodle's
internal function "enrol_try_internal_enrol".
The Moodle documentation shows it will attempt to enrol you using manual enrolment.
For this reason manual enrolment MUST be enabled for these courses.
For cohort type coupons, a user is made a member of a cohort. That's all there is to it.
Surprise though, if you want to actually make a user have access to a course, you
probably want to configure cohort enrolment for the course.
For those paying attention, creating cohort type coupons thus enables a simple
way of enrolling users into multiple courses at once just by configuring the right
cohort enrolments in multiple courses.
That's still not to say course coupons can't be used in a similar way (using meta courses).
Screenshots
On clicking on more details it opens a new page with the error "error/block coupon/error:unable to enrol"
Can you please guide me with the next step for troubleshooting the same ?
Coupon tries enrolment through the use of the internal Moodle function dedicated to this.
Looking at the code, this internal method only supports manual enrolment and will fail if either manual enrolment is not available (globally disabled) OR if the course is not configured with manual enrolment.
Let me know if this helps!
Cheers,
Rogier
Thanks,
Very nice plugin and especially the QR code function is really simple.
However, I would like to ask you if there is a way to enroll some users as teachers and some as students because, if I am not mistaken, when you use a coupon you get the role that 's selected at the "Default role" (block_coupon | defaultrole) setting at plugin 's settings, the moment you are claiming your coupon and not the setting you had when the coupons where generated.
Is there a way to generate coupons that you can assign the role this coupon will activate, so as to be able to create coupons for teachers, as well as students, that skip the "Default role" setting?
If not, is there a possibility to have this kind of functionality in the future?
Thanks in advance.
This is a decent feature request we've considered in the past and could be implemented in the future.
One of the reasons we decided not to implement was that this wasn't needed at the time (long before it even landed on Moodle's plugin page).
Do you have any thoughts on how you would track each coupon / voucher and make sure any printed or otherwise distributed vouchers are distinguishable?
Of course you could have a specific background/logo, but I could imagine you'd want to have that information clearly stated on the coupon itself.
I'd love to hear your input on this.
Cheers
I am presenting the way I am thinking of it but of course you decide how this can be done.
After you select your courses for example, on a new page or even maybe on the same page under the courses selection box with a drop down menu, you choose the role (custom roles would be nice too) that should be assigned to the coupons that will be generated.
There should also be an extra column at the reports page with the role that's assigned to each coupon, to be able to filter them as well.
Now about how this information will be stated on the coupon, I 'm thinking something simple like a parenthesis after the course name with the role in it. Something like "Thermodynamics (Student)" or "Thermodynamics (Non-editing teacher)" for example.
This looks like a really useful plugin. The problem we are having is that it generates the coupon code but we are not receiving the PDF emails. Is there a setting we need to change?
Many thanks Gareth
I've sent you a message through the messaging system.
So far this plugin is the single most useful thing in our new Moodle instance.
I was wondering if there is already a way to create a re-usable coupon code in the plugin?
This way we can have a code that we give out to prospective clients as a demo course, or for courses where generating an individual coupon for each client in impractical.
We can of course use self-enrolment, however our user testing has shown that having two different ways to enrol in a course becomes confusing. It's much better for us to have your coupon plugin and a generic coupon for the course.
thanks!
This plugin's awesome! It would be great if we had more enrolment methods, for instance self-enrolment.
Is there a way to configure this?
Thanks!
Thanks for your interest in the coupon plugin. Could you inform us on the Moodle version you are using? We've had this exact issue mentioned once before but so far, have not been able to reproduce it.
I've also sent you a personal message.
Cheers,
Rogier
Is there a way to control how the course name appears on the Coupon PDF?
Thanks,
Kevin
The version, 3.5 should not reflect the build date of the major release but the date of the code release. This makes it difficult because if you are upgrading the LMS from 3.1 to 3.4 -- you get a "downgrade" error on the plugin because the two build dates are incorrect.
Because the 3.2.2 has a higher build number (2017092503 than 3.3.1 (2017092501) this creates the problem. The "higher LMS version" should always have a higher build number (even by 1) to ensure the update event triggers.
New Moodle 3.5+ build will be here soon