Moodle plugins directory: Event Reminders

@Mr. Marc
Event reminders will work if you can create a calendar event (manually or automatically) for each interested type of offering.

Seeing two issues within the cron scripts when trying to send out reminders. I'm running Moodle version 3.2.2 against an Oracle 11 DB.

The first is for a Course or Close Events:

[Local Reminder - ERROR] Error occured when initializing for event#[581] (type: course) Error reading from database
[Local Reminder - ERROR] #0 /u01/apolloglobal/moodle/ies/noah/lib/dml/oci_native_moodle_database.php(277): moodle_database->query_end(false)
#1 /u01/apolloglobal/moodle/ies/noah/lib/dml/oci_native_moodle_database.php(1179): oci_native_moodle_database->query_end(false, Resource id #2429)
#2 /u01/apolloglobal/moodle/ies/noah/lib/accesslib.php(3937): oci_native_moodle_database->get_records_sql('SELECT DISTINCT...', Array, '', '')
#3 /u01/apolloglobal/moodle/ies/noah/local/reminders/lib.php(280): get_role_users(Array, Object(context_course), true, 'ra.id as ra_id,...')
#4 /u01/apolloglobal/moodle/ies/noah/lib/cronlib.php(223): local_reminders_cron()

The second is for Site events:
[Local Reminder - ERROR] Error occured when initializing for event#[602] (type: site) Error reading from database
[Local Reminder - ERROR] #0 /u01/apolloglobal/moodle/ies/noah/lib/dml/oci_native_moodle_database.php(277): moodle_database->query_end(false)
#1 /u01/apolloglobal/moodle/ies/noah/lib/dml/oci_native_moodle_database.php(1179): oci_native_moodle_database->query_end(false, Resource id #1786)
#2 /u01/apolloglobal/moodle/ies/noah/local/reminders/lib.php(254): oci_native_moodle_database->get_records_sql('SELECT * \r\n ...')
#3 /u01/apolloglobal/moodle/ies/noah/lib/cronlib.php(223): local_reminders_cron()
#4 /u01/apolloglobal/moodle/ies/noah/lib/classes/task/legacy_plugin_cron_task.php(163): cron_execute_plugin_type('local', 'local plugins')

I'm trying to get more details regarding the DB errors that are thrown, but was hoping folks here may have some insight into the issue.

I have solved the problem with reminders not working in moodle 3.1.5 if anybody is interested to know.

Basically i did the following

1. i noticed that version 1.3.1 will work but it sent reminders out more than once due to a bug. After an upgrade to versions 1.4, 1.4.1 and 1.5 i noticed that event reminders didn't send

2. I downloaded 1.4 to find out how the repeated reminders were no longer sent and i noticed that a database table was not created for this plugin

3. I went into the lib.php file and modified the following lines of text to be as follows:

The logrows line to now become:
$logrows = $DB->get_records("local_reminders", array(), 'time DESC', '*', 0, 1);

timewindowstart variable line:
$timewindowstart = $firstrecord->time + 1;

Changed the following if function in local_reminders_cron to the following:
if ($upcomingevents == false) { // no upcoming events, so let's stop.
mtrace(" [Local Reminder] No upcming events. Aborting...");
add_to_log(0, 'local_reminders', 'cron', '', $timewindowend, 0, 0);
add_flag_record_db($timewindowend, 'no_events');
return;
}

Added the following to the bottom of local_cron_reminders (before the add_to_log line)
add_flag_record_db($timewindowend, 'sent');


Added into lib.php:
function add_flag_record_db($timewindowend, $crontype = '') {
global $DB;

$newRecord = new stdClass();
$newRecord->time = $timewindowend;
$newRecord->type = $crontype;
$DB->insert_record("local_reminders", $newRecord);
}

Please note that add_to_log doesn't appear to work in moodle 3.0+ from what i have noticed and so that is obsolete

Finally go into your phpmyadmin or whatever database software you use and set up the following:
table name: yourmoodleprefix_local_reminders (in my case it is modl_local_reminders)

column name: id; type: bigint(10); auto increment
column name: time; type: varchar(16); null: no
column name: type; type: varchar(32); null: yes; default: null

If you don't want to do the last part i simply copied the structure of the database from version 1.4 onwards. If anybody would like a copy of my lib.php then i can send this over but as i say, the database table is just the same as version 1.4 onwards

I am receiving the following error when trying to send reminders for Group Events:
[Local Reminder - ERROR] Error occured when initializing for event#[101] (type: group) Coding error detected, it must be fixed by a programmer: Invalid modulename parameter
[Local Reminder - ERROR] #0 /data/www_root/html/xxx/local/reminders/contents/group_reminder.class.php(60): get_coursemodule_from_instance('0', '0', '4')

Any ideas about how to remedy this? Thanks.

Hi Andrew,
Which moodle version and plugin version you use? I believe it is somewhat older and we fixed it in the latest version.
(See this diff: https://github.com/isuru89/moodle-reminders-for-calendar-events/commit/9116a412a9c1e2cd9a8d8fc34fd4c75f381563d1#diff-91d5700bd6a6490b6f68e88225034bde)

Check whether the below shown condition is there with your plugin code. If not, you can add the line and verify it again.
https://github.com/isuru89/moodle-reminders-for-calendar-events/blob/master/contents/group_reminder.class.php#L58

Thank you, Isuru. The updated version solved the issue.

Are there plans to make a version compatible with Moodle 3.1?

I'm using this currently in Moodle 2.7. Is there a way to segment the reminders notifications by course?
Example: I own course A and course B, but as a user I only want to receive reminders from Course B. Is that possible? Is there a way to adjust the Plugin Code to make this possible?

Is the Custom Schedule not working? The 1, 3, 7 days reminders work for me. I'm not getting email reminders for the custom schedule e.g. 1 hour before activity starts. Is it a either/or function? Not both works. Like you can only use 1,3,7 days or custom schedule? Thanks.

Custom schedule:
local_reminders_duecustom
Additionally specify desired schedule to send reminders in ahead of time for an event.

@Margaret Richards
The latest plugin v1.5 should work in Moodle 3.1.

@Marc McLain
I thought this could be done using profile specific settings as shown in here. https://docs.moodle.org/27/en/Messaging_settings#User_profile_settings

However, currently the plugin does not support a profile/activity specific configurations to tweak out which messages should he/she receive, which I need to consider technical aspects of it in terms of how to do it.

@Intist Sro
Currently the reminders work only for 1,3,7 days ahead, and there is no way to have a custom schedule from configuration unless you can modify the the code. Those days were carefully selected at the beginning of plugin development considering a reasonable reminder schedule for everyone.

In short, you have to add a desired schedule in line 47 and append that constant in to line 124 in lib.php file to check for a custom schedule.
And also you may want to edit settings.php file to appear custom schedules on configuration page.

I will consider this as a feature for a future release.
Thanks.

Will this also work on 3.3?

I have reminders working just fine in v3.3.1

@Alan Brown
This should work with v3.3 as far as I know there is no significant api changes which affects the operation of plugin.
You may use plugin latest version.