Using Communications

[astral]

Hello, thank you for making this platform available.

I am looking for a way to send official communication messages to users and then be able to track who has received and read them. From reading the manual it sounds like the "Communications" function of forma LMS is intended to provide this, however it does not seem to work as expected.

As the administrator I go to E-Learning>>Communications>>Add

I type in the title, description, and optional course. Then click "Save Changes."

The Communication now appears in the list with an orange triangle/exclamation point under the user column and upon hovering over it it says "no user selected."

I then click the orange triangle and am presented with a user list. I select the desired users in the list and click "save changes."

I am returned to the list and the orange triangle is now replaced with an outline of a person and the message "Operation completed successfully" at the top of the page.

However, none of the selected users seem to be notified of this communication. No emails are received and there is nothing within the user profile when logging in to indicate the communication is there.

How are users notified supposed to be notified of communications? Am I missing a step in the process?

I believe I have the email smtp configured properly because I am able to send Messages through the system and emails from this are sent to each user.

Thanks for your help.

[max]

Hi Astral,

welcome onboard!

Communications can be used as a way to send "multimedia" communications to users. In fact, you can also include scorm objects in your communication.

User should be notified because - in frontend - he would see a new communication under the "communication" tab. Is that tab turned on?
In the past we made a customization that also sent an e-mail when a communication was used, we might recycle them for the next release.

Communications, as you may have noticed, may be related to a course or not.

In the meanwhile, you could rather use "announcements": that function is available within a course (so it's related to a course, obviously) and it indeed sends an e-mail notification when a new announcement is added.

Also pay attention to "event manager" (under administration-main-settings): the event related to a new announcement must be "in use".

[astral]

Max,

Thanks for the response. After looking further, I did not have the "communication" tab enabled. Once I did this, they showed up in the list.

I was hoping to have the ability to have email notifications sent when a new one is entered but it looks like Announcements can be used instead with this functionality as you mentioned.

I appreciate your help!

[Pritchard]

Hello... I apologize for resurrecting this thread, but I set a communications date ahead of time, but it seems visible right away (even though the date is a week from now)? Is there a way to schedule communications in advance?

More specifically, our instructors have templates for course communications planned out in advance (so they may want to set a full course's announcements ahead of time and only release on the specific dates - ex: weekly basis). Being able to email or SMS these communications would be nice as well. I realize announcements and communications are separate features. Just thinking of the best way for our instructors to handle this scenario...

[max]

Hi Pritchard, welcome on board!

No problem with resurrections

From what I see, communications can be scheduled for the date you set upon creating them.

To better answer your question, I wouldn't use "communications" to achieve that goal. That feature is not well developed and is very raw, although it has the advantage that it can be planned in advance and released at a specific date. I normally prefer announcements, at least they are more integrated into a course. Announcements are also notified by e-mail. Unfortunately they cannot be planned. If you are ok with that, maybe you can use announcements.

SMS: Forma already has an integrated system to send SMS. The integration we inherited from the old Docebo CE doesn't work anymore, but we developed a new one with another provider. If you are interested, we can talk about that.

Finally: you are not the first one that has this kind of need. We recently analysed and quoted a customized feature for a customer, to better handle communications to users when new LO are uploaded.

[Pritchard]

Max, thank you for the welcome and for your responses. We are still evaluating FormaLMS for our client. Technical investigations (for any custom integrations) are likely to begin soon as well.