Enrolment Workflows

Enrolment Workflows can be used to trigger specific actions to run against users enrolled into an activity on certain dates. The following are common use cases for utilising workflows:

  • Scheduling learning to appear on a specific date.

  • Refresher training that will expire at a set time period after completion.

  • Assign further activities or pre/post-training surveys.

  • Setting reminder notifications to be sent before and after due dates.

By creating a custom workflow, you can define an abstract set of rules that can be re-used across enrolments with different Start/End Dates.

Hint: In addition to Enrolment Workflows which only apply to enrolled users, an Activity Workflow can be used to run actions against any user accessing an activity, whether enrolled or not.

See Activity Workflows to read more.

Workflow Fundamentals

A workflow consists of a series of Triggers. A Trigger specifies an Action that will occur when the Trigger's Conditions are met. A typical trigger might read as:

Trigger on Start DateChange Status to Assigned

This would assign an activity to a user when the start date is matched.

Trigger Conditions

The Primary Condition

Every trigger must contain a primary condition that will be met before the trigger will run. There are two possible types of primary conditions for defining a trigger:

  • Date-Based: The trigger occurs on a specific date (i.e. 1 week before Start Date, assign a survey)

  • Status Changes: The trigger occurs as a result of a status change (i.e. when the user is assigned, send a notification).

Date-Based triggers are the most common of the two, typically workflows are used to ensure certain actions occur on a specific day. Because workflows are designed to be abstract, these conditions are best used when referencing a parameter that is populated from the enrolment.

For example, instead of setting a trigger to mark a user as overdue on January 1st, 2030, the workflow trigger would be set to mark a user as overdue on the Due Date. The Due Date can then be set to different values for different enrolments, i.e. Course A may have a Due Date of January 1st, 2030, but Course B might be a different date. In this way, the same workflow rules can be used for different enrolments.

This layer of abstraction may feel restrictive at first but provides a way to create a standard set of rules that can be used across the entire system without the need for duplication.

Secondary Conditions

In addition to the primary condition, any number of secondary conditions can be added. Secondary conditions are much more flexible and can refer to a user's attributes or their completion/enrolment status in the activity. Secondary conditions are often required to ensure an action is only triggered for some users in the enrolment, an example of this would be an overdue reminder:

Trigger 1 day after Due Date AND Completion Status is not completedSend Notification

This trigger can be used to send an overdue notification to all users who haven't completed the activity. In this case the secondary condition ("Completion Status is not completed") ensures the overdue notification isn't sent to users who have already completed the activity on time.

It is important to be aware that workflows are evaluated overnight and not in real-time. This caveat has some subtle implications – for example, if wanting to send a notification when a user completes an activity, the trigger condition must be:

Trigger 1 day after Completion Date Send Notification

This is because workflows are evaluated in the morning and if a user completed during the day, the next day would be the first time a completion date trigger could be evaluated (i.e. a trigger on the completion date would never run).

Actions

Types of Actions

A big driver for workflows is the ability to change a user's enrolment status for a given activity.

The Default Action

Workflows may optionally include a Default Action that will be applied when none of the trigger conditions are met. This is useful to provide a fallback status ahead of any actions being run. For example, for date-released training, we would want to assign an activity on the Start Date which means that prior to the Start Date, the training should be unassigned.

Instead of picking some arbitrary earlier date to mark the user as unassigned, it's easier to use a Default Action of Change Status to Unassigned instead.

Creating a Workflow

Under Assign Learning, click Workflows to access the Enrolment Workflows screen. This will bring up a list of saved workflows, if any exist.

Click Add Workflow to create a new workflow.

Enter a Workflow Name and optionally write a description to help identify this workflow and its purpose in the future.

Click Select a Workflow to start with a predefined workflow template and pick from the following options:

  • Assigned Ad-Hoc: The activity is assigned immediately without a Due Date

  • Assigned with Due Date: The activity is assigned immediately with a set Due Date

  • Date-Assigned: The activity is unassigned until a specific Start Date with a Due Date

  • Assigned with Prerequisite: The activity is only assigned once the prerequisite activity has been completed

  • Assigned with 1-Year Expiry: The activity is assigned immediately and expires 1 year after their completion date

You can also create a workflow from scratch by clicking Add Trigger without selecting a predefined template, but we find it's easier to start with some base rules and modify from there.

Editing Workflows

Workflows provide the control for defining your own custom rules and actions, if desired. For the below instructions, we'll start with the Date-Assigned workflow.

The workflow view provides a timeline of triggers that will occur. Above the blue line is a list of date-based Primary Conditions that have attached actions, whilst below the below line we see any Secondary Conditions and their resulting Actions.

Adding a New Trigger

Click the Add Trigger button in the top, right-hand corner of the screen to add a new trigger.

  1. The primary condition for this trigger, must be one of "when Date" or "When Status".

  2. Click this button

Editing an Existing Trigger

  1. Click on a Condition/Action pair to open the Trigger Panel.

  2. Edit the Conditions on the left-hand-side of the Trigger Panel or the Actions on the right-hand side of the panel.

  3. You may close the Trigger Panel by clicking again on the highlighted Condition/Action pair or by alternatively selecting a different Trigger to edit.

  4. Click Save Changes when you've finished editing the workflow.

Removing a Trigger

  1. Click on a Condition/Action pair to open the Trigger Panel.

  2. Click the Remove Trigger button in the bottom right of the Trigger Panel to remove the trigger. The Trigger Panel will automatically close and the trigger will disappear from the timeline.

  3. Click Save Changes when you've finished editing the workflow.

Workflows Reference

Triggers

Primary Condition Options

Secondary Conditions Options

Actions

Change Status

Other Actions

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