Manual Assignments - term based due date?

Thanks, Aaron. We're looking for a dynamic due date rather than a fixed due date. We'd like to be able to create one manual assignment with a due date of, for example, 30 days out. When I first create the assignment, I might assign it to the first 3 individuals who need to complete it. For that group, the fixed date approach would work fine. But I then may need to add 2 more people to the same assignment a few weeks later. For the 2nd group, it should still be due 30 days from the date it was assigned to them, not from the original date.

So for User1, User2, and User3 it may have been assigned on 6/1 and due 7/1, but for User4 and User5 if it was assigned on 6/20 it should be due 7/20. This is a common scenario for us with both onboarding and systems trainings. Under the fixed date approach, we have to lump users into groups with their own assignment and due date. Then keep creating a new assignment with the same requirements, but a new due date over and over. Unfortunately a rule-based assignment is not an option for us with this one.

Matt Kamen

 4

Responded: 5/19/2014 3:58:44 PM

We are considering this for inclusion in Sprint 62!

Don Wilde

 3

Responded: 8/8/2014 9:07:17 AM

Just to make sure I understand your request:

It would be # of days from the date assigned, not date the assignment was first viewed by the user.

Manual Assignments are indeed effective when they are created, not when the user first views the assignment. So my understanding is you would like to keep that behavior, and simply add a field for setting "due in X number of days" from when it is created.

So if you created the assignment on 5/1/2014 and wanted it to be due 20 days from date assigned("# of days from the date assigned"), then you would want it to be due 5/21/2014, correct?

Since your requirement is that it be a fixed number of days from the date assigned, and since you want the assignment to be effective immediately, then create the assignment on the day you want it to be assigned, and add the number of days you would like to the current date and set that as the Due Date field when creating the manual assignment.

So in the above scenario, you would create the assignment on 5/1/2014 and set the due date as 5/21/2014. Does that work for you? Please let me know if I've misunderstood what you are trying to accomplish. We could add a term days field, but it would simply perform the same calculation and the actual behavior would not be different.

Enrollments, Learning Products, and Rule based assignments all have some type of "term days" setting because it is calculated from the time the user activates the enrollment or the rule based assignment is dynamically assigned. In the case of manual assignments, they are always effective immediately, and so adding the field there might be misleading as there is no such dynamic behavior. You can always add X days to the day you are creating the manual assignment and set that as the Due Date.

AaronLS

 3

Responded: 5/19/2014 1:56:10 PM

That absolutely makes sense. With some possible modifications to our rule based assignment, this might fit better since we already have a term days and an "add new audience members continuously" options there, and its implementation is better equipped to handle adding assignments with dynamic dates. So as new users come in, they get assigned immediately with X days for it to be due with no repeating.

The two issues with our current implementation being:

1. Creating a new rule based assignment that only affects future new hires and not all existing employees.
2. Augmenting the criteria to allow you to pick up new hires.

As far as #2, is there already some fields from the learner profiles that you could set criteria for that would fit well to the training you are giving? I'm guessing you've thought about that and the answer is no. Perhaps our existing criteria simply needs to be improved to fit your scenario?

Question A) What are the issues with finding criteria that selects the correct people for a particular assignment(assuming we fix issue #1)? Is there some commonalities for the people you are assigning to, or is it usually any & everyone?

I believe you can actually add an "include" criteria rule without selecting any criteria and it will select everyone, if you want all new users to be effected(I haven't tested if you can save all the way through, it might fail validation). The main problem here is issue #1.

Perhaps if you could assign people some sort of category or field and in turn your rule based assignment would automatically pick up people with that certain category. So rather than going to the assignment and adding the person, you would go to the person and add them to a certain category, and then any rule based assignment that applies to that category will trigger on them. This is similar concept to how every new hire at a company usually gets added to network categories such as "Everyone", "Hourly Worker", "Manager" etc. which determines what network resources they are given access to, instead of meticulously adding their permissions. This would be sort of like where maybe you have training all new Salaried employees must take when onboarded. So you setup your rule based assignment for the "Salaried" category. Then later as people are on-boarded, you don't really think about what training you want them to take, but instead think about what categories apply to them, add them to those categories, and let the assignments get automatically assigned. This is pretty common in approach from a resources access standpoint, but it can be a little abstract for those not familiar with it, so I don't know if that's a good fit. For you, it might be your category is simply called "Everyone", and you always add people to the "Everyone" category so they get ANY assignments that apply to everyone.

Question B) If you had a step where you added each new user to a particular category, instead of adding them directly to the assignment, would that be an acceptable solution?

Regarding issue #1,

Question C) Have all or most of the existing users already completed the Learning Products being assigned, or completed some equivalent LP in the system that could be added as an equivalency? Such that the "Accept Prior Completions" is sufficient to prevent prior users from being given the assignment, so that it will only affect future users.

Hopefully it doesn't seem like I'm trying to force you down a different path, but want to get as much information as possible and keep all options on the table for us to consider. It might turn out that making the original modification you suggested would be easier.

AaronLS

 3

Responded: 5/19/2014 5:11:13 PM

@Aaron - Has there been any further discussion on this?

Matt Kamen

 4

Responded: 6/6/2014 12:09:58 PM