[Solved] Course expiration and renewals howto?

Ok guys. We're almost ready to launch our new site for our client. Here are 2 items that remain:

1) We have our courses set in Joomdle and manual enrolment to 30 days. However when someone purchases a course, an end date isn't set in their enrolment. Are we missing something there? We don't want to be manually selecting enrolments for everything...

2) When the course time period is over (or close to it) does Joomdle have a reminder and a renewal option for users so they can sign backup or re-purchase the course to continue using it?

Thanks in advance for all your help so far. The client is very very happy with the Joomla/Joomdle/Moodle deployment.

Rob

Hi Rob,

Joomdle does not manage expiry options at this moment. For part 1, you should set the expiry defaults in the course itself. So once a new enrolment occurs, the expiry is automatically set.

Your 2nd question is harder. Joomdle doesn't know how expiry dates. So, you will need to set another method to manage the notifications. IMO, you might want to look at one of the Joomla membership managers such as AEC, Ambra, etc. which have such concepts noting that Joomdle doesn't integrate with any of these at this point. so there will always be some element of manual work - just a matter of choosing which part will be manual.

If you really need it fully automated, some custom work could be done based upon an agreed scope and time permitting.

Hi Chris,

We'd probably want to stick within the Joomdle/Tienda setup currently so we could probably figure out some way to manage renewals etc.

I wonder if Moodle has some kind of expiration warning setting that we could customize.

Regardless we have the default for all of our courses set to 30 day enrolments in the Manual Enrolment settings, but when a new user purchases a course, the end date isn't checked or set. Do you think I'm missing the correct location for setting the expiration period? It's like the automatic expiry isn't working or I've not got it turned on correctly...

Hi.

I just looked at the code, and I know why you are not getting the expiration period set in Moodle: we just put a zero there

I will try to make it use the course config when I have some free time, and let you know.

Hi again.

I took a deeper look, and I see this was working in Moodle 1.9 but was not in 2.0.

I think I have already fixed it. As it is only a 1-line mod, you may want to do it yourself to test.

File: "moodle/auth/joomdle/auth.php"
Function: enrol_user

Almost at the end, just before:
$plugin->enrol_user($instance, $user->id, $roleid, $timestart, $timeend);
Add:
$timeend = $timestart + $instance->enrolperiod;

You will need to set your enrolperiod in the manual auth method for the course.

Antonio

Great! We're staging the site now going through it again and I'll let you know!

Rob

Works like a charm. Thanks guys. Now I just need to figure out how to use Moodle to send out a notice a few days before the enrolment period ends to ask them to renew.

Thanks!

Rob

Great, thanks for reporting back.

Please let us know if you find a solution for the renewal emails.

Antonio