Notifications

How do Digest Notifications work?

R
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge

Hi everyone, I’m Roberto Moscatelli from the Docebo Support team and I would like to share this guide I created on Digest Notifications.

 

What are Digest Notifications?

Digest notifications group multiple notifications about the same type of event into one larger notification. For example, instead of receiving seven separate notifications about courses that are not yet completed, the user will receive one notification with a list of the courses that they have yet to complete.

 

How are they configured?

Digest notifications are configured just like other notifications, with the only difference being that instead of scheduling the notification sending, you configure its frequency (hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly). Also, by flagging “Send immediate notification digest on massive enrollment” option within the Advanced Settings of the platform, enables a Digest Notification be sent at the time of enrollment.

 

But what courses/assets will be included in the notifications? And what users?

 

If you are wondering the answers to these questions, let’s dive a little deeper into the three specific behaviors of Digest Notifications:

  1. Snapshot 
  2. Timeframe
  3. Day in advance

 

1) Snapshot

Digest Notification Included Trigger
Digest: Learner has yet to complete a course when a number of courses in which a user is enrolled have not yet been completed by the user

 

This means that users assigned to this notification will receive a notification with a list of courses (involved in the notification) in which they have the status “Enrolled” and “In progress”.

 

The system takes a “photograph” of the user’s situation at the time that the notification should be sent out.

Snapshot Example:

Let’s say that the notification is set to be sent “every week on Monday at 10:00” and today is Monday at 9:59.

The situation is the following:

  • UserA is enrolled in Course1 with status “Enrolled”

  • UserA is enrolled in Course2 with status “In Progress”

  • UserA is enrolled in Course3 with status “Completed”

At 10:00 the notification “Digest: Learner has yet to complete a course” will be triggered for UserA which will include: 

  • Course1 (as the status is “Enrolled”)

  • Course2 (as the status is “in Progress”)

However, UserA will not receive the notification for Course3 because the course status is “Completed”.

 

If during the week (let’s say on Thursday) UserA completes Course2, next Monday at 9.59 the situation will be:

  • UserA is enrolled in Course1 with status “Enrolled”

  • UserA is enrolled in Course2 with status “Completed”

  • UserA is enrolled in Course3 with status “Completed”

At 10:00 the notification “Digest: Learner has yet to complete a course” will be triggered for UserA and will include: 

  • Course1 (as the status is “Enrolled”)

As the previous week, UserA will not receive the notification for Course2 and Course3 because of their “Completed” status. 

 

2) Timeframe

Digest Notification Included Trigger
Digest: User enrolled into a course when a user is enrolled into a number of courses
Digest: Assets marked as outdated when an asset is marked as outdated by a user. The owner of the content will receive the notification
Digest: Course marked as outdated when a course is marked as outdated by a user. The platform administrator will receive the notification

 

For these three notifications, the users will receive a notification with a list of items (courses or assets) based on a specific time frame.

 

Example for “Digest: User enrolled into a course” (will be the same behavior for “Digest: Assets marked as outdated” and “Digest: Course marked as outdated”)

 

In sum, if the notification has been configured to be triggered every day with the current behavior, it runs a check for all the users that have been enrolled in the specified courses between the previous day and the time when the notification needs to be triggered. The same rule applies for weeks and months.

Timeframe Example:

We have a "Digest: user enrolled in a course" notification to be sent every day at 18:00

  • User1 has been enrolled in some courses today (02/21) at 14:00

  • User2 has been enrolled in some courses today (02/21) at 15:00

  • User3 will be enrolled in some courses today (02/21) at 23:00 

As the notification is set to be sent every day at 18:00, today the notification considers the following timeframe:

  • From 02/20 at 18:01 (previous day) to 02/21 at 18:00 (time of the notification)

So in this case: 

  • on 02/21 at 18:00

    • User1 and User2 will receive the notification only for the courses in which they have been enrolled between the timeframe

  • on 02/22 at 18:00

    • User 3 will receive the notification as their enrollment was after the time of notification (18:00) on 02/21

    • User1 and User2 will not receive the notification on 02/22 as the timeframe for the 02/22 will be: from 02/21 at 18:01 to 02/22 at 18:00 (and User1 and User2 are not in this timeframe)

If you set the Digest notification as "weekly on Monday at 9.00", the timeframe is "from last Monday at 9:01 to this Monday at 9:00". The users that have been enrolled during this timeframe will receive the notification.

 

If you change just the time of the notification (for example, you moved it from 9:00 to 10:00) the timeframe will be "from Last Monday at 10:01 to this Monday at 10:00).

 

To conclude, all of the users that have the status "Enrolled" that are outside of the timeframe will not receive the notification (or at least the course will not be included in the list).

 

Please note: if you set two equal notifications (“Every monday” one at 9:00 and one at 10:00) and a user is enrolled on Tuesday, the users will receive two notifications including the same course.

 

3) Day in advance

Digest Notification Included Trigger
Digest: Course has expired when a number of courses in which a user is enrolled are going to expire

 

The notification "course has expired" does not consider users who have already completed the course.

 

The notification can be set with two options:

  • Number of days to check in advance

  • Send only on exact day

 

“Send only on exact day” flag is adding a specific day check. This flag determines if the notification is due to be sent ONLY the exact number of days before the event OR every time the notification is triggered and the number of days before the event is LOWER than the expiration I set.

Day in advance Example:

Let’s say that UserA is: 

  • enrolled in Course1 (with expiration date 03/20) 

  • enrolled in Course2 (with expiration date 03/20) 

  • enrolled in Course3 (expiration date 03/30)

We set the notification “Digest: Course has expired” to be triggered every day at 10:00 AM, also we set the days in advance to 2.

 

Let’s review the behavior based on the configuration and the flag:

 

For UserA there can be 2 behaviors:

  • Flag “send only on exact days” OFF

    • UserA will receive the notification on 03/18 AND 03/19 AND 03/20 for Course1 and Course2

    • UserA will receive the notification on 03/28 AND 03/29 AND 03/30 for Course3

  • Flag “send only on exact days” ON

    • UserA will receive the notification on 03/18 for Course1 and Course2

    • UserA will receive the notification on 03/28 for Course3

 

Feedback/Questions⁉

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this guide and if it was helpful for you. Please share any feedback and/or questions below.

11 replies

Lucy.blake
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge +3

Thanks @roberto.moscatelli, this is really useful. 

Is there anyway to do a digest notification to show what a user has completed in the past month for example?

R
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge

Thanks @roberto.moscatelli, this is really useful. 

Is there anyway to do a digest notification to show what a user has completed in the past month for example?

 

Hi @Lucy.blake thank you for your reply.

Currently there’s not a digest notification to show what a user has completed in the past (month, year,...).

From the admin side my suggestion, as workarond, is to create a new report “Users-Courses” and in the “filters” tab filter for the completion date:

 

 

You can also schedule the reports to receive it in your inbox.

 

From the learner side, the best way to see it is going in the My Activities area, select the “courses” tab and sort for “Completion date”:

 

Anyway, if these solutions do not satisfy your request, please create an idea in our Community Portal. 

Have a nice day!

Roberto

 

Lucy.blake
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge +3

@roberto.moscatelli thanks for this I’m not too bothered just wondered if it was possible. You can see last months activity on things like LinkedIn and just wondered if there was an easy way to do it. 

I’ve just been playing with the ‘Digest: learner has yet to complete the course’ and was wondering why is password reset there but not other things like course thumbnail or course progress? I imagine there was  a reason. I’m just curious. 

Also is there any way to limit the courses to ones that have been subscribed to in the last month?

R
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge

Hi @Lucy.blake thank you for your reply!

I believe that the reason why other things like course thumbnail are not in this notification is because, as this notification includes a list of courses, maybe you can receive a too long list notification that could be “difficult” to read. 

Anyway I can agree about the course progress shortcode, so my suggestion here is to request an improvement for this notification.

About the second question, currently it’s not possible to set the notification for a specific timeframe (last month in your example).

If you create an idea for the improvement of this notification, please let me know and I will more than happy to add my vote!

Have a wonderful day!

Roberto

 

aswartz
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge

@roberto.moscatelli thank you for this detailed explanation. I am still a bit confused about ‘Digest: Course has expired’.

 

We are looking for a way to keep sending reminders to a user, then their manager and on up according to an escalation process defined for courses with a deadline. It seems like this can work with ‘Digest: user has yet to complete a course’. The problem with that is that those include courses that are still not expired. 

Am I correct that the ‘Digest: Course has expired’ will only be sent either once on the day itself OR every day leading up to expiration according to what you put in ‘number of days in advance’?

Is there any notification that works with the deadline that you can trigger based on how many days over the deadline they are?

Thanks,

Aimee

R
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge

Hi @aswartz 

thank you for your reply on this.

 

About your question 

 

 

Am I correct that the ‘Digest: Course has expired’ will only be sent either once on the day itself OR every day leading up to expiration according to what you put in ‘number of days in advance’?

 

 

It depends if you flag the “send on the exact day only” or not:

 

 

So in the example above, with the flag, saying that the Expiration date of the course is 08/30, the notification will be sent out ONLY on 08/28.

Otherwise, if you don’t flag the option “Send on the exact day” (but you still have “2” in “Number of days to check in advance), the notification will be sent out on 08/28 AND 08/29 AND 08/30.

 

About this one

 

 

Is there any notification that works with the deadline that you can trigger based on how many days over the deadline they are?

 

Let me understand: you cannot use the Digest “Course has expired” because the course that are already expired are not in this notification (cause it consider just the courses that are going to expire)?

If yes, the only other notification that you can use (for courses that are already expired) is the Digest “Learner has yet to complete a course” but as you correctly said, it consider also courses that are not expired (so in which the user is “in progress” or “enrolled” with a “valid” date).

 

If all written above is correct (meaning that I fully understand your use case), I confirm that we don’t have a notification just for expired courses after the deadline. In this case my suggestion is to open a new Idea on our Community Portal.

 

As workaround you can create a custom report filtering for “Course has expired” and inserting a date range as pictures above:

 

Please let me know if everything is clear.

 

Have a nice day!

Roberto

Jamie at GuyKat
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge +1

@roberto.moscatelli thank you for this detailed explanation. I am still a bit confused about ‘Digest: Course has expired’.

 

We are looking for a way to keep sending reminders to a user, then their manager and on up according to an escalation process defined for courses with a deadline. It seems like this can work with ‘Digest: user has yet to complete a course’. The problem with that is that those include courses that are still not expired. 

Am I correct that the ‘Digest: Course has expired’ will only be sent either once on the day itself OR every day leading up to expiration according to what you put in ‘number of days in advance’?

Is there any notification that works with the deadline that you can trigger based on how many days over the deadline they are?

Thanks,

Aimee

 

You are correct on the above. A “workaround”, even though not perfect, is to use that digest - learner has yet to complete and simply add the [expire_at] shortcode in the bulleted list section so the due date shows up along with the non-completed course so a user can see if it’s overdue or not. I assume you also have seen the digest - learner has yet to complete (admin) version which is a great one to use for manager notifications to include their entire team on one notification.

Hope this helps!

Jamie Morgan - Vice President NA | GuyKat | www.guykat.com
amusselman
Rank

This means that users assigned to this notification will receive a notification with a list of courses (involved in the notification) in which they have the status “Enrolled” and “In progress”.

 

Will the notification still be sent if their course access has expired but they are still “enrolled” or “in progress?”

—Aliya
dklinger
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +7

@roberto.moscatelli a question. We have configured an automatic group with a digest notification with a daily schedule. We did this to support a business need and work through a business problem:

  • The need is to act as a tail end strategy for a learning campaign…the business problem is those that have not completed learning that are on leave? The will receive the system digest notification: user has not yet completed a course when the come back.
  • these learners were originally mapped with a snapshot. Some lose their “eligibility” with a course during the lifecycle of the learning campaign
  • when I mention “eligibility” I mean that a person should NOT receive these notifications if they are on leave.
  • we bring their HR status in as a user field.
  • so we believe that once our daily integration runs? People that have their HR status change? That will add them to the group.
  • Because they now meet the two scopes for the notification (enrolled in the learning plan + automatic group)…people coming back from leave will begin receiving notifications based on the digest schedule. 

My question is, does the theory sound right? Thank you for your time in advance.

L
Rank
Userlevel 2
Badge

This looks useful.  Could I please have an example of how to lay out the notification text using the [items] tags.  I have not been successful so far in getting this to work.

 

H

I just finished the Docebo U training for digest notifications, and I cannot figure out how to recreate the example they give: 

“To avoid overwhelming your audiences, consider using Digest Notifications. Digest notifications batch all the individual notifications from a certain category and send them as summary communications at a set cadence.

For example, instead of sending a new notification every time learners complete individual courses, an admin might configure a single monthly digest notification listing all the courses learners completed during that time frame.” 

Our new employees are enrolled in, and therefore complete, so many courses in such a short amount of time that I’d love to be able to reduce the sheer number of emails they receive.

Reply


Terms & ConditionsCookie settings