Within both a Program and Certification, there is a tab called Exceptions. Users who are assigned to the Exceptions report will be there for one of the following reasons:
- Already assigned to program
- Time Allowance
- Completion time unknown
- Duplicate courses in different certifications
What is the Exception report?
The exception report details any errors that have occurred when the system has tried to calculate the completion dates and enrolments for the learners assigned to a program e.g. the completion criteria states the learner has 30 days from the position start date to complete the program. If the position start date field has not been completed then the program is unable to calculate the program end date.
There is a notification that can be sent to Site Managers when a user enters the Exceptions report, this can be configured by the Learning Pool Support Team. This is a permission that needs to be added to a role, therefore if assigned to the Site Manager role, all those with this role will receive the message.
Where is the Exception report?
- To view the exception report click the Exception Report tab from the program page. The report details the name of the user, the user ID number, and the issue.
- Once the error is known, a decision on how to fix it can be made.
- Use the Select and Action fields to perform bulk actions. Select allows the selection of all the users that meet a certain condition. Action allows the selection of an action. The available actions are:
- Assign: This means "ignore the exception and add them to the program anyway". The user is now treated like any other user who was assigned without getting an exception. They should receive any program messages that other users would have got at the time when the exception is resolved. In the background the exception still exists it is just marked as "handled". Otherwise, it might be recreated again.
- Set realistic due date and assign: The system automatically calculates a realistic time frame for the learner. This is based upon the minimum program time required plus one week.
- Do not assign: This means "remove the exception from the list and don't add them to the program". The user is treated as if they were never assigned. No messages should go out to them.
- Click Ok on the confirmation box that appears after the appropriate condition is set and action. This action may take a few minutes to complete.
Please note that when clearing down the exceptions report, if messages are within the Program / Certification, these will trigger to users being reassigned. For example, the Enrolment message. This is because the user is effectively being reassigned to the Program/Certification.
What are the Exception types and what do they mean?
There are several different types of exceptions that occur in different circumstances:
Time allowance exceptions
On the "Content" tab, course sets have a "Minimum time required" field which states the shortest time that someone would need to complete that course set. These values are then used to calculate a total minimum time required for the program by combining the individual minimum times for each course set (how it is calculated depends on if course sets have THEN or OR logic between them). In more recent versions we print the "Total minimum time required" at the top of the content tab.
On the "Assignments" tab an admin can specify a completion date, which can either be a specific date, or a date relative to some other criteria.
A time allowance exception occurs when the difference between the completion date and the time the assignment is made is less than the total minimum time required.
An example of this: Program consists of 1 course set with a minimum time of 5 days
Admin assigns user A and sets the completion date to be "Within 10 days of first login"
Today is 14th October 2014. User A first logged in 1st September 2014.
Therefore "within 10 days of first login" is equal to 1st Sept + 10 days = 11th Sept for that user
Since the user's due date is already in the past, they didn't have the minimum time to complete so an exception is thrown for that user. Now imagine user B was also assigned with the same criteria, but they first logged in on 13th October: "Within 10 days of first login" is 13th October + 10 days = 23rd October. Today is 14th October so that gives them 9 days to complete Minimum time is 5 days so therefore no exception is thrown for user B.
Already assigned to program exceptions
This exception type is thrown if:
A user has this program assigned to them via one of their learning plans. The program must have been approved and the learning plan must be active for it to count.
They are then assigned to the program via the assignments tab.
The reason for this exception is to let the admin know that they have already completed the program (so it might not be necessary to assign it to them).
Assigned programs will appear under Required Learning for the user, whereas programs added via a learning plan do not.
Completion time unknown exceptions
This exception can occur if the completion date uses a relative date, but the relative date can't be calculated for that user for some reason.
For example, if the completion date of "10 days after a specific profile date field", but a particular user did not have any value set for that profile date field then an exception would be created.
Duplicate course in different certifications exceptions
This exception is raised if the user is being assigned to a certification, and the certification contains a course that is also included in another certification that the same user is assigned to. That would be bad because certifications will reset courses when they expire and should not have the same course being reset for the same user from two different sources.
Duplicate courses in different certification exception types do not apply to programs.