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Course/Group Cancellation Deadlines

1 Requirements

In scenarios where blended-learning courses are mapped in ILIAS, there is often a need for cancellation deadlines:
In contrast to pure elearning courses, on-site components of a course consume certain resources that:

• Might also be used for other purposes.
• Must yield a minimum return on the costs.

Therefore, blended-learning courses possibly must be cancelled in case a specific minimum number of participants isn't completed.
And in contrast to pure elearning courses, the cancellation of on-site components of a course entails some possible other events:

• Must the training rooms be reserved?
• Is accomodation of participants needed?
• Must trainers be scheduled for the training?
• Are materials (print copies, devices, special clothing, food/drinks) to be provided?
• Are invitation mails to different stakeholders of the course (participants and their possible superiors, trainers, keynoters, hotel etc.) to be dispatched?

When the cancellation deadline of a course has exceeded and the minimum number of participants hasn't been completed, two different automoatic action could take place:

• The person in charge of the course is alerted, so he/she can decide to cancel the course.
  Cancelling the course should be possible in an easy way, e.g., by a button in its settings.
  After cancellation, all stakeholders should be informed by automatically.
  In case, there is a "Trainer Deployment Schedule", the trainer scheduled for that course should automatically appear as available again for the period of the course.
• The course could be cancelled automatically (with all implications mentioned above).

1.1 Open Questions

• In the solution we developed for a customer, this has been realized as a relative deadline (another proposal within the "Seminar Management" complex).
  I.e., the cancellation is possible until x days before the beginning of the on-site event. So, this proposal only makes sense if the community also accepts:
  • Relative deadlines.
  • The date of the on-site event as a default setting of courses defined as blended-learning
    (in our solution the date when the on-site event takes place is a default setting of the course object while in the trunk it is currently only an optional extended metadata item).
• It should be discussed whether this feature also makes for groups.

1.2 Related Topics

This article is only a part of an entire complex of features.
Immediately related topics are:

• Seminar Management
• Course Templates
• Central Seminar Material Management
• Central Seminar Provider Management
• Central Seminar Notification Management
• Central Trainer Management, incl. "Trainer Deployment Schedule"
• Course Booking/Cancellation by Superiors, incl. personalized overviews for superiors
• Minimum Number of Participants
• Relative Dates in Courses/Groups

1.3 Feature being approved by JF, 20 July 2015

• A new setting "Cancellation Deadline" is introduced (absolute date, not relative)
• After that date, the "Leave" permission will not be granted anymore. The "Cancellation/Unsubscribe" tab will not be shown anymore, the corresponding action will not be listed in the action dropdown anymore.
• The date is presented on the info tab.
• Naming will still be discussed.
• The "Pemissions of owner" screen should list this setting if it is affective.
• The feature should be implemented for groups as well.
• The setting will be placed into the "Registration Settings" section under "Limited Registration Period"

2 Additional Information

• Idea / concept: bromberger (at) qualitus.de
• Interest in fundin: Qualitus
• Maintainer: Meyer, Stefan [smeyer]
• Development: Feature is developed by Leifos and is to be integrated by tbd
• Test cases by: …

3 Discussion

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], 20 July 2015: We appreciate the feature as being outlined by JF today and schedule it for 5.1.

4 Implementation

, 18 Aug 2015: This feature has been implemented according to the JF discussion (see above). The limit is displayed on the info screen if set.

Test Cases

Test cases completed at 26.07.2015 by Suittenpointner, Florian [suittenpointner]

• C6493: Stornierungsfrist in Kurs-Einstellungen eintragen
• C6494: Versuch, den Kurs vor und nach Ablauf der Stornierungsfrist zu stornieren
• C6495: Stornierungsfrist in Gruppen-Einstellungen eintragen
• C6496: Versuch, der Gruppe vor und nach Ablauf der Stornierungsfrist zu stornieren

Approval

Approved at 15/08/28 by Bromberger, Norbert [bromberger].