We have trainings that are held on a different days within a week or multiple varying days throughout the month. Staff are not able to get a calendar reminder to mark off the days as the system does not allow for this. WE currently have to just note the different days they may attend in the description of the training. It would be more effective if staff had the days marked on their calendar as a reminder.
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ILC's recurring classes functionality does not support variable/skip day configuration which is a BUMMER when there's holidays that could fall within the cadence. While there IS a workaround, it's a terrible experience which requires administrative intervention.
We can't schedule ILCs leading up to or interrupted by holidays (Christmas, Easter, many Mondays and Fridays) because the interruption is too complicated for our Salesforce integration and payment schedules to instructors. The current ILC system requires far too much manual intervention for a global organization. We can't sustain this model.
I support the ILC recurring sessions. We have a 3-part series, one-lesson per month on the 2nd Tuesday that cycles throughout the year. It would be a great benefit for Admin and the learner's experience.
Just want to check in and see whether there was any chance of this being re-looked at? Not only would this be a huge benefit for admins, it would also provide a much nicer user experience.
To support ILC courses it is essential to allow some way for multiple dates for each day that may not be reoccurring. It is fine if you have a separate calendar entry for each day as long as there is a way to support
Same here... I totally support the comments and ideas!
Nowadays it is important to set up a (especially virtual) training with different dates / timeslots...
"Learning" means not only a training on one special day but also be flexible within upskilling e.g. on a modular basis.
Class-based scheduling is absolutely fundamental to our recurring-session programming, and without it, Absorb is not a functional LMS for instructor-led courses or for maintaining audit-ready compliance records. Yes, please explore a solution where varied ILC session schedules require a Learner to accept each class in the session per series, and if this is not possible, please eliminate the .ics calendar functionality and return to class-based scheduling. Baseline functionality has to come before convenience in feature prioritization.
Hello Admins!
This is definitely an on-going conversation that we refer to as "class based scheduling", and if we hear from a large enough portion of our client base that calendar integration is not as important as class based scheduling, we would definitely make this change. Unfortunately it calls for a choice, because .ics files simply do not support irregular meeting cadence, so class based scheduling and single-click scheduling which integrates with popular tools like Outlook and Google calendar can't be supported simultaneously.
The decision to support calendar integration goes back some time. Statistically the overwhelming majority of ILCs had only a single session at the time when we did support class based scheduling, but we did not have .ics file generation. After hearing from many clients and then exploring the prospect with many others we found that calendar integration in a day-to-day tool embedded in the workflow of almost all learners was preferred to class based schedules, and we listened.
Though it is true that .ics meeting series do allow an individual recurrence to be moved, calendar invitations simply don't support varied scheduling. This is evident when an alteration to an individual occurrence is made, as there is an update sent which requires manual acceptance. That would be the case with calendar integration for sessions with irregular cadence - rather than a single .ics, there would need to be one for each class resulting in many clicks to schedule each.
Is it the case that you would prefer to have class based schedules rather than automatically generated meeting invitations? Should we explore a solution where varied ILC session schedules require a Learner to accept each class in the session per series?
We also need a lot more flexibility in the recurrence function, as mentioned by other users. Additionally, we have several courses with one session in the morning, one session in the afternoon, where we need a separate session for each, meaning also two sessions to enroll in, two clicks, which is a horrible experience for the user.
Total flexibility please!
#theybetterimproveorwemove
Good point, Mike!
Agree!
We would love to see an update to address this as well. As an example, one of our programmes consists of 3 sessions that fall on an uneven cadence with different duration of sessions. Would be so much easier for a learner to enroll once and get the calendar invites for all 3 sessions instead of us having to create 3 different ILC's and link them up with an enrolment key, or manually.
Well the "week(s) on weekdays" is helpful, it still does not capture the course that is held on varying days throughout a given month. For example, a class held T/TH one week and M/W the next.
It would be great to have bigger flexibility like selecting specific days in the month in case the intervals between meetings are not equal.
In Outlook recurrences, once saved, it is possible to cancel a session (occurrence) or change an individual session to any date/time — the recurrence does not have to keep arbitrarily marching on with the same cadence, come what may in reality. Imagine that an observed holiday occurs in the middle of a recurrence and a session needs to be canceled on or rescheduled around the holiday — Outlook can support this entirely predictable scenario, and an LMS should, too. Maintaining accurate records of sessions is important for contact hours and audit, too, so without a function to edit recurrences to match the way learning programs must operate in reality, the system is not only confusing learners and instructors by forcing invites on dates when sessions cannot happen, it is also creating false records that make audit, etc. impossible.
Thank you for your idea. We use a standard recurrence model for our ILC sessions in order to afford our session enrollment meeting invitations that are sent out to work with the standard recurrence models of most calendars (e.g. Outlook, Google) and are automatically added to a learner's calendar. Having said that, we do support "week(s) on weekdays" recurrence which allows you to pick different days within a week that you want your session to occur and recur upon (see attached). Is this of value to your organization?