What’s New in Totara 19?
Totara 19 has arrived, bringing with it a host of exciting new features and improvements that enhance both functionality and user experience. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s new in this latest release.
Course Enrolment Approval Workflows
Totara 19 introduces a sophisticated new approval workflow for course enrolments. This feature allows users to request enrolment in courses, with the ability for other users to approve or reject these requests. The approval process is customizable, allowing multiple stages with different approvers to be configured, providing greater flexibility in managing enrolments.
Clone Certifications
Duplicating certifications has never been easier. The new clone feature allows you to copy an existing certification, including its details, content (such as certification and recertification paths and course sets), and notifications. This streamlines the process of creating new certifications, enabling you to use existing ones as templates rather than starting from scratch.
Inspire Theme
The new Inspire theme refreshes Totara’s user interface, offering a modern design with a left-hand side main menu for easier navigation. While it shares similarities with the Ventura theme, Inspire introduces a cleaner and more contemporary look to the platform.
AI Course Tag Recommendations
Course tagging is now smarter with the AI tag recommender. This tool suggests relevant tags based on course content, making it quicker and easier to organize and categorize courses. It also serves as a demonstration of the potential for developing other AI-driven interactions within Totara.
Totara Engage Features Integrated into Totara Learn
Totara Learn now incorporates all the functionalities previously exclusive to Totara Engage. This includes workspaces, libraries, user-generated content, and personalized recommendations, making Totara Learn a more comprehensive learning management solution.
Section 508 Accessibility Improvements
Accessibility is a key focus in Totara 19, with several enhancements made to improve compliance with Section 508 accessibility standards, ensuring the platform is more inclusive and usable for all users.
Totara Goal Tasks and Linked Courses
Goal management is more actionable with the ability to add tasks to goals. Each task can be associated with a specific course, integrating learning directly into the goal-setting process. This feature allows users and managers to track progress step by step, marking tasks as completed along the way.
Comments on Totara Goals
Communication around goals is now streamlined with a new Comments tab. This feature allows both users and managers to comment on goals, helping to track progress and provide contextual updates. The comments also leverage Totara’s centralised notifications, ensuring timely and relevant communication.
Totara Goals Transition Mode
For organizations transitioning to Totara goals, the new transition mode offers flexibility. This mode allows you to enable Totara goals while still maintaining access to legacy goals, ensuring a smooth and uninterrupted transition.
Goal Reporting
A powerful new reporting feature allows for in-depth analysis of Totara goals, tasks, and linked courses. This report source provides crucial data for administrators and managers to identify impactful learning resources, monitor goal completion rates, and track course utilization.
Manager View of Team’s Goals
Managers now have the ability to view the goals page for each team member. This feature enhances their ability to support goal-setting and monitor progress, providing a clearer view of team dynamics and achievements.
Totara Goal UI Improvements
The user interface for Totara goals has been refined, offering improved sorting and filtering options. Goal cards now display the number of comments and progress, and it’s easier to see when a task is completed, making goal management more intuitive.
Performance Activity UI Improvements
A new header has been added for performance activities, making it easier to configure titles, activity types, and descriptions. The general tab has been removed, with settings redistributed across other tabs. Additionally, the Content tab has been enhanced for better visibility of activity sections.
New Performance Activity Reporting Capabilities
Two new capabilities—mod/perform:report_on_staff_responses and mod/perform:manage_staff_participation—have been introduced to enhance reporting on performance activities. These capabilities are particularly useful for organizations experiencing performance issues with large-scale activity reporting.
Totara 19 is packed with features designed to make learning and performance management more effective and user-friendly. Whether you’re managing course enrolments, tracking goals, or enhancing user experiences with new themes and AI tools, Totara 19 provides the tools you need to succeed.