Deadlines: Best practice

When specific learnings are mandatory, it can be nice to set a deadline on it, to make sure users complete it in a mannerly time.

Setting deadlines for tasks in a company is a beneficial practice for several reasons. First and foremost, deadlines can be helpful for your users when they prioritise their work. This ensures that important tasks are completed in a timely manner, contributing to overall productivity.

Additionally, deadlines provide a clear framework for expectations, helping users understand the time associated with their assignments. This clarity reduces uncertainty and fosters a more organised work environment. When individuals are aware of specific timeframes for completing tasks, they are also more likely to take responsibility for their work and deliver results on time.

How to set a deadline

The deadline can be added to modules only, and this is done by first adding the modules to a learning path.

When you are in edit mode in the learning path, you need to open the left-side menu to find the learning path settings. This is done by clicking the 'Click to change module settings' on each module.

From here, we focus on the Deadline feature, which is number two in the menu.

When you click here, you will get different options on the number of days you wish to use, but you can also customise it to get the exact number you need.

The number of days you choose is how long the countdown will last.

When does the countdown start?

The countdown starts the second the module unlocks for the user. This means that if you have 3 modules in a learning path and these modules are locked in order, and all of them have a deadline with 7 days to complete, the 7 day countdown will begin for module 2 on the day that module one was completed. The countdown for the third one will, therefore, begin when module 2 has been completed.

This means that the deadline on all following modules will be pushed depending on when a user completes it.

If you need to have a whole learning path completed by a specific day, this is also doable - You just have to follow a few simple steps.
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For example, Let's say you have a learning path with 5 modules, and you want all four to be completed within 60 days. You avoid the deadlines being pushed for the users and still make them complete the modules in the correct order, you need to do the following:

1. Disable the 'Modules must be completed in order' feature.

2. Calculate how long time you expect each module to take.

3. Add deadlines to each module, starting from the bottom and going up.

4. Following the example, we add 60 days to the 5th module and then 50 days to the fourth one, 40 days to the next and so on.​

This way, the users will be pushed to take the learning in the desired order. However, they do have access to all the modules from when you share it with them.

Here you have the explanation in video format🎬

Deadlines from the user view

When looking at the user dashboard, your module will be shown in a prioritised order by default, which means that the ones with the shortest deadline will be shown first. A thing to take note of here is that the order will only be prioritised for modules in this section when the deadline has counted down to 14 days or less.

The look of a deadline countdown will show both on the learning path card and also when you click into the learning path to see the modules.

When a deadline runs out, the text will let them know how far behind schedule they are on their learning.

Send reminders

Now you know how to add deadlines and how they look to you to ensure your learning will complete what they need in a timely manner, you can send them a reminder.

This can be done in two ways:

1. From the admin dashboard, you can go to the 'Exceeded deadline' tab and send a reminder to both users who completely missed a deadline and those who have one coming up within the next 14 days. Click the envelope to send an individual one to the users you wish to send a kind reminder.
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2. In the analytics dashboard, you can send reminders to only users with missed deadlines - here, you can send one to all users in one click by clicking 'Send to all'.

In the platform, you can also enable users to get an automatic reminder 7 days (or less) before their deadline. For more information on communication settings, you can dive deep into this article: "Communication and notifications".

We hope you found this article insightful, but should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to our support 🚀