Using Documentation as Prerequisites - Genius CE & Enterprise

How Documents as Prerequisites Work

To configure your Genius CE or Enterprise environment to require learners to upload documents as prerequisites, you need to complete the following steps:

1. Edit the 'External File Types' list to include the documents you expect your learners to upload.
2. Add entries from the External File Type List to the course you want to require documents for
3. Review any submitted documents from your learners through the External Files Uploaded report.
4. Create enrollments by approving your learners' submissions in the External Files Uploaded report.

Editing the External File Types List (Step by Step)

1. Set up the documents that your learners will actually be required to upload. To do that, you have to edit a list located under Administration > System Setup > Lists.
2.  When you reach the List page, click on the dropdown menu to find the External File Types list, as shown below:

This External File Type List is used by Genius CE & Enterprise when it comes to providing both Administrators and Learners with the ability to require and submit documents prior to creating enrollments in the system.

You can add new entries into this list by hitting the 'Add new entry' link or edit existing links by clicking the blue Pencil icon on the left of the results table. In this case, for example, we added a new entry called 'National ID' in the External File Types list, we make sure that the status of this entry is 'ACTIVE' and hit Save.

The 'National ID' document type is now ready to be used as a document prerequisite in a course. 

Setting up Documents as Prerequisites at the Course Level

3. Ensure that the correct documents are required as prerequisites for each course created in the system. To do that, once we have completed step one, we can navigate to the Course tab and find the course we want to work on - in this case, for example, 'Business 101'.

4. To add documents as prerequisites, click the Edit button once we are in the course's profile page, and scroll downwards to find the 'Course Requisites' section:

We can use this interface to add new documents as prerequisites prior to enrollment in a course.

In this particular case, we want to make sure that the National ID document is required prior to enrollment in this course. To do that, we click on the dropdown under 'Documents Prerequisite', and we will be able to select entries from the External File Types list that we edited previously. We can even use a search interface to more quickly find the entry we are looking for (in this case, 'National ID'):

5. Click on that entry, and then click on the Add button to make sure that it is added to the list. To remove, click Remove. When finished, click the Save button at the bottom of the page to make sure that edits to the course properties have been saved.

Review Submitted Documents through External Files Uploaded Report

Once this step has been completed, the Catalog entry for any sections of that course will make it clear that the documents specified have to be uploaded prior to enrollment. 

If a learner attempts to enroll in a course without having an approval for each file required for that course on record, the learner will not be allowed to complete the registration process and they will see the course in their Pending Courses section of the Dashboard:

Learners can upload their documents via the 'External Files' command in their Genius+ interface, and they will be able to specify which file they are uploading from the External Files list. Because of this, it may make sense to keep this list small.

As learners submit documents via the External Files command on their interface, you can review their submissions via a specialized report - the External Files Uploaded report, located under Reports > External Files > External Files Uploaded.

When you navigate to this report, you can hit Get Data to review all submissions made by your learners, or, edit the filtering criteria to cast a wider net and find all external files submitted that may be related to a specific course, a specific document type, or a specific learner. 

Any submissions made for this specific document type are shown here. We can review the actual file submitted by each learner by clicking the download icon under the 'File' column, then select each individual record and approve/deny the submission through the buttons in the bottom of the page.

Creating Enrollments by Approving Document Submissions

Once you select a few records and hit the Approve Selected button in the External Files Uploaded report, those learners' file submissions will be considered to be approved.

• This means that any enrollments that were on hold pending file approvals involving those files will be created. In this case, for example, we approve the learner's National ID file submission for Business 101 through the External Files Uploaded report, and the learner is immediately enrolled into Business 101, as expected:

PLEASE NOTE:

• File approvals are global. Once a file is approved, that learner will have an approval for that file that will apply for any course that involves that document as a prerequisite. 
• File approvals are unique to each learner and each file type. This means that learners submit files for each document type defined in the External Files list, and they obtain approval for each file independently. If a course requires several files as a prerequisite, learners have to perform multiple submissions and obtain separate approvals for each one of those files before they are able to enroll in their course.  

Genius CE & Enterprise will save the files submitted by each learner under the Files menu for each learner.

You can review that page by going to the Learners tab, clicking on a learner, and finding the Files menu for the learner you are looking for. In this case, for example, the National ID of the learner we used as an example is available for consultation: 

• Genius CE & Enterprise will send daily reminders to learners about any missing files. If a learner attempts to register into a course that requires documents as prerequisites, that course will be placed in the Pending Courses section of that learner's Dashboard. Genius CE & Enterprise will send a daily reminder to any learners who are missing files for their enrollments based on the AUTO_MISSING_EXTERNAL_FILES template, available for review and editing under Administration > System Setup > Default Templates.

PLEASE NOTE: This email notification is not triggered the moment a learner attempts to create the enrollment, but instead, it is sent on a scheduled job every day.

You can change the time of day when this email is sent by going to the Administration > Recurring Jobs > Edit Jobs page, and editing the job titled 'EmailMissingDocumentsReminder.SendEmailToStudent' by clicking the blue pencil icon by its side. 

THE LIST OF ALLOWED FILE TYPES FOR EXTERNAL FILES IN GENIUS ARE AS FOLLOWS:

• .pdf
• .csv
• .png
• .jpg
• .jpeg
• .gif
• .svg

It is recommended to include this in your email communication if you require learners to submit external files as prerequisites or as other required means.